The Mystical Letter Aleph - Part 1 - Rabbi Yaakov Marcus

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] My name is Rabbi Yakov Marcus. I teach here at NV. Um, I do tour college campuses, uh, speaking to students your age. I try to do my mystical Hebrew alphabet series on campus, uh, the shapes and meanings, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. We're going to do a two-part series today on the letter olive, part one. I think I'm teaching you again one more time. And uh we're going to look for the shape and meaning of the Hebrew letter, the first Hebrew letter of the alphabet, the letter olive. The reason we're going to do this is because uh most Jews nowadays believe that the Torah is man-made mythology. Different people wrote at different points in history. Somebody edited it together. And that's what we call the five books of Moses. Orthodox Jews believe that it is not man-made. That is God-given Mount Si 3,300 years ago. and therefore it is a divinely given uh document. Uh once it's divinely given, everything changes. If it's made from human authorship, fine. So it's cute, it's nice, it's got cute stories, maybe ethical messages or whatever, but it's not going to be that deep. Once it's God-given, the deeper you dig, the deeper it will go. And that's one of the ways you can try to see for yourselves that the Torah can't be man-made is to develop some basic Hebrew skills and start analyzing the Torah in its original Hebrew. because once you translate a text, of course, everybody knows that you distort it. So, we're looking for the shapes and meanings of the Hebrew letters. And um the uh the alphabet is one of the clues that it is a god-given text because we have the only alphabet on the planet where letters are philosophical ideas and therefore the shape of the letter and the mathematical value of that letter will line up with the idea. In all other alphabets, letters do not have philosophical meaning. Letters are shapes which represent uh sounds. Um for example, if I were to write the word cat on the board, a c doesn't mean anything and a doesn't mean anything. A t doesn't mean anything. And the sum total of those three letters teaches you nothing about the nature of a cat or what a cat philosophically represents. Torah Hebrew is the exact opposite. Alf is an idea means something. Bait is an idea means something. Gimmel is an idea means something. And therefore when you uh look at words in the Torah, not only does a word in the Torah have a dictionary definition, but on a deeper level, the that word has got to be the sum total of its meanings of its letters in that particular order. And there's no other book in history you can do this with. Can't do this with the New Testament. Can't do this with the Quran. Can't do this with the Book of Mormon. Only the Torah is the uh book that you can take apart the the words and analyze them on a letterby letter basis. Of course, we're not even discussing picture languages which are pretty p primitive like Chinese and Japanese where you you create pictures with symbols. That's a lower form of communication. We're talking about abstract ideas from an alphabet. Okay. So, let's just do let's begin the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the letter olive. We are going to be looking for um godlike ideas because olive has a mathematical value of one. It's the first letter of the alphabet. And whenever you see oneness in Judaism, it always has to allude to godliness, infinite oneness, infinite perfection of God. And therefore, we're going to be looking for some sort of godly idea in the letter olive. Now, you can't say the shape of the olive um is a godly shape because that would be idolatrous, you know, to represent God with shapes. So, there must be some sort of godly message in the letter olive. That's what we're going to be looking for. And um let's see if we can find any hints to godliness. The first hint is that unlike every other letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the letter olive is the only silent letter. In uh if you look at other letters, you'll see that they all have a sound associated with them, including the letter in. Interestingly enough, I don't know if any of you have had a chance to take modern Hebrew classes, but in modern Hebrew, they decided to make the in silent because it was a guttural sound. and it was a little difficult to pronounce so they just skipped it. Um, Tmani Jews, uh, which who are from Yemen actually have a much more accurate Hebrew and they still pronounce the ion as a guttural sound. But in modern Hebrew, for the most part, Israelis do not pronounce it. They call it silent. But in the Torah, ion actually has a sound. So the only silent letter is the letter olithf. It only takes the sound of whatever vow you put below it. So why would that be? Why would the letter of godliness be a silent letter? The answer is obviously just like God doesn't give himself a physical expression out into the world, so too he doesn't assign a physical sound to the letter that represents his oneness. That's why it's a silent letter. Now, if I were hired as God's graphic artist and he asked me to design a letter representing his infinite oneness, I would never have used in the sh I would never have used the shape of the olive. Olaf is sort of like an X-ike pattern and it's not a terribly unified shape. If I were hired as God's graphic artist, I would have chosen a vertical line or maybe a horizontal line as more simple shapes or or a circle is more unified, maybe a dot, something like that. So question is why did why did God use such a complex X-ike pattern for the letter that represents his oneness? So uh let's take a look at our charts that I gave you. Take a look at the kosher column with the letters of the alphabet that appear in the Torah. And um take a look at the top row, right hand side, middle column, and tell me what letters of the alphabet do you see contained in the letter olive? Okay, you're looking at the letter olive, top row, middle column there. What uh what letters of the alphabet do you see? Okay. There's an upper yud and there's a lower yud. And there's a slanted what? Above, right? The sixth letter of the alphabet. Right. So, we've got two of the 10th letter of the alphabet. Those are yuds, upper and lower. So, let's just write the word yud above the letter here. Yud. Upper and lower. And then the sixth letter of the alphabet is above, which in essence is a straight line. So, let's put the letter V up there. So we've got upper y u lower