This is a regular feature on IsraelSeen by Dr. Yitzkak Hayut-Man. An innovator, futurist, visionary and Bible scholar. I have the utmost respect for the man I consider a friend. He is among the few that is courageous enough to allow the “open source” of the Torah-Bible to be presented in new and interesting ways for our greater understanding. for more go to his web site: http://www.global-report.com/thehope/a78-re-genesis-now-project-preface-introduction
The decade pattern of the ten utterances and the ten Sephirot is surely the hidden, yet recognized, pattern of Being (HaWaYaH), of the Creation, of Adam and of the World of Tiqqun, and we shall still mention and use it a lot in the sequel. But there is still another hidden pattern enfolded in the first verse of Genesis – and which is extended and interpreted in the sequel of the book of Genesis in the story of the sons of Jacob and the founding of the tribes, and in the rest of the Bible in the manner of the camping of the tribes around the Tabernacle and the division of the land into homesteads – and that is the pattern of the Twelve.
It is instructive to note that the Sefer Ye?irah, which was the first to make explicit the principle of “The Ten Sephirot”, does not deal with accounts of tens, but prefers counts of 3, 7 and especially 12. We know that the usage of the twelve, as in the division of the Zodiac, was very common in the ancient world and also in Israel, and evidence for this abounds in the mosaic floors in synagogues from the Second Temple period and onwards, as well as in hymns to the zodiac signs which apparently were voiced in those same synagogues.
It is therefore perhaps surprising to find that the Twelve is not mentioned explicitly in the Story of the Creation (and one may even suspect that it is intentionally hidden, so as not to add validity to the worship of the stars and constellations which were current in the ancient world). Yet there is no doubt that this principle was implied. If we accept that the story of Creation-in-six-days amplifies the concept of Cosmos as a cube, then elementary spatial geometry shows us that every cube of six faces also has twelve edges. Whereas the conceptual cube is constructed from the six faces, an actual cube is hewn or constructed from material, and when a cube is built in actuality, the construction is through the setting of twelve edges. In the Book of Genesis, too, there is a need for the birth of the Twelve Tribes and their establishment upon earth in order to realize the divine plan, which is expressed in the pattern of the six days. But it is also true, as we shall se in the sequel, tat the Scriptures prefer to go beyond the dozen to the 13.
The Sevenfold Pattern and Sefer haZohar
As we have shown above, there are seven words in the first verse and there are also six paragraphs in the first account of Creation – corresponding to the seven days of Genesis-Bereshit.
The sevenfold pattern is of course, before all else, the pattern of the seven days of creation and the “Seven Sephirot of Construction”. The names of most of these seven lower Sephirot are derived from the verse of David: “Thine, O Lord, is the Gedulah (Greatness), and the Gevurah (Power), and the Tif’eret (Glory), and the Ne?a? (Victory, and the Hod (Magesty). For Kol (All) that is in heaven and on earth is thine, thine is the Mamlakhah-Malkhut (Kingdom)” (II Chron. 29:11).
The Zohar exegesis for Parashat Bereshit builds the parallels between the seven days of Genesis and the seven lower Sephirot, “The Sephirot of Construction” in great detail. The Zohar deals, as noted, with the first word – Bereshit and translates it to Aramaic: “Bara Shith” – or “created six”. Namely: in the beginning there was created the six-fold pattern of the Sephirot of Construction, and with them the world was created in six stages.
Already the Talmud dealt in various passages to the concept of “The letters of Creation”: “Be?al’el knew how to combine the letters by which heaven and earth were created” (Bavli, Berakhot 55a), and Rabbi ?qiva (the greatest authority for the Talmud) was known as one who would expound about each and every letter in the Torah and related intensely even to the ???? that decorate some of the letters. But it was only about a thousand years later when the Mequbalim in general, and the Zohar and its offshoots in particular, set to formulate a whole systematic scheme, in order to interpret each word and each letter in the account of Bereshit, and to show how are encoded in them the basic instructions for the building of the worlds.
The Zohar thus regards the word ELoHIM – God – as the dynamic combination of the concepts of MI (Who?) and Eleh ( these), in accordance with the verse: “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who (MI) has created these things (ELeH). The Zohar details and presents Creation as a dynamic process within God-ELoHIM, a process in which MI (Who) created – that is brought outside of it – Eleh, “These”. The Gematria value of the letters of Eleh is 36, namely six squared, which reinforces the identification of these Eleh with the more overt six “Sephirot of Construction” and the six days of Genesis. Each day of the Creation has a parallel among the Sephirot: The 1st Day – chesed (Grace, Love), 2nd Day – Gevurah (Severity, Judgment), 3rd Day – Tif’eret (Beauty, Articulation), 4th Day – Ne?a? (Overcoming, Eternity), 5th Day – Hod (Thanking, Splendor) and 6th Day – Yesod (Foundation, Thoroughness). These are the overt Sephirot. We prefer not to rely on Gematria in our exegesis, but in such a case, of using basic numbers and their squares, we deem that the Gematria are based on the authentic numerical patterns and codes of the scriptures.
