This week’s partzuf will be dedicated to taking an important word from the parashah and looking at various words or phrases with which it shares the same gematria and then corresponding them to the sefirot.
The Serious Side of Gematria
Gematria is the study of the Torah’s quantitative dimension. Most people are familiar with gematria because they have heard one that kind of stuck to their minds. Perhaps it was that the value of “Mashiach” (מָשִׁיחַ) and the value of “snake” (נָחָשׁ)—the snake from the Garden of Eden—are the same, 358. It may have set them thinking. What in the world could these two things possibly have in common? The Mashiach represents the rectification of reality, while the snake was the one who tricked Adam and Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge and got us into the mess we’re in, in the first place.
Or maybe it was a famous gematria from the early Middle Ages, that God’s Name, Elokim (אֱ־לֹהִים) and “nature” (הַטֶּבַע) also have an identical value, 86. Another one of these quantitative identities between words that initially seem mismatched gets our attention and pushes us to figure out the connection.
But more often than not, gematria is seen as a sort of Jewish “parlor trick.” People aiming to entertain will try their hand at connecting the names of the bride and groom with each other, or with the parashah, or with whatever else seems to work. This is an especially opportune moment to create equivalencies using the “slight of hand” known as the kollel, the seemingly indiscriminate custom of rabbis to add 1 to either side of an equality to get it to work. Though there is a serious source that provides a legitimate basis for this action (and even mathematical considerations that make it plausible), the way it is done haphazardly degrades the seriousness of gematria.
There is yet another fault at play. A lot of people have heard and perhaps agreed with the assessment that gematria is meaningless, because every number has an infinite number of possibilities of words or phrases that have its value. And so “everything can be shown to equal everything else.” But this is evidently not true. There is actually a very small number of words or phrases that equal any given number, and even less if you want the word to be one that can be found in say the Pentateuch, or the Bible, or the Mishnah.
To counter this tendency to discount the value of gematria (no pun intended), one of the early Medieval commentaries on the Torah[1] notes that the phrase, “For it is not empty from you”[2] (כִּי לֹא דָבָר רֵק הוּא מִכֶּם)—about which the sages say, “If it empty—it is from you that it is empty, because you have not toiled over it,”[3] meaning that it is your shortcomings that lead you to think that a particular Torah teaching is empty of meaning—has the same value as “gematriot” (גִּימַטְרִיָּאוֹת).
Like any part of Torah study, gematria is only as good and as revealing as the fear of heaven characterizing the person using it. To truly evaluate the importance of a certain mathematical finding in Torah, one must be a true scholar and know the vast literature dealing with gematria from the time of the sages and on.
All this being said, there is a playful air to gematria and to other forms of letter manipulation. To discover it and to enjoy it, one must have a certain idiosyncrasy to the way they think.
Building a Partzuf Based on Number
One of the most central words in our parashah is Hebron, the name of the town in which Abraham and Sarah dwelt for many years of their lives in the Land of Canaan. This is not the first time that Hebron is mentioned in the Torah. The first time was in the verse, “Avram moved his tent and came to dwell at the plain of Mamre, which are in Hebron; and he built and altar there to Havayah.”[4]
Historically though, Hebron was the first place in the future Land of Israel that Abraham purchased a plot of land and the town where Abraham buried his wife, Sarah, “Sarah died in Kiryat Arba—Hebron—in the land of Cannan…”[5] (וַתָּמָת שָׂרָה בְּקִרְיַת אַרְבַּע הִוא חֶבְרוֹן). When we construct a partzuf surrounding a certain word or concept, we are interested in seeing how other words or phrases that have an identical numerical value can be organized based on the sefirot. In our case, the value of “Hebron” (חֶבְרוֹן) is 266, so all the words and phrases—most of them taken from the Bible, but a few from other rabbinic sources—will share this same gematria, or numerical value. Thus, apart from calling this the partzuf of Hebron—the word from which we started—we could also call this the partzuf of 266.[6]
Crown (keter): Hugging and Clinging to You
Our first phrase is taken from the Hoshanot, the liturgical poem recited while circling with the Four Species on Sukkot. The phrase translates describes the nation of Israel as, “Hugging and Clinging to You” (חֲבוּקָה וּדְבוּקָה בָּךְ). The first word, “hugging” (חֲבוּקָה) begins with the same two letters as “Hebron” (חֶבְרוֹן)—chet and beit (חב). Many items, Kabbalistic sources cite the verse from the prophet Habakkuk (whose name also begins with chet and beit, חֲבַקּוּק), “Therein is concealed His power”[7] (וְשָׁם חֶבְיוֹן עֻזֹּה) as the clearest Biblical reference and description of the crown, particularly of the inner aspect of the crown’s higher partzuf, Atik.[8] The description of “hugging and clinging to You” is also referring to the soul’s highest aspect, the singular one (יְחִידָה), which at its highest level is concealed and hidden, even from the individual himself.