y u and a slanted vv. So now why did God create a letter to represent his oneness as a combination of other letters? Why couldn't he make some sort of squiggle and say this is an olive? Why did he borrow three letters in combination? So to do that we're going to have to understand very quickly um the meaning of life according to Judaism. And let's see if we can do that in the next minute or two. The meaning of life according to Judaism is if you were on the 1960s TV game show called Let's Make a Deal. Now, you all look younger than, you know, somebody who is around in the 1960s, but but uh if you're not familiar with the show, it was kind of fun. You brought something silly to the studio and the MC of the show was a Jewish guy from Canada named Monty Hall. He would trade you whatever you brought for what was behind one of three curtains. Let's say you brought a bowling ball. So he said, "I'll trade you that bowling ball for what's behind one of these curtains." And and the way the game show worked is behind one curtain there'd be a chair. Behind another curtain, there'd be a chicken. Behind the third curtain there be a brand new car. Right? It was kind of fun. So um I'm going to um to give you three different choices for the meaning of life. Behind curtain number one, let's say, is infinite knowledge. You take curtain number one, you'll know everything there is to know in the universe. Behind curtain number two is infinite pleasure. You take curtain number two, you'll live in infinite pleasure forever. Bind curtain number three, God is sitting on his throne. There's an empty chair nearby. If you take curtain number three, you get to spend the rest of eternity with with God forever. So, what does Judaism say? Judaism says, curtain number one, infinite knowledge. Excellent choice. We are a knowledgebased religion. We'd love to know everything there is to know in the universe. And curtain number two, infinite pleasure. Sign me up. I mean, Judaism says you're here to get pleasure. Infinite pleasure forever. Doesn't sound like it get any better than that. However, Judaism says really you got to go for curtain number three because curtain number three offers you the opportunity to connect back for uh with God forever. In other words, God sitting on his throne, empty chair, hang out with God for the rest of eternity. So connection back to God forever is the meaning of life according to Judaism. Why does that make sense? Because if you can connect back to God forever, you're connecting back to the source of all the knowledge and curtain one. You're getting the source of all the uh pleasure and curtain two. You're getting the source of all the curtains, source of all the game shows, source of everything. In other words, Judaism says, why go for a slice of pie when you can get the pie factory. So, the meaning of life according to Judaism is you are here to connect back to God. You're here to go for curtain number three in the game show metaphor. That way, you get everything. Now the Talmud does not use game show metaphors when it wants to say the same thing because this is really addressed um in in the Talmud it talks about uh you being a soul. We call your soul an ashama but you are a soul. That's the essential you. The body you see in a mirror is not the essential you because you know they taught you in high school biology that the cells of your body are constantly replacing themselves. You don't have the same cells you had a few years ago, right? So, you know, when you're a baby, you were this big. By the time you're you hit your teens, you're this big. So, you're, you know, multiple bodies later. So, you can't say this is me, even though you think it is, because the proteins and amino acids of the cells of your body are obviously coming from the proteins and amino acids of the food you eat, right? This is the hamburgers and French fries you've been eating. So, therefore, when you think of who am I, Judaism says really the essential source of your your concept of self is your soul. Yeah. So you are what we call a soul body combination. You're put in this world. Uh this world represents a long hallway leading up to curtain number three. God sitting on a stern leading up to heaven. And your job is to make decisions which take that body soul combination and connect you back to God. Which leads to two very easy but very important definitions according to Judaism. The definition of good are going to be those decisions I make which connect me back to God. And the definition of evil are going to be those decisions I make which distance me from God. So now let's do that again. Good is that which connects me. Evil is that which distances me. And notice that the definition of good and the definition of evil have nothing to do with what you like. That's very important to remember. Meaning good is that which connects me to God even if I hate it. And evil is that which distances me from God even if I love it. Okay. Fine. So, let's play make pretend. Let's pretend you could go back in time. Um, pre-day one of creation, whatever that means. Before there was a universe, before there was time, matter, space and energy, before there was any concept of anything, any any concept of a reality as we can think of, if you could go back pre everything, what would you find according to Judaism? I mean, what was there before there was anything? What would you say? I have no idea. Think think Jewishly here? Darkness. Before there was darkness. Before there was chaos, you know, call it pre- everything. Nothing. Before there was nothing. You're not putting on this Jewish sort of perspective here. Looking at it from a Jewish pers. What? Whoa. Before there was good and bad. Anybody? We say pre everything there's God. In other words, God's outside of time. So God always is. So you can't have a before or after with God. God just is. Okay? So therefore, you could have pre- universe. You could have pre whatever, you know, call it a big bang, call it whatever. There's pre- everything. You can think pre- everything, but you can't talk preod because time is not constraining God. God wills time into existence as we believe he wills. Matter, space, energy, all those sort of things are coming from God. And therefore they are things that he wants to exist but they don't affect him. Does that make sense? Something that you let's say create or imagine doesn't turn around and affect you. You're you're the source of it. It's coming from you. So fine. So therefore God is meaning God always is. There's no before. There's