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Orchard of Delights
forgiver of iniquity and purposeful sin….”(Numbers 14:17). In a
traditional Torah scroll, the Hebrew word for “magnified” (yigdal)
begins with an enlarged letter yud at the beginning of the word.
Paradoxically, the incredibly powerful yud in its usual form is the
smallest of the letters; as the Midrash states, it is “the little that
contains much” (Bereishit Rabbah 9:7). Moses realized the severity
of the sins committed by the ten spies and the people. The enlarged
letter yud symbolizes Moses beseeching God to go beyond the letter
of the law by magnifying whatever small merit the people had in
order to offset their obvious deficiencies.
God answered Moses’ prayer in the affirmative – “I have forgiven
because of your words” – but then seems to hedge His acceptance
with the following bitter rebuke of “all the men who have seen My
glory and My signs that I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness
and have tested me these ten times and have not heeded my voice”
(Numbers 14:22). Once again the number ten appears in this portion,
in this instance, to denote that this is the tenth time the people have
“tested” God. Moses, knowing this, prayed when saying “yigdal,”
that the aspect of yud (ten) should be magnified so that God could
forgive the people.
Yud is the first letter of God’s four-letter name and signifies His
Presence in every point of reality. Graphically this is symbolized by
the yud’s form being a stylized point. In Psalm 145, often referred to
by its first word “asherei,” King David prays to God: “Open up Your
hand and satisfy the desire of all living things.” The Hebrew word
for “hand” (yad) has the same root as the letter yud. The Sages teach
that the verse’s deeper meaning is revealed when instead of reading
it as “open up Your hand,” it is read as “open up Your [aspect of]
yud.” God’s greatness is revealed in that He not only provides for all
but also “satisfies the desire of all living things” – even those who
defy Him.
According to tradition, God tested Abraham ten times. Abraham’s
final test was the Akeidah, the Divine command to sacrifice his son
Isaac. The Midrash states that after the ordeal was over, Abraham
– who had not protested even once during the test – turned to God
and requested that He show his descendants mercy as his reward.
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The mystical approach proposes that events which transpire at
any given moment leave deep impressions on that moment in the
very fabric of time, or to use the Talmud’s phrase, “for generations.”
Somehow the crying on that ninth of Av was embedded in all future
occurrences of the same calendar date. If time is viewed as strictly
linear this proposition makes no apparent sense. Though one might
admit that cause and effect demand that the crying on that night
have a profound effect on the future, it would not necessarily be felt
on every ninth of Av in the future. However, if time is envisioned as
a spiral, the notion that what occurs on a particular calendar date
will effect the same date in the future makes more sense, for if time
spirals ever upwards then the same point is passed every year, albeit
on ever higher levels of the spiral. Thus, every moment in time is
both entirely new and yet profoundly influenced by the past which
it echoes.
The Talmudic discussion actually takes place in the context of the
statement that over the course of history five misfortunes took place
on the ninth of Av, including the destruction of both Temples (Ta’anit
29a). Since this statement was written in the Talmud, many more
terrible events have occurred on this date, including the expulsions
from England in 1290 and Spain in 1492, as well as key events during
World War One and Two. The uncanny number of calamities that
have befallen the Jewish people throughout history on the ninth
of Av leaves no doubt as to God’s harsh response to the crying on
that auspicious night. It does leave us though to contemplate and
try to comprehend the spiritual and material truth underlying this
phenomenon and how it impacts on time and history.
One way of explaining this phenomenon is by comparing time to
space. According to Einstein gravity operates through the curvature
of space. The greater the mass the more space is curved, thus creating
the pull of gravity. This explains how the planets’ rotation around
the sun and the moon’s orbit around the earth actually works. The
pull of gravity caused by the sun’s tremendous mass warps space in a
manner that creates the planets’ orderly circuits around it. The same
holds true for the moon’s rotation around the earth.
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