Sometimes, the elements or ideas we gather and organize into a partzuf—a Kabbalistic model—have not been organized in the past. Although it may make a lot of sense to connect them with one another, it is always helpful to strengthen their connection through another type of analysis. For this week’s partzuf, we are going to look at the all-inclusive sins described in the Torah. These are the sins whose effects are still felt today, usually not just by the Jewish people, but by all of humanity. In addition, the strife or issue that caused them has yet to be remedied.
What is a Sin?
A sin is a test that has the potential to either reveal the essence of either the individual or a community or, if failed, to derail life and set it on a detour. Chassidut discusses the potential for revealing the essence in length in context of the verse, “For Havayah your God is testing you to know whether you love Havayah your God.”[1] Since God already knows whether we love Him or not, the verse should be read as stating: “God is testing you so that you may know whether you love God.”
If it is an individual that sins because he or she fails the test, then their personal life is derailed. The remedy for a personal sin is confession, the most important part of doing teshuvah. Case in point is the account of Judah’s sin against his daughter-in-law, Tamar that appears in our parashah, parashat Vayeishev. When confronted by Tamar, Judah admits to his wrongdoing and says, “Indeed, she is more in the right than I, inasmuch as I did not give her to my son Sheilah.”[2]
Judah’s descendant, King David, exemplifies the ability to confess to one’s sins. After being confronted by the prophet Nathan regarding his machinations against Uriyah the husband of Batsheba, David immediately confesses, “I have sinned to God.”[3] Because of David’s immediate submission to God’s rebuke spoken through His prophet Nathan, he is considered the exemplar of lowliness before God and the dean of all who seek to repent before God. As such, David’s confession is viewed as an important rectification for Adam’s attempt to deflect guilt for having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge. David’s descendant, the Mashiach is destined to bring all of humanity to rectify this predilection to shun responsibility for our actions.
The All-Inclusive Sins
The Torah describes many sins that might be candidates to be included in this group, but there is no clear rabbinic source that lists what the most important might be. So it is helpful and perhaps even surprising that we can use mathematical analysis to guide and then support our decision to include particular sins in our group.
Let’s begin by noting the most general sins that are easy to identify. The first is of course the sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. No sin has affected humanity more than this one and, in a sense, all of human history, all the difficulties, all the strife, are the result of this sin. By eating from the Tree of Knowledge, our eyes were opened, but our natural connection with God was severed. Since then, we have been seeking a way back.
The sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge began the process of pushing the Divine Presence, the Shechinah, up seven levels from dwelling in our reality. The return of the Shechinah to human consciousness began with the life and efforts of Abraham and was completed at the Giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, seven generations later. The sages describe that the poison injected into Adam and Eve by the primordial snake was neutralized by the Shechinah descending upon Mt. Sinai.[4] However, the healing was short-lived and forty days later, the people sinned with the Golden Calf, an all-inclusive sin that once again cast the Jewish people into a state of dissonance from God.
The third prominent all-inclusive sin of the Torah is the Sin of the Spies who went to see the Land of Canaan and then came back with a defamatory report, which caused the people to distrust God’s ability to bring them into the Land. The result of this sin was forty years of wandering in the wilderness and ultimately led to Moses not entering the Land. Had Moses led the people into the Land of Israel, he would have constructed the permanent Temple in Jerusalem and the Messianic age would have begun.