When Maimonides refers to this aspect of God, he describes it as “absolute [or, necessary] existence” (מְחֻיַּב הַמְּצִיאוּת), in other words, God’s existence alone is absolutely independent of anything else. “Necessary” (or, “absolute” in this context) in Hebrew (מחויב) also stems from these two letters, chet and beit. With respect to Hebron, the two first two letters, chet and beit, also allude to “affection” (חִבָּה), which is its special trait, thanks to which it makes all souls affectionate towards one another. Before passing on, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai revealed the secret ingredient that bound him with his disciples and they with one another, “For us, everything depends on affection”[9] (אֲנָן בַּחֲבִיבוּתָא תַּלְיָיא מִלְּתָא). This was in contrast with his teacher, Rabbi Akiva’s generation, which acted with might and zealotry and led the rebellion against Rome.[10]
Further, the initials of “hugging” (חֲבוּקָה) and “clinging” (דְבוּקָה) spell “one” (חד), once again suggesting the way in which the crown is singular and one.
Wisdom (chochmah): The Modest
A single word that equals 266 is “the modest” (צְנוּעִים). The connection to wisdom is explicitly found in the verse, “The modest possess wisdom”[11] (וְאֶת צְנוּעִים חָכְמָה).
Since the modest here are in the plural, it refers to the foundation of wisdom, which is described as extended, and thus joins the foundation of understanding by penetrating it and together descending until the emotive partzuf of Ze’er Anpin.
Understanding (binah): Rebbe Nachman’s Central Verse
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov writes that one of the deepest tasks we can undertake in life is to see a fellow Jew in a positive light. But according to Rebbe Nachman this doesn’t just mean judging him or her leniently and with a good eye, it means searching for something positive in them. Once you find that positive point, quality, or action, you should contemplate it continuously until it elevates the individual. He learns this from the verse, “Soon, there will no longer be a wicked individual, because you will contemplate his place, and it [his wickedness] will be gone”[12] (עוֹד מְעַט וְאֵין רָשָׁע וְהִתְבּוֹנַנְתָּ עַל מְקוֹמוֹ וְאֵינֶנּוּ). The gematria of the first three words of this verse, “Soon, there will be no longer” (עוֹד מְעַט וְאֵין), is 266, the value of Hebron. Since the verse speaks of contemplation—“you should contemplate [his place]” (וְהִתְבּוֹנַנְתָּ)—it clearly corresponds to the sefirah of understanding, which in Hebrew stems from the same root as “contemplation.”
Knowledge (da’at): Hebron
The choice of including “Hebron” (חֶבְרוֹן) itself in our partzuf may seem surprising. What we learn from this is that sometimes when we construct a partzuf, we are constructing it entirely around the central point, as it were, of knowledge.
Hebron (חֶבְרוֹן) means to connect; it is the place where all four elements are united. This is one of the reasons why (according to the Zohar) it is called Kiryat Arba, which means the Town of the Four. The inner quality and experience of knowledge is of unity (יִחוּד). Knowledge is the sefirah that unifies our intellect with our emotive attributes and the habitual faculties, just as the earth of Hebron unites the elements together. In this sense, knowledge is like the soul, or the consciousness of the entire individual.
Another perspective on including “Hebron” into the partzuf of Hebron is that its value is of course 266, and we can (as this article’s title suggests) refer to the partzuf we are constructing as the “Partzuf of 266,” and of course “Hebron” (חֶבְרוֹן) is one of the simple words whose value is 266.
Loving-kindness (chessed): Trust in God
Another phrase that equals 266 is, “he who trusts God is surrounded with loving-kindness”[13] (הַבּוֹטֵחַ בַּי־הוה חֶסֶד יְסוֹבְבֶנּוּ). Obviously, this phrase is connected with the sefirah of loving-kindness but let us explain why. We tend to put our trust in those that have our best interest in mind—those that love and care for us. About this relationship between trust and love, King David says, “he who trusts God is surrounded with loving-kindness.” What the verse is saying is that there is an infinite loop found in our relationship with God. We put our trust in Him because He cares for us and because we put our trust in Him, He loves us even more, which causes us to put even more trust in Him and so on.