no after. God just is. Now according to Judaism really God is the only thing that is. Do you understand what I mean by that? In other words, we believe God is the only thing that is because everything else is what God wants to exist. So the only thing that ultimately has real existence is God. Everything else is a product of whatever God wants. You follow? So listen to how I abstract this a little bit. This is going to be a little confusing, but follow it anyway because we're going to come back to this at the end of the class. Okay? This is the way we're going to abstract that idea. We're going to say like this. God is meaning God is the only thing that has real existence. In other words, God's not coming from anything. Just God exists. God is. Everything else isn't. What do I mean by that? Everything else isn't God. Everything else is what God wants. Right? You don't look at something and say that's God. Right? You just say, "Okay, God wants there to be a universe and he wants there to be subatomic particles and carbons, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, whatever it is. God wants things to exist. They exist." So, let's let's do that again. God is. Everything else isn't. Now, if you and I live in a universe of isn't, it's only because the is God wants the isn't to exist. Because isn't has no existence. Do you follow that? You want me to do it again? Step one is that according to Judaism, God is the only thing really that ultimately has an existence that's not dependent on anything. God causes everything to exist, but nothing causes God to exist. Okay? So God's beyond anything we can understand. God's beyond time, matter, space, and energy. God just is. So I'm going to say it like this. God is the only thing ultimately that is relative to God. Everything else isn't. Meaning everything else isn't God. Everything else is an expression of whatever God wants. So let's try it again. God is, everything else isn't. If you and I live in a universe of isn't, it's only because the is God wants the isn't to exist. Because isn't has no existence. It's got to be coming from something. You follow? Yeah. So then we are like we are not relative to God. We're an expression of what God wants. But we're not God. Obviously, even on a good day, we're not God, right? So we're just whatever we are. In other words, God wants our bodies to exist. So our bodies can exist. God wants our souls to exist, our souls to exist. Whatever it is, you God wants universes, galaxies, stars, planets, whatever it is, God wills that stuff into existence. But that's that's what God wants. That's not what God is. Okay? You follow? Good. Now, therefore, if you could go back pre-day one of creation, and all there was was God, pre-time, matter, space, and energy, before there was a universe, before there was whatever it is, you know, call it a big bang, call it whatever science labels it. But if you could go back before there was anything, and all there was was God, and you say, "Well, what should I do today?" And you'd say to yourself, "Well, today hasn't been invented yet. All there is is God." So if the meaning of life according to Judaism is you're here to connect back to God, it doesn't get any easier to connect back to God than pre any creation when all there is is God because there's nothing else to do. You say, "Well, I guess I'll connect back to God. There's nothing else here because God hasn't done anything yet." You follow? They're just making this up, right? But you follow the logic. In other words, pre-universe, pre- everything, it's easy to connect back to God. There's nothing else. I mean, theoretically, if you could go back pre- everything. Yeah. Okay. So, now let's say God decides to create a universe. Day one of creation, whatever that means, light, darkness, whatever the Torah says. But on day one of creation, there's more out there to distract me from connection back to God than there would have been pre-day one when all there was was God. Which means logically if the whole purpose of creation is connected back to God, it would have been harder to do that on day one than it would have been pre-day one before there was anything to distract me. You follow? Okay. Then let's continue that logic. On day two of creation, as the universe gains some sort of order, structure, complexity, it would have been harder to connect back to God on day two than it would have been on day one. And day one would have been harder than pre-day one. So, what I want you to do is relook at the Torah's description of the first six days of creation. Not as if the Torah is a book of physics telling you, "Well, this is how to create a universe if you become God." Because I don't think the Torah is trying to do that. I mean, that would be silly. What I want you to do is relook at the first six days of creation as if God is creating a mask where it's going to get layer upon layer and thicker and thicker with each succeeding day of creation. Pre-day one, it's easy to connect back to God. On day one of creation, as as creation begins now, there's more out there to distract me. It's a little harder to connect back to God than pre-day one. On day two, it was harder to connect back to God on than day one. On day three, it's harder to connect back to God than day two. On day four, it's harder than day three. So, what we're going to do is call this first six days of creation God creating a mask of nature. Call it physics, chemistry, biology, call it whatever. But with each succeeding day of creation, that mass is going to get thicker and thicker and thicker and make it harder and harder to connect back to God. So much so that if you watch the Torah's description of those first six days, you'll see that human beings aren't even created till day six. And we're put on the other side of that mask, which is now really thick. And we're told the meaning of life is connection back to God. But now the mask of nature, which hides God, is so thick, you can go through your entire lifetime saying connection back to who? I don't know if God exists. I don't know if Torah is true. I don't know if I have a soul. I do know I have to go to work. I got to pay my bills. I mean, there's plenty, I know, but God, spirituality, Torah, who knows? That's how thick the mask that God hides behind God over those first six days of creation. Now, whatever those days mean, right, it's not clear from the Torah what a day means because we we measure a day by a rotation of the earth relative to the sun. And and that sun is not even created