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Orchard of Delights
manifests His desire to dwell in the lower worlds and to relate to and
bestow His love and goodness on His creatures.
Another permutation of the word “bereishit,” which offers a similar
message, is ashrei – bat (תב-ירשא), “happy is the daughter.” But who
is this happy daughter? The Kabbalah teaches that all of creation is
feminine in relation to God. So the daughter could be creation, but
that is not all. The Hebrew word for daughter (bat) is at the root of the
Hebrew word for house (bayit) and in the Talmud a wife is referred to
as her husband’s “house” or, more accurately, his “home.” Thus, this
permutation hints that all of creation is, as it were, the daughter or
wife of God. The receptive feminine energy creates a dwelling place
– a home – for her beloved in the lower worlds. In Kabbalah, our
most exalted relationship with God transpires when He is intimately
conceived of as our beloved.
The word “bereishit” can also be permuted to spell shirat av
(בא-תריש), literally meaning “the song of the father” or “the cardinal/
essential song.” The latter word, “av,” is spelled alef, beit and can be
pronounced as either ab or av because the letter beit, the first letter
of the Torah, can be pronounced as either beit or veit. Alef and beit
– are the two first letters in the alef-beit, the Hebrew name for the
alphabet. Thus, the permutation shirat av could also be read as “the
song of the alef-beit.” This permutation reveals an awesome insight:
the Divine speech of our Father in Heaven was in fact a song, the
song of the alef-beit, the Hebrew letters. God, in effect, sang the world
into existence!!
Another permutation of the letters of “bereishit” creates the
formulation shir ta’av (באת-ריש), “a song of desire.” This permutation
may allude to an enigmatic Midrashic statement: “God had a passion
to have for Himself a dwelling place in the lower worlds” (Midrash
Tanchuma, Naso 16). The world, the product of Divine song, is
mysteriously the object of God’s desire, for He wishes to dwell in
it, in the lower worlds. Thus, this permutation alludes to one of the
reasons God created the world. (See The Mystical Power of Music for
a fuller explanation of the role of music in creation and its spiritual
connection to the soul.)
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The Ba’al Shem Tov united these approaches to prayer with the
three levels of experiencing reality by explaining that every Hebrew
letter contains Worlds, Souls, and Divinity. He concluded his
famous letter to his brother-in-law, Rabbi Gershon of Kitov, with
the following thoughts:
Every word of your lips intends to unite: for in every letter
there are Worlds, Souls, and Divinity and they ascend
and connect and unify with each other and afterwards
the letters connect and unify to become a word, and
then unify in true unification in Divinity. Include your
soul with them [words of prayer and Torah] in each and
every state. And all the worlds unify as one and ascend
to produce an infinitely great joy and pleasure, as you
may comprehend from the joy of the bride and groom
in miniature, in the physical realm; how much more so
[is the joy and pleasure experienced] on such an exalted
level as this. Surely God will be your aid and wherever
you turn you will succeed and reach greater awareness.
“Give to the wise and he will become wiser.”
£Noah and ShabbatNoah and Shabbat
££Noah and Shabbat
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Lamech gave birth to Noah and prophetically exclaimed: “This
one will bring us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands,
from the ground which God has cursed” (Genesis 5:29). The word
“Noah” is related to the word “rest.” According to Rashi, man would
now be able to more easily work the earth, which had been cursed
since Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. With
Noah’s birth and Adam’s concurrent death, the curse that had been
in effect during Adam’s lifetime, would be diminished, in effect, laid
to rest. Furthermore, Noah reputedly invented the plow, making
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