Surrounding alludes to “reasons” (סִבּוֹת), i.e., types of signs. A person needs to be super-sensitive to seeing the signs that God is constantly sending him or her, showing that His Providence sees us all at every moment.
Might (gevurah): Contraction
“Contraction” (צִמְצוּם) means that everything in Hebron requires a contraction. This is the essence of might. The rectification of “contraction” is fasting—i.e., contraction in a positive manner. There are many levels of fasting and every person must find the right kind of contraction for him or herself. For example, even if a person plans on eating some seeds and he skips every other seed, that too is considered a “contraction” and counts as his having “fasted” to a certain degree.
Beauty (tiferet): Gathering the People
Beauty is the coming together of many facets or colors to create a single image. The phrase from the Torah that we correspond with beauty does indeed describe a situation in which many facets and characters came together albeit for a negative purpose. The verse reads, “When the people saw that Moses was delaying in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron…”[14] (וַיַּרְא הָעָם כִּי בֹשֵׁשׁ מֹשֶׁה לָרֶדֶת מִן הָהָר וַיִּקָּהֵל הָעָם עַל אַהֲרֹן). The value of “the people gathered” (וַיִּקָּהֵל הָעָם) is 266. Even though this phrase appears in the context of the sin of the Golden Calf, it is rectified not very long after, during the construction of the Tabernacle—the rectification for the Sin of the Golden Calf—when “Moses gathered the entire congregation of Israel”[15] (וַיַּקְהֵל מֹשֶׁה אֶת כָּל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל). Put another way, the Golden Calf was the result of Moses not being there to guide them, which is why the rectification for this occurs when Moses gathers the people. Furthermore, when they sinned, they were called “the people” (הָעָם) and when Moses gathers them, they are described as “the entire congregation of Israel” (כָּל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל).
Let us explore the rectification further. The values of the letters of “Hebron” (חֶבְרוֹן) in reduced numbering are 8, 2, 2, 6, and 5. Amazingly, these are the numbers of letters in the words that make up the phrase, “Moses gathered the entire congregation of Israel” (וַיַּקְהֵל מֹשֶׁה אֶת כָּל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל): וַיַּקְהֵל מֹשֶׁה – 8 letters, אֶת – 2 letters, כָּל – 2 letters, עֲדַת בְּנֵי – 6 letters, and יִשְׂרָאֵל – 5 letters.
We can explain this further by noting that the reduced value of “Hebron” is 23, which alludes to Eve’s original name, before she sinned, which was “Chayah” (חַיָּה). Hebron returns Eve to her original name, Chayah. It also alludes a word that means “joy” (חֶדְוָה), the word used by the Zohar to designate the optimal state of the Jewish heart, “Weeping is wedged in the heart from this side, and joy is wedged in the heart from that side”[16] (בְּכִיָּה תְּקִיעָא בְּלִבַּאֵי מִסִּטְרָא דָא וְחֶדְוָה תְּקִיעָא בְּלִבַּאֵי מִסִּטְרָא דָא), a topic discussed and explained in length in many Chasidic writings.[17] In short, joy is the counterweight to the heart’s weeping over either sins committed in the past and/or our distance from God’s goodness that is the result of those sins.
Victory (netzach): God is the Highest of the High
Another key phrase that equals 266 appears in the verse, “Though Havayah is high, He sees the lowly; though lofty, He perceives from afar” (כִּי רָם י־הוה וְשָׁפָל יִרְאֶה וְגָבֹהַּ מִמֶּרְחָק יְיֵדָע). The gematria of the words, “Havayah is high” (רָם י־הוה) equals 266. The connection with the sefirah of victory is based on the Ten “Extremes” (עֳמָקִים) that appear in Sefer Yetzirah. The ones described as, “the depth of high and the depth of low” (עֹמֶק רוּם וְעֹמֶק תַּחַת) correspond to victory and acknowledgment, respectively. Thus, despite God being the extreme of height, as removed as he is from reality, still He perceives and knows all of it, particularly those that are lowly (שָׁפָל).
Acknowledgment (hod): Refrain
Corresponding to the sefirah of acknowledgment (hod), we find a simple word whose value is 266, “refrain” (סוּר) as in the verse, “Refrain from evil and do good”[18] (סוּר מֵרָע וַעֲשֵׂה טוֹב). To refrain from evil requires a steadfast commitment to follow God’s path and not to veer left or right. This is the essence of being earnest, the inner quality and experience of acknowledgment.