till day four. So, you know, there are people who want to say that maybe these first six days are billions of years long. But it's clear that you have to look at these first six days as almost like God's going into hiding behind layer upon layer upon layer that gets thicker and thicker and thicker. So human beings are put on the other side of that uh mask that hides God. And we're told the meaning of life is connection back to God. And now we don't even know if God's there. We can walk away and be an atheist. Right? So that means that if you follow the logic, the purpose of creation was connection back to God. But the act of creation over this first six days is making that more and more difficult to achieve with each succeeding day. Which is another way of saying that the purpose of creation and the act of creation were opposites. You follow the purpose of creation was connection back to God. The act of creation of those first six days is making it more and more difficult to do that with each succeeding day. So therefore, we can conclude that the purpose of creation and the act of creation were opposites. And if you and I can figure that out in under three or four minutes, why couldn't God figure that out? And the answer obviously is he could. So why did he do that? Why did he make the whole purpose of creation you'd have connection back to him and then go into hiding over this for six days? Make it harder and harder to figure out he's there. And uh the answer to that question goes back to when I was in the fifth grade. Now, what human beings understood before was in the fifth grade, I don't know, but I figured this out in the fifth grade cuz what we used to do, you guys would never do this. But what we used to do is bend paper clips and then hook them to rubber bands and take aim at the head of the kid sitting next to us. And these things stung like crazy, right? You could shoot that kid in the head with your paperclip or you could put it down, but the only time you could shoot that kid with your paperclipip is when the teacher was out of the room. Because when the teacher stand in front of your desk, you never touch a rubber band and paperclipip. You don't want to get in trouble. That's exactly what God's doing. the the only way to give you the free will capability of deciding whether or not you want a relationship with God or whether or not you want to walk away is for God to pretend to be out of the room. That's exactly what he's doing right now. Cuz think about it for a second. If God's in the room right now, that's really serious. You guys should be taking lots of notes. And if he's not in the room right now, so what difference does it make? Go do whatever you want. You know, go, I don't know, hold your phones below the desk and check your emails. Right? You see, that's where your free will comes from. Maybe God exists, maybe he doesn't. Maybe he's in the room right now. Maybe he's not. You know what? Maybe science can explain everything. Maybe the universe is one big random accident. What a coincidence. Aren't we lucky? Maybe they're wrong. And to the point where maybe God exists, maybe he doesn't. Maybe he's in the room right now, maybe he's not. That's where your free will begins. Cuz think about it for a second. God's so overwhelmingly infinitely perfect, overwhelmingly infinitely pleasurable that if he were to take that mask of nature, the first six days of creation, he's hiding behind. So maybe exists, maybe doesn't. And let's say he were to decide to rip that mask of nature apart for 30 seconds and appear in front of you and say, "Hey, guess what? I really do exist. So what are you going to do now? Be an atheist?" In other words, he's just taken religion and forced it down your throat. And you can't have a relationship at gunpoint. And that's why God goes into hiding and he doesn't want to rip apart that mask. That's why in Jewish history over the last 4,000 years, God doing miracles are extremely rare. Because when he rips apart the rules of the mask of nature and makes it obvious he exists, he degrades the free will of whoever is alive at that time and witnesses it. And therefore, they have less options to disconnect and it forces them to be more religious, more connective and of course they get less reward for that because it's not really coming from them. It's being forced on them by the miracle. So therefore, Jewish history doesn't have a lot of miracles in it, right? It's a very heavy price for people to pay. Um, backtracking a little bit. So when you're talking about creation and these different layers, these different masks, does that mean that nature according to Judaism doesn't have any sort of intrinsic value that's only a means to an end within itself? No. Everything has intrinsic value because it's all godly. In other words, it's all an expression of God's will. We don't believe God makes mistakes. So therefore the whole system in itself is meant to be tools for us to use to connect back to God and hopefully we approach it in that with that you know appreciation that that level of respect. Otherwise we can look at nature as something that's useless and worthless and it's like having a treasure all around you and not realizing how to use it. So therefore the whole system that God builds between himself and you not only hides him but is supposed to be tools for connection. So I guess in that case are you saying then so in the sense of it being tools that's kind of what I mean is like it means to like our end does Judaism have a place for nature to be it ends in itself in itself without serving our purpose. No, no. Because um we we get that hint in the hierarchy of creation over the first six days. You get from less complex to more and more complex as you get to day six. The final creation is us. And therefore, it's a pyramid. So human beings are at the top of that pyramid to show that the whole pyramid's there to support the human being's ability to connect back to God. As a matter of fact, although this is not a class on free will, if we were to do a class on free will, we believe that the ultimate highle gift of free will is only given to human beings. That animals that when they decision maker on a much more primitive level and uh we human beings and our ability to imitate godliness have that free will decision-m capability that allows us to decide how to use the whole system to connect back to God. Okay. Yeah. Um, so you said that the layers of the mask were building for the like six or seven days of six six days of creation. Is it