MI (Who) is connected with the number 50 (its Gematria value) – a number associated in the Qabbalah with the concept of “The Fifty Gates of Binah (Understanding)”. The number 50 is found explicitly in the scriptures in connection with the counts of the years of the jubilee and of the days between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot (Pentecost, and literally “weeks”). It is made there of the 49 days of seven weeks (just as the number 36 is six sixes) and an additional day. We can therefore understand the meaning enfolded in this Midrash about the name ELoHIM as containing the revealed and the hidden together. The six sixes of the created world issue from the hidden seven sevens, of the secret of the Sabbath, and of the unique One which is above all. (The legend says that to Moses were revealed “the 49 Gates of Binah, but the 50th Gate, the most hidden one, remained hidden from him too). This means that the same geometric pattern that we saw in the word BeREShIT, is also found in the world ELoHIM (God) – as the array of the Laws of Nature composed like a square (of 6×6) of EleH (These – 36) nested within the square (of 7×7) of the hidden MI (Who?) – Whereas the One, which is even more hidden, surrounds and connects them all. In this sense, Elohim-God has a three-stratum structure or Image, related to the ?elem Elohim (Imago Dei) –which Adam was created with.
The process of Creation is cyclical: Creation is the splitting of the (potentially identifiable) Eleh from the hidden MI, namely Who? In the course of creation, EleH – These – are separated from the MI – Who? – fall down, and become manifest as heaven and earth. Their ability to reunite is dependent on the answer to the question “Me bara Eleh?” (Who created These?). In the very ability to reach in consciousness the One God – these return and connect. The process of the rectification of the divinity, the return of the Elohim to the pristine unity, is tied to our reaching awareness of God, and in the realization and answer to the question “Who created These?”
The identification of Bereshit with Bayit – House – and Rosh – Head – forms a framework for the entire Bible. The Hebrew Bible opens with the verse “Bereshit God created the Heavens and the earth” and is sealed by the declaration of the emperor Cyrus (whom the prophet called Messiah {Isaiah 45:1}) in the end of the Book of Chronicles: “”The Lord God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house in Yerushalem which is in Yehudah; Whoever is among you of all his people – the Lord hid God be with him – vyal (and let him go up)”. So “the House of God” is already implied in the first three words of the Bible, and in the proclamation that completes it. This final call for action seals the intention in the creation of heaven and earth.
This means that the whole Torah could be regarded as given primarily for teaching to build “the House of God”. And indeed, if we examine the Torah quantitatively, we find that whereas the Torah allocates for the whole description of the whole process of Genesis, the creation of Heaven and Earth and all their host, including humankind, mere 34 sentences (and in the strict action, until “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host” only 31 sentences) – the erection of the Tabernacle, a man-made temporary structure, is described in detail through 256 sentences[20] that deal with the plan of the Tabernacle, its design and construction, and another 75 sentences about the design of the priestly garments and their preparation.[21]
This means that from the perspective of the Torah – the erection of the Tabernacle-Mishkan, which is the prototype of “The House (of God) in Jerusalem which is in Judea”, is seven times and more (or – when calculating also the instructions about th garments – ten times) more important than the creation of Heaven and Earth and all their host. The Torah, which begins with Bereshit, which comprises as we have seen both “House” for the “Head”, continues then to elucidate the conditions required for completing the creation of the world through the construction of the “House” in order to house the divine “Head”, the divine presence – the Shekhinah – in this world.
The sages have noted that the construction of the Tabernacle was made in the same pattern that heaven and earth were created. In the book E ayim (“The Tree Of Life” – the primary cannon of the later Qabbalah) the building of the temple is paralleled to the structure of the various worlds (Gate 43, the drawing of the worlds, olam ha tsiyah).
Just as the story of Bereshit repeats in three different versions (see below), so also the description of the erection of the Tabernacle is repeated in much detail three times: first time in the description given by the Lord to Moses – which corresponds with the level of Creation-Bri’ah and revelation; second time in the description given by Moses to Be?al’el – which corresponds with the level of Formation-Ye?irah; and another, third, time about the construction itself – namely at the level of Action-?ssiyah. Now – as we have noted the correspondence in the patterns – we can return to the different stories of the creation.
The first creation story is sealed with the aim, which is the subject of the Sabbath (which in the Qabbalah is that of the Sephirah of Malkhut): “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host. And by the seventh day God ended his work which he had done; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and performed” (or rather – “created to be performed” by us). The concept of Sabbath-Shabbat should be understood also in the sense of returning-hashava and answer-Teshuvah – the answer to the question of the meaning of human existence, of returning the world to its creator, to prepare His House and to sanctify the world.
Note that the expression “the seventh day” (Yom haShevii) repeats here three times, in three kinds of regard. It is also interesting that the first verse about the completion of the creation (“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host”.) has (in the Hebrew original) 22 letters, a full creation from the first Hebrew letter to the last, whereas the whole passage (which is recited every Sabbath night) has 144 (Hebrew) letters, a “square number” of a dozen dozens 12×12 = 144. to be continued…