Foundation (yesod): A Tzaddik is Never Late
Another phrase that equals 266 is found in one of the seminal descriptions of the Mashiach and the Redemption, “it will come, it will not tarry”[19] (בֹא יָבֹא לֹא יְאַחֵר). In the context of marital relations, this phrase refers to the sefirah of foundation. One of the characteristic qualities of foundation is that all that proceeds to pass through it does so at the exact time required, a topic we have explored elsewhere. A person who is related to foundation tends to tarry but here, even though it seems that he is late, he will in fact not be late.
Kingdom (malchut): Who am I?
עני ואביון אני. King David, the archetypal soul of kingdom, describes himself in Psalms as, “I am poor and impoverished”[20] (עָנִי וְאֶבְיוֹן אָנִי), whose value is 266. Kingdom is described as “it has nothing of its own,” and it is the source of one’s feeling of ego—the source of the “I”—that King David in particular sought to rectify through his lowliness before God. As the verse from where this phrase originates begins, “A prayer from David: Incline Your ear, O’ God, answer me, for I am poor and impoverished.” The feeling of lowliness reflected in this verse manifests as a feeling that “I have nothing of my own,” I cannot take credit for all of my accomplishments, for they are should be attributed to the Almighty, “for it is He who gives you the prowess to succeed.”[21]
Let us now picture the complete partzuf:
| crown-keter כתר
חֲבוּקָה וּדְבוּקָה בָּךְ
|
||
| wisdom-chochmah חָכְמָה
צְנוּעִים |
understanding-binah בִּינָה
עוֹד מְעַט וְאֵין |
|
| knowledge-da’at דַּעַת
חֶבְרוֹן |
||
| loving-kindness-chessed חֶסֶד
הַבּוֹטֵחַ בַּי־הוה חֶסֶד יְסוֹבְבֶנּוּ |
might-gevurah גְּבוּרָה
צִמְצוּם |
|
| beauty-tiferet תִּפְאֶרֶת
וַיִּקָּהֵל הָעָם |
||
| victory-netzach נֶצַח
רָם י־הוה |
acknowledgment-hod הוֹד
סוּר |
|
| foundation-yesod יְסוֹד
בֹא יָבֹא לֹא יְאַחֵר
|
||
| Kingdom-malchut מַלְכוּת
עָנִי וְאֶבְיוֹן אָנִי |
||
More 266
Though there are a limited number of words and phrases whose value is 266, this was not a comprehensive list. Let us mention a few more and quickly say a few words about where each of them would fit in our partzuf:
Second-Filling of Aleph: The filling of the letter alef is alef-lamed-pei (אלף). The second filling is alef-lamed-pei lamed-mem-dalet pei-alef (אלף למד פא), whose value is 266. This would correspond to wisdom because of the well-known and often-quoted phrase, “I will teach you wisdom”[22] (וַאֲאַלֶּפְךָ חָכְמָה), where the word “I will teach” you is derived from the letter alef, which literally means to teach or to train, in Hebrew. Because the permutation of the name of the alef, פֶּלֶא, means wonder and usually refers to the crown, we might be tempted to place the alef’s second filling in the crown, however just alef (אלף) refers to the hairs of the beard of “the concealed wisdom” of the crown, which descend to become the wisdom of the World of Emanation.
Honor of Havayah: A more complex calculation we use in gematria is to take the equivalent of a “dot product” between two words with the same number of letters. Applying this calculation to the two words “honor of Havayah” (כְּבוֹד י־הוה)—an idiom that appears many times in the Bible—we get 200 plus 10 plus 26 plus 20, which sums to 266.
Interestingly the normative value (i.e., the “regular” gematria) of these two words is 58, which is the value of the word meaning “grace” (חֵן). But notice that this word is simply the first and final letters of “Hebron” (חֶבְרוֹן). This leads us to another interesting observation, that the word “Hebron” is also equal to “the grace of Isaac” (חֵן יִצְחָק), since the initial and final letters are “grace” and the value of the middle letters, 208, is the same as “Isaac” (יִצְחָק).