still? Um, no. But it's still really thick. That that once God created all those layers of the mask and that whole process was finished. It was finished. In other words, that's how the system remains um up till today. It's not like that every week God starts over, you know, and builds from Sunday through Friday rebuilding the mass per se. Whatever the universe was at the end of day six, that's the way it so like the changing of society and like we've done a lot talking about social media and like societal norms, those aren't adding on to the layers kind of separating our view, right? I think what you're looking at when you look at society is you look at the culmination of historical free will decisions leading to either a better use of social interaction or better use of um nature or our relationship to it or poor free will decision making that builds up over the centuries towards less healthy interactions between people or less healthy interactions with nature. So when you just when you learn the social sciences really you're you're trying to examine how human beings over time use the gift of free will either correctly or incorrectly. Yeah, I think you might have just answered my question last 30 seconds. But um so if what separates humans from nature or from animals is like our capacity for reason, our capacity for free will, how is that compatible with the Torah that has laws and responsibilities? regard. Well, um I guess it wouldn't I guess it wouldn't be fair if God would to give human beings the gift of free will and not give us a a template or a blueprint of how to use that free will correctly. So that's what the Torah I think is the Torah is the template by which we can exercise free will decision-m which makes us godlike in the healthiest most productive way. Okay. So now we have the whole purpose of creation is connection back to God and then the act of creation over this first six days is God in effect going into hiding behind layer upon layer of a mask. Right? So maybe exists maybe doesn't to give you free will because no free will no relationship. We all know that you can't be forced into relationship. That's not called a relationship. Right? If I were to take your fiance, uh, let's say you were engaged and the day before you married him, I were to use a combination of chemicals and hypnosis to brainwash this guy into loving and adoring you. You know, so much so that after you marry him, he follows you around the apartment you live in all day like a lovesick puppy, right? He just can't stand the thought of going to work in the morning because he don't want to be away from you for eight hours. So, you know, after a few hours of marriage, you know, initially you'd love that. That would be great. And then you'd end up throwing the guy off a building because you don't have a husband, you got a robot. You can't have a relationship with a robot. So if there's no capability of disconnection from God, because if God appeared, we would just sort of grab and we wouldn't be able to let go. Then we'd be in effect a nation of robots. There's no purpose of creation. If God wants a nation of robots, what kind of relationship is that? So he gives you free will decision-making, which is godlike. It's a godlike gift because nothing else in the system has it. Obviously, rocks don't have plan uh free will. Plants don't have free will. Animals have very very weak decision-m. So, you have you and I have that ability to connect to God, but he can't force the connection because that ruins the relationship. So, he goes into hiding so that you can make the decision for yourself. And that in Jewish mysticism is the deeper meaning. The Hebrew letter V. The Hebrew letter V is the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And whenever you see sixes in Judaism, I want you to think physical completion. That's what the idea of six is. Six is the idea of physical completion. What does that mean? Let's take this um let me uh use my pocket calendar. This is a plastic pocket calendar. Okay. Any three-dimensional object which is the part of the mask of nature which hides God always has six expressions to it. Right? It's got up, down, that's two. East, west, north, south, that's another four. That gives us six directions so to speak to be a part of the mask of nature which has God. So the idea of sixness is thickening the mask just enough. So maybe God exists, maybe he doesn't to give you free will. Right? That's why there are six days that complete the process of God going into hiding. So we're going to call Vav the mask of nature which hides God. Okay. That's the deeper meaning of the Hebrew letter. That's that sixthness of God going into hiding beyond the six days of creation. Okay. Okay, any questions so far? Now, if you go into a hardware store in Israel and you say to the guy behind the counter, um, I need to buy a VV. So, question is, what is a VV literally in Hebrew? In a hardware store, when you buy a VV, you walk out of the store, anybody take basic Hebrew here? No. When you walk out of the hardware store, av literally in Hebrew is a hook, right? Coats in Hebrew are held up on coat vavves, right? So therefore, if a VV is a hook, it makes sense that in Hebrew grammar, when a v, which is a v sound in English, is used as a prefix in front of a noun, if I say ani v, there's the vv, right? An v. What did the vv do grammatically? Anybody know from basic Hebrew? Correct. Because v as a prefix, the v as a prefix is the conjunction. And very good. So the vavv grammatically is the conjunction and a n and d because that's what a hook does. A hook hooks things together. You know, it's fascinating that in in Torah Hebrew grammar, in other languages, it's obvious grammar is designed to punish high school students. In Torah Hebrew, grammar will teach you philosophy. And that's one of the beauties of Torah Hebrew. So above since it's literally a hook is a conjunction and because that's what and does hooks things together. Good. Now, if I were hired as God's graphic artist and he asked me to design a letter of physical completion, the mask of nature that hides him. So, I wouldn't have used a straight line for above. Av in essence is a straight line. It's a very simple shape. Doesn't look terribly physically complete. If God wanted me to design a letter representing the mask of nature he hides behind. So, since ink is physical, I would use lots of ink to design my letter, right? I would my letter would have ink, movement, texture, a certain genre sequa, right? This would be my letter of