Beis and the Beginning. The Power, Part 2

According to the Kabbalah, the Universe was actually created using the letters of the Aleph-Beis. This being the case, though, we are faced with a question; why does the Torah start with a Beis? I would think that it should start with an Aleph. Aleph, being the first letter of the Aleph- Beis, represents beginnings. And in it's role as a number, 1, it represents unity. So I might think that the Torah would start with an Aleph to show that the beginning of the Universe comes from the spiritual emanation of the oneness and the unity of G-d. Why doesn't it?

Rabbi Elazar Ben-Kalir answers this question. The Torah does not begin with an Aleph because it's spiritual power was needed elsewhere. Where else was it needed? It was needed for the beginning of the verse, “Anochi HaShem Elokecha”, I am the Lord your G-d, the first of the Ten Commandments and the basis for all of the 613 Mitzvos found in the Torah. The Aleph reinforces, spiritually, the Commandment which proclaims the complete unity of

G-d, and our responsibility to believe in Him.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Elazar emphasizes, the Beis at the beginning of the Torah is not there simply by default. It was put there for a reason. The Beis, which in Hebrew also represents the number 2, tells us that when G-d created the Universe, He actually created two Universes. This world, the physical Universe that we know, but also the spiritual world, where all of the disembodied souls and angels exist, as well as the source of spiritual Light. Both of these Universes, the physical and the spiritual, were created by G-d at the beginning, as testified to by the first letter of the Torah, Beis.

The Power of the Hebrew Letters

“With Ten Sayings, G-d created the Universe”. Our Sages teach us from this that the Universe was created from the first ten utterances of G-d in the Torah (i.e. “...and G-d said, Let there be light”, etc.). The Kabbalah takes this idea further, that literally it was the Hebrew letters that make up the Ten Sayings which G-d used to create the Universe, that it was the Aleph-Beis itself, and the order of these letters in the Torah, through which G-d created and creates everything. This is related to two Kabbalistic ideas, that the Torah is the blueprint for the Universe, and that the entire Torah, from the first Beis to the last Lamed, is really one long Name of G-d, in addition to being a spiritual narrative.

With this knowledge, we can understand an argument found in the Talmud. We believe that the Torah was given to Moshe on Mount Sinai. But there are events in the Torah that happened after Moshe received it! One opinion holds that the entire Torah was given to Moshe, including future events. After all, this is prophecy, and G-d is All-Knowing. But wouldn't Moshe's knowledge of these future events actually affect those events? Therefore, a second opinion is offered, that the Torah was given to Moshe up to the pint at which it was given to him, and that as later events unfolded, additional sections of the Torah were revealed to him. But, given what we learned above, we can understand the Kabbalistic teaching that both opinions are not self-contradictory. The Kabbalah learns that the entire Torah was revealed to Moshe at Mount Sinai, but not as a narrative, rather as one large “Name” of G-d, letters without any break in them. Then G-d revealed to him the spaces between the letters that would form them into words, but only up to the point at which Moshe received the Torah. Subsequently, after every event, G-d would reveal the spaces in the letters that would in turn reveal the narrative of the Jewish People and G-d's Commandments. In this way, we can see in a very concrete manner, the relationship between the Universe, the Jewish People, and G-d's creative power as manifested in the Torah.