beha'aloscha: hello darkness my old friend
hello friends!
Did you know that cranes build other cranes, unless they are really tall, and then they build themselves? What a metaphor for,,, something.
Anyway, it's been quite a week. I hope y'all are doing okay.
Before we dive in, some shameless self-promo: I was a guest on the Talmud podcast xaihowareyou this past Sunday to talk about philosophy theology of mathematics, math in the Talmud, and svara! Listen to find out: if circles are real, if feta is a condiment, and what corned beef hash has to do with wisdom.
Back to business. Let's wander over to Bamidbar 10:35, a verse many Jews sing at the beginning of the Torah service (translation lightly modified):
׆ When the Ark was to set out, Moses would say:
kumah haShem - Advance, O haShem !
May Your enemies be scattered,
And may Your foes flee before You!
And when it halted, he would say:
Return, haShem, the myriad thousands of Israel ׆
Every Shabbos I am wondering:
why do we sing this during the Torah service?
what is up with the inverted nuns?
Let's start with the nuns (the Hebrew letter not the cloistered women).
The numeric value of nun is 50, but these nuns are inverted. We're about to do some fun math with this, but if that's not your thing, don't worry, it's just a paragraph.
So. The inverse of a thing is that which returns it to unity. In the (multiplicative) group of integers mod 613 (see what I did there), 282 is the inverse of 50 because 50 x 282=1 mod 613. Since there are two of these inverted nuns the total value is 282 x 2 = 564.
The number 564 corresponds to the word תקחנו.
This word appears in the book of Iyyov (trans. Edward L. Greenstein), in a verse I'm going to deliberately interpret out-of-context:
On what path/דרך dwells the light?
And the darkness -- where is its place?
Can you take it [תקחנו] to its domain?
Do you know the route[s]/נתיבות to its home?
You might have noticed that I highlighted a couple words in the quote from Iyyov: דרך and נתיבות. These two words also appear in the Torah service, but they appear when we return the Torah to the ark:
she is a tree of life to those who grow with her
and those who hold her are blessed
her paths [דרך] are paths of comfort
and all her ways [נתיבות] are peace
return us haShem to you and we will return
That's very nice, you might say, but the plain meaning of the Bamidbar verse is undeniably violent. But I think there's a reason the verse in Bamidbar speaks in the language of violence, of scattering enemies and fleeing foes. We live, after all, in a world of chaos and violence and concealing darkness. We ourselves contain chaos and violence and concealing darkness.
We are not taught in Iyyov to reject darkness, but to take it to its home. Ibn Ezra clarifies this in his commentary on Iyyov: תקחנו, the word suggested by the inverted nuns, means להוליכו. You will lead darkness home. You will walk with darkness on its paths to its home.
Iyyov teaches that knowing the path of light is mamash knowing the path of darkness.
This is the Torah service. We embark with the violence of "kumah hashem" and we return with the peace of "etz chayim hi". The Torah itself is both paths: the one we follow to lead darkness home, and the path of light that we return on.
Longtime friend of the newsletter Or haChaim explains: the reason the Israelites had to wander in the desert was to rescue sparks of holy light held captive by the קליפות, the negative/evil/inverted sefiros. Each piece of "kumah hashem" is linked to rescuing these sparks:
"When the ark was to set out" - this refers to the Ark journeying while these sparks of holiness cleave to it.
"May your enemies be scattered" - these enemies are the קליפות.
"Return, haShem, the myriad thousands of Israel" - we pray that haShem gathers in these sparks of holiness in their thousands
The Talmud regards "kumah hashem" as the tachlis of Torah's sanctity: a Torah scroll needs to have 85 complete letters in order -- the same length as these verses -- to require saving from a fire on Shabbos. This, then, is the most basic obligation of Torah study: that we seek out and restore the concealed sparks of holiness scattered throughout the wilderness. That we lead the darkness to its home, so we can find the path of light.
Good shabbos,
ada