physical completion, right? It would be a work of art. I was not consulted, but God chose in essence a straight line. Why he chose that, we'd actually have to go further down the alphabet. If we got further down the alphabet, I could do it for you, but not in today's class. So, we're going to put aside why above is a straight line for now. But you got the idea. If you want a letter of physical completion, you should be using lots of ink for that. Now, what if God hired me as his graphic artist and he said, "I want you to design a letter for me representing non-physicality, what about a letter that represents spirituality as opposed to physicality? In other words, instead of a letter representing the physical world, per se, what if you were designing a letter as a graphic artist representing, I don't know, let's say heaven instead of the physical world or your soul as opposed to your body or your thoughts as opposed to your brain. What would a spiritual letter look like? So, I'd say, well, that's easy. Since ink is physical, if you want a spiritual letter, why use ink? I'd say, you see that blank spot right there? That's your letter of spirituality. And I wouldn't use any ink whatsoever. to which God would reply, you know, nice try, but uh you can't you can't design a letter with no ink. I mean, when you wrote a Torah scroll and there were all these blank spots all over the place, how would you know where words started and stopped? So, if God said, "Listen, I want a letter of spirituality, but you have to use ink." I'd say, "Fine, if I have to use ink, I'd make a dot, least amount of physical ink possible, right? If that's my letter of spirituality, and that's exactly what God did." Because if you look at the Hebrew alphabet, you'll see the least amount of ink of any letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Right? That's that letter Y. And the only Hebrew letter that floats in the air is that 10th letter, the letter Y. Olive, B, GML, Daled, H, V, they can all sit on a line. But Yud is that tiny drop of ink that floats. And therefore, in the Torah, whenever you see Yuds, whenever you see Yuds, think spirituality. Don't think physical. It's a tiny drop of ink that floats in the air to represent heaven as opposed to the physical world or your soul as opposed to your body or your thoughts as opposed to your brain. It's what a yud of spirituality does. And that's why you see little hints in Hebrew grammar to how yud is more spiritual than other letters. For example, if you take a verb root, let's take an easy verb like dair. Anyone know what the verb dair means in Hebrew? Anybody take any basic classes? Debe speak. Yeah, very good. So, dair means to speak. So, if I take a yud of spirituality and put it in front of any verb root, right? Doesn't matter which verb. I'm just using an easy verb. And so, instead of saying dbe, I put the yud as a prefix and I say y because y is a y sound, right? Year. Um, what did the yud do to the verb? Anybody take any Hebrew grammar? Just from guessing, does it turn it into a noun? Like no. Almost. It takes yuds take verbs and push them into the future tense. So although dear means speak, y means he will speak. It's future tense now. So why does it make sense that yuds push verbs into the future? Because the future is not in the physical world. The future is only in the realm of thought. And y since it's a letter of thought, right? It's spiritual. Letter of thought slides verbs into the realm of thought. Okay. So now if yud is the letter of spirituality, the rabbis asked the question, why did God design the letter of spirituality uh with a value of 10, right? Y is the 10th letter of the alphabet. What's so spiritual about 10? I mean there's lots of tens in Judaism, but they don't sound spiritual, right? There's ten commandments. There's 10 plagues, right? So the ten commandments don't sound overly spirit. Don't murder. Don't steal. don't commit adultery sound pretty practical to me. They don't sound very spiritual. So why is the letter of spirituality assigned a value of 10? That's the question we have to ask. And the answer to that question goes back pre-day one of creation. So let's go back where we were earlier in the class. Before there was time, matter, space, and energy, before there's universe, before there's reality to when all there was was the infinite oneness, infinite perfection of God. Nothing else yet. Remember I said God is, everything else isn't. God is the only thing that is. Do you remember this from about a half hour ago? Um, you know, it's it's kind of fun when you think that God is the only thing that is, and God's not affected by anything because he's willing everything into existence. I was once on a college campus and a girl raised her hand and said, "Yeah, but what was there before God?" So, what I had to explain is ins as soon as you insert the word before into your question, you locked your question into time. Since there's no time by God, you can't ask the question. So, the question really doesn't exist. There's no before to be before. God just is. So, you can't really ask the question because it doesn't the question doesn't make sense. Another girl raised her hand and said, "Yeah, but where does God come from?" So, I said to her, "Well, you know, once you insert the preposition from into your question, you made your question locationational. But since there is no location by God, there's no from to come from. So, therefore, the question really doesn't exist. You can't ask the question. Question doesn't make sense, right? Well, okay, good. So, now let's go back. We're trying to figure out why the letter Y has a value of 10. And to do that, we're going pre-day one of creation, pre-time energy, pre- universe, pre- everything to when all there was was God. Now, if we're going to say God is infinitely one, not sort of one, not kind of one, but infinitely one, then by definition, nothing else can exist because infinite oneness means that's all there is. Right? So therefore, if God's infinitely one and nothing else can exist, so what happens when he decides to create something? So doesn't that creation violate God's infinite oneness? I'll give you an example. Let's say God decides to create an electron. Fine. But now that there's an electron there, what happened to God's infinite oneness? Because the electron is not God. In other words, why doesn't creation violate God's infinite oneness? We wouldn't have a problem if we said, "Well, God's sort of one or he's kind of one." Fine. So there maybe there are