KETER: MAIN READING OF THE WEEK – THE ZOHAR BOOK

Main Reading for PRAYER OF MANY, today with ENGLISH ZOHAR READING, page 127.

ARVUT OF : Robin Anderson

However, only through direct study with a Kabbalist-teacher can a student
learn it and grasp its information. And since for many generations there
were only a few Kabbalists, unconnected with one another, the language of
Kabbalah was the last to evolve. Even today it can only be “learned” directly
from a Kabbalist-teacher.
Initially, Kabbalists enciphered their knowledge of the spiritual world as
letters, whose outlines reflected the interrelationships of spiritual forces. In
other words, each spiritual degree is characterized by a unique interrelationship
of spiritual forces. By assigning each spiritual property with a particular symbol,
one can depict the interrelationship, as well as the general product of the union
of spiritual forces of each degree, i.e., its essence.
Thus, Kabbalists created the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The
Zohar pays much attention to analyzing the connection between the letters, which
helps a student to synthesize his knowledge and find new ways of discovering
spiritual forces and their actions within.
As our forefather Avraham writes in his Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzira), letters
represent the stones from which the building-word is constructed. As our sages
tell us, the world was created with the letters of the “sacred language,” each letter
representing a certain holy, spiritual, altruistic force of creation.
The properties of this force are reflected in the letter’s outline, its
importance with regard to other letters, its potential combinations with the
others, its potential punctuation marks, its crowns and notations, its numerical
value (Gematria) and variations.
However, this only concerns separate letters and their combinations. There
are also certain rules that enable us to determine the properties of spiritual
forces not from letters, but from whole words. Moreover, quite often we can
replace letters or even parts of a word with similar ones.
The language itself, the roots of its words, indicate the properties of the
spiritual object they describe. For example, Adam originated from Adama—earth,
which emphasizes his insignificance, and from the word Adameh—similar (to the
Upper One), which emphasizes his eminence. The name Yaakov comes from the
word Ekev—to get around (Esau). There are many such examples in the Torah, for
everything is named after its root, as after the patronymic name of one’s father.
Once we have established that certain combinations of letters (Kelim,
language of letters) can be used instead of the language of Sefirot and Partzufim
when describing spiritual actions, the entire description of the spiritual worlds
amounts to portraying objects and actions in the form of letters and their
combinations. This is how the whole of the Torah is written, in words.