Where should we place this more complex calculation of “the honor of Havayah?” The angels ask, “where is the place of his honor” (אַיֵּה מְקוֹם כְּבוֹדוֹ). The value of “honor” (כָּבוֹד) is 32 and therefore it is usually associated with the 32 Pathways of Wisdom, which would suggest that this too corresponds to the sefirah of wisdom. But in the early Kabbalah there is a distinction between two aspects of honor: The honor of that which is emanated and the honor of that which is created (כָּבוֹד נֶאֱצַל כָּבוֹד נִבְרָא). These two aspects of honor correspond to supernal wisdom (חָכְמָה עִלָּאָה), or just wisdom, and lower wisdom (חָכְמָה תַּתָּאָה), which actually refers to kingdom (malchut). Thus, we correspond “the honor of Havayah” with the sefirah of kingdom within wisdom.
The Perimeter of the Chair (הֶקֵּף כִּסֵּא): In the early Kabbalah (pre-Ramak and Arizal), these six letters, organized as a mnemonic are those which when recursively “filled” lead cyclically to the letter alef. For example, if we fill the letter alef (א), we get alef–lamed–pei (אלף). But the filling of pei (ף) is pei–alef (פא). Continuing to take the filling of the final letter—alef—demonstrates that we are in a never-ending cycle with the letter alef being the “final” filling of alef. Since these six letters’ mnemonic is the “perimeter of the chair” (הֶקֵּף כִּסֵּא), which equals 266 and alludes to the World of the Throne (עוֹלָם הַכִּסֵּא), which is the World of Creation, we correspond this to the sefirah of understanding.
“Thus says [God]”: All the prophets, except for Moses, are associated with the idiom “Thus says God” (כֹּה אָמַר) whose value is 266. Prophecy is associated with eras in which there is a complete unification between Ze’er Anpin and Nukva, the latter being the equivalent of kingdom. When this occurs once again, prophecy will return to the Jewish people. Clearly, this phrase corresponds to the sefirah of kingdom
Two more noteworthy words whose value is 266 are “show me”[23] (הַרְאֵנִי) and “alright” (בְּסֵדֶר). The first was spoken by Moses after the Sin of the Golden Calf as a request that God reveal His compassion, and as a result Moses was given the Thirteen Measures of Divine Mercy. The second is not a Biblical word. It literally means “in order,” but is used colloquially to designate that all is in order, or all is alright.
(from classes given in Hebron in the month of Iyar 5754)
[1]. Pa’ane’ach Raza written by Rabbi Yitzchak, the son of Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi, author of the Kuzari.
[2]. Deuteronomy 32:47.
[3]. Jerusalem Talmud Ketubot 8:11.
[4]. Genesis 13:18.
[5]. Ibid. 23:2.
[6]. This also provides a basis for why “Hebron” itself also appears in the partzuf; see the entry for Knowledge (da’at), below.
[7]. Habakkuk 3:4.
[8]. Note that this word that means, “is concealed” (חֶבְיוֹן), also begins with the letters chet and beit.
[9]. Zohar 3:128a.
[10]. There is a well-known saying from the sages, “All sevenths are endeared” (כָּל הַשְּׂבִיעִין חֲבִיבִין), a saying with which the Lubavitcher Rebbe begins his seminal essay, Bati LeGani. One of the most beautiful mathematical allusions to this principle can be found in the 15 adjectives we recite immediately after the Shema, proclaiming that everything we have said in the Shema is true, “and certain, and established, and enduring, and right, and faithful, and beloved, and endeared….” (וְיַצִּיב וְנָכוֹן וְקַיָּם וְיָשָׁר וְנֶאֱמָן וְאָהוּב וְחָבִיב). The seventh adjective is “endeared,” i.e., the seventh is endeared!
Incidentally, because each begins with the letter vav (ו), these adjectives are known as 15 vavin. The form of the letter vav is a simple straight line. Since the value of “endeared” (חָבִיב) is 22, it also hints at the ration of 22 to 7, which is the best approximation using two-digit numbers for pi, the ratio between a circle’s diameter—alluded to by the letter vav, as noted—and its circumference. For more on pi in Torah, see our website inner.org.
[11]. Proverbs 11:2.
[12]. Psalms 37:10.
[13]. Ibid. 32:10.
[14]. Exodus 32:1.
[15]. Ibid. 35:1.
[16]. Zohar 3:75a. Tanya ch. 34 and Iggeret HaTeshuvah ch. 11.
[17]. See particularly, our treatment in the article “Perek BeAvodat HaShem” in Lev LaDa’at.
[18]. Psalms 34:15.
[19]. Habakkuk 2:3.
[20]. Psalms 86:1.
[21]. Deuteronomy 8:18.
[22]. Job 33:33.
[23]. Exodus 33:18.