other things, but once God's infinitely one, then then creation no longer makes sense because it seems like anything God creates is in violation of his infinite oneness. Do you follow the problem? Yeah. Nuts. Okay. Good. So now what we're going to use to try to understand creation relative to God's infinite oneness because it doesn't make sense is a metaphor used by the Arizal who is a big cobalist who lived in spot 500 years ago. and he came up with a two-step metaphor to try to help our brains understand how God can create a universe with trillions upon trillions upon trillions upon trillions upon trillions upon trillions of things in it and still stay infinitely one. In other words, the universe's diversity doesn't violate God's infinite oneness. So, the metaphor is actually kind of clever. It's two steps, very simple. It's only two sentences long. I'll go over the metaphor with you because I think it's important for you to hear the metaphor and understand that the metaphor is not really accurate. That's why it's only a metaphor. In other words, we're not really going to understand how God creates a reality without violating his oneness because we're not really going to understand God ever in any capacity whatsoever. We don't have the brain power for it. Our brains are locked within time. And in your brain, thought A leads to thought B leads to thought C, which allows you to conclude D. But that process is happening within time. You can't use a finite brain locked within time to try to understand, you know, godliness, which is infinite and outside of time. Our brains are not going to get it. So, the reason I came up with this um nice two-step metaphor to try to help our brains come close, even though ultimately, you know, in the the big scheme of things, we're not going to really understand what God does. Okay? So, let's do the metaphor together. uh see if you can spot where the metaphor fails because the metaphor has a spot where it's not going to make sense. Okay, so I'll do the two steps. Metaphor, two sentences long. You listen carefully, then I'll ask you if you spotted where it failed. Okay, here we go. Two-step metaphor for how God creates reality without violating his oneness. In step one of the metaphor, God is so infinitely, overwhelmingly, intensely one that nothing else could possibly exist because he's 2 to1ish for anything else to exist. In other words, pretend God's oneness is so intense, nothing else could exist. So in step one of the metaphor, what God's going to do, metaphorically speaking, is he's going to pull himself back and create a space. Okay? Now, that space is a space where God's out of the way enough to allow for the possibility for something else to exist. Notice nothing else exists. God's just making it possible for something else to exist in step one. Did you follow that? God's so intensely one that in step one of the metaphor, he's going to pull himself back and create a space where he's out of the way enough to allow for the possibility for something else to exist. nothing exists. But he's just making it possible because if he doesn't then his oneness will overwhelm any attempt to create diversity. That's step one of the metaphor. We call that a negative step because God's not really doing anything as much as he's more removing. In step two of the metaphor, which we call a positive step, God's going to will or zap into that space what we call reality. our universe will unfold. Time, matter, stress, energy, all that sort of stuff unfolds within that space. That's step two, because it's positive because now God's doing something. Okay, step one, God pulls himself back enough to create a space where he's out of the way enough to allow for something else to exist. And in step two, he wills reality into existence. Step one was negative. Step two is positive. Those are the two steps of the metaphor. Now, I said it wasn't really accurate. If you were listening, did you spot where the metaphor really didn't make sense? Yeah. Is it because God is the only thing that is and there's no reality? That's what I was confused about. Well, if he's creating reality, why can't there be a reality once he creates it? Because, didn't we talk about how we all exist as reflections of what? God's will, of his will, but we don't. We aren't actually. No. No. Relative to ourselves in the universe, for sure we exist. We're just saying relative to God, we have a source. God doesn't. So we come from whatever God wants and God doesn't come from anything, right? That's I think how you have them say. Yeah. So if God is one, God is reality and he already it already exists. No, only from a godly perspective. the reality we call God exists, but everything else needs a cause. So, we're we're just discussing a two-step process for that cause. That's what we're doing. We're not saying this is how God created himself, God forbid, God is not created. We're just saying if he wants you and me to live in a universe with 100 billion galaxies, each galaxy has 100 billion stars. There has to be a methodology that causes that. I'm just saying like reality would already exist, right? No. All that exists pre those two steps is God. Now God says, "You know what? I'm going to create a universe. It's going to have 100 billion galaxies. Each galaxy has 100 billion stars. I'm going to put human beings in that universe and I'm going to design a system for them to connect back to me." So now God's using, according to metaphor, God's using a two-step process to generate all that rather than a one-step process. He's going from negative step to positive step instead of just saying poof, there's going to be a universe. So the question is why? But what we're what we're trying to do is look at the two-step process and say, okay, here's how reality is not going to conflict with godliness. And therefore, a reality that God wants to exist exists even though it's not infinitely one. Right? You know, the keys and the pen are not infinitely one and yet it's coming from an infinitely one source. So that's what we said. How did infinite oneness generate all of creation with trillions and trillions and trillions of different things in it without violating that infinite oneness? So that's where we use the two-step metaphor. Okay. But did you spot where the metaphor didn't make sense? I haven't heard a so far. No. You want me to do the metaphor again for you? Can you explain it? Which part? Oh, just give you the answer. Okay. Okay. But are you clear on both steps before I do that? Okay. Where the metaphor didn't make sense is if we're going to call God infinitely one, then we're going to have to we don't have to talk location when it comes to God because it does make sense, right? But if you're going to talk anything location, you must talk infinitely everywhere. So therefore, the step one of the metaphor where God pulls himself back and decides to create a space where he's out of the way makes no sense whatsoever because God doesn't get out of the way. There's nowhere to go. So if God's infinite one, infinite oneness means infinitely everywhere and therefore there's no space where God's out of the way. So the metaphor really failed in its first sentence. That's what I was hoping you would spot. Okay. Yeah. So now, so how do you reconcile that? In step one, God gets out of the way enough to create a space where he's out of the way enough to allow for the possibility for other things to exist. And then he in step two wills them into existence. So step one made no sense. So along comes a later cobalist uh who deals in explaining areas of Jewish mysticism like this and he tries to explain the Arizal's two-step metaphor. Now he lived about this later commentary. This later rabbi lived about 200 years ago. So he's going to go back and explain the result who lived 500 years ago and try to make the result's two-step metaphor make more sense. Because if you think about God pulling himself back and creating a space where he's out of the way and you know he can't get out of the way because he's everywhere. You'll just start to get a headache. So along comes this later commentary. His name is Rabim from the town of Elijah and he was the top student of the V Neon. He lived like I said about 200 years ago. He says listen if it gives you a headache thinking God got out of the way when you know he's infinitely everywhere and therefore there's nowhere to go. He says I'm going to say it in a way that's easier on your brain but I'm not saying it any differently. It was the Arizal's metaphor of God getting out of the way and my version are the same. But I think my version is easier to understand than his version. You can use either one. So he says like this in step one, the negative step, right? He says instead of God saying God pulled himself back to create a space where he was out of the way enough to allow for the possibility for something else to exist, he says simply, why don't you just say in step one, God hid himself enough to allow for the possibility for something else to exist. And therefore, you don't have to imagine him going anywhere. So, what we're going to do is say in step one, God goes into hiding. Metaphorically speaking, that's why it's a negative step. And in step two, God's going to will reality into existence. Okay? Those are the two steps that we're metaphorically going to use to understand how God creates the universe without violating his oneness. Now once you understand that two-step metaphor certain areas uh where Judaism let's say doesn't follow society or Judaism let's say seems to be in conflict with the science will make a lot more sense. I I'll give you an example. If you want to talk hiding, let's say metaphorically would represent darkness. And God willing reality into exa existence, which was step two, a positive step would represent light or clarity, right? Hiding would represent dark and willing reality into existence would represent light. That's negative to positive. That's a metaphor we can use. Then all of a sudden, if you look at other civilizations attempt to track time, you'd see that from a secular perspective, there are two ways that makes sense to go from one day to the next. You could start each new day at dawn. Let's say you lived thousands of years ago and you were a farmer. And you called your days Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, which I don't think they did thousands of years ago, but let's say they did. So Monday would end and Tuesday could begin at dawn. Why does it make sense? Because you get up at dawn to work your fields. So yesterday was when I was sleeping and today is the morning. That would make sense, right? Civilizations nowadays um prefer to use the changing of a day at midnight. So Monday go uh becomes Tuesday at midnight. Now if you lived before clocks, why does that make sense to use midnight? Because you'd want to go from one day to the next without causing a lot of disruption. So it's easier to do it when people typically are sleeping, right? doesn't make sense to go from Monday to Tuesday at noon. That would be very confusing. You know, if I meet you in the morning, it's Monday. If I meet you in the afternoon, it's Tuesday. Would be very hard to do. But midnight, even before clocks, is easy to track because you can always track noon by looking and see when the sun's directly overhead, even if you don't have a clock. Correct? So, midnight's the exact opposite from noon. So, civilization stuck with that system. Nowadays, we go from one day to the next at midnight. Judaism goes from one day to the next at sundown, which is really weird. Don't you find that weird? Why is it that Shabbat starts Friday afternoon? You know, in New York in December, Shabbat could start 4:35 in the afternoon. I mean, plenty of people are still Wall Street. So, why don't we why don't we go by midnight? Why don't we go by dawn? Because if you follow the metaphor, if God's using a two-step process, step one, he's hiding. except to his willing reality into existence. So metaphorically that's dark to light. So if you look at the days of creation, God says there was darkness, there w there was evening, there was morning one day, there was evening, morning two days. So it seems that the process starts with hiding. That would be nighttime, that would be darkness, and that's followed by light, that's followed by clarity. So our days start when it gets dark as opposed to midnight or dawn. But we're tracking really the metaphor which is reflected in those first six days of creation. Night to morning, night to morning each day. You following? Okay, good. There's a way to look at how Judaism differs from science based on this metaphor as well. Um, because a lot of people think that Judaism and Torah and science are not compatible. And the truth is Torah and science are very compatible. But there's an area where science looks at reality different than we do. And that's also in the two-step metaphor going from um hiding to willing reality to exist. But since uh we're out of time in part one of the class, I think we'll stop here.