In Search of Mathematical Simplicity
After HaRav Ginsburgh first taught about these three all-inclusive sins in the Od Yosef Chai Yeshivah in Shechem, he contemplated the Torah portions in which they appear from a quantitative perspective. The sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge is in parashat Bereishit, the 1st parashah in the Torah. The sin of the Golden Calf is described in parashat Ki Tissa, the Torah’s 21st parashah. The sin of the Spies appears in parashat Shelach, the 37th parashah. These three numbers—1, 21, and 37—can be seen as a series. A basic technique used to analyze series is the “finite differences” method. It is the discrete equivalent of finding the derivative of a function and was originally developed by Isaac Newton. If numbers in a series have a constant second “finite difference” they form a quadratic series. For example, the number 1 3 6 form a quadratic series since we can write:
| 1 | 3 | 6 | |||
| 2 | 3 | ||||
| 1 | |||||
The difference between 1 and 3 is 2, the difference between 3 and 6 is 3, and the difference between the differences (2 and 3) is 1, also known as the base of the series. We can use the base to find the next number in this series:
| 1 | 3 | 6 | 10 | ||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | |||||
| 1 | 1 | ||||||
The next number is 10. We can use the base to continue generating the rest of the numbers in the series.
Now, let us return to the three numbers 1, 21, and 37. Arranging them in the finite differences form we get:
| 1 | 21 | 37 | |||
| 20 | 16 | ||||
| -4 | |||||
But we can do better by assuming that there is a missing number in this sequence, between 1 and 21. If we add the number 9, we get the following:
| 1 | 9 | 21 | 37 | ||||
| 8 | 12 | 16 | |||||
| 4 | 4 | ||||||
By adding the 9, we have speculated that there is another all-inclusive sin in the Torah’s 9th parashah, which happens to be parashat Vayeishev. Another thing that has changed is that the base of the series is now 4, which itself alludes to there being 4 all-inclusive sins. One more important change is the average value of the four numbers: 1, 9, 21, and 37. Their sum is 68, which means their average is 17, the value of the word for sin (חֵטְא). One should immediately question this gematria, since the value of “sin” (חֵטְא) is 18. However, there is one exceptional instance of the word in the Torah where it is written without the alef, regarding a situation in which the congregation inadvertently worshipped in a forbidden way. They then bring “a he-goat as a sin offering”[5] (וּשְׂעִיר עִזִּים אֶחָד לְחַטָּת). Since the average value is 17, we are pointed in the direction of the Torah’s 17th parashah, which is Yitro, suggesting that the remedy to all the all-inclusive sins is found in the Giving of the Torah described in that parashah. Because the Torah is what designates what is a sin and what is not, it follows that only the Torah can also annul a sin through the path of teshuvah.
Before identifying the all-inclusive sin in parashat Vayeishev, the 9th parashah, let us see what the number preceding 1 is. We can find it by extrapolating backwards:
| -3 | 1 | 9 | 21 | 37 | |||||
| 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | ||||||
| 4 | 4 | 4 | |||||||
It may sound a little strange, but if we follow the numbers logically, we can say that the negative 3rd parashah is the third parashah backwards from Bereishit, which is Nitzaveem. Parashat Nitzaveem contains what is known as the parashah of teshuvah, a beautiful allusion to the sages’ statement that “teshuvah preceded the Creation of the world.”[6]
One more point that will be important for our construction of the partzuf of the all-inclusive sins in a moment is to look at the number of verses in these parashot. In the 1st and 9th—Bereishit and Vayeishev—there are 146 and 112 verses, respectively. There sum is 258. In the 21st and 37th parashot—Ki Tissa and Shelach—there are 139 and 119 verse, respectively. Again, their sum is 258. This both provides additional mathematical support for adding the 9th parashah as well as setting the stage to dividing the 4 all-inclusive sins into 2 pairs, just as the first two letters of God’s essential Name, Havayah are known as “the concealed” (הַנִּסְתָּרֹת)[7] and the final two letters are known as “and the revealed” (וְהַנִּגְלֹת).
But what is even more interesting is that the number of verses in parashat Yitro—the Torah’s 17th parashah, which we said is the remedy to the all-inclusive sins—is 72,[8] which is 4 times 18, or 4 times the value of “sin” (חֵטְא), alluding to its being the remedy for these 4 sins.
The All-Inclusive Sin of Vayeishev
It is not difficult to identify the all-inclusive sin in the Torah’s 9th parashah, parashat Vayeishev: the sin of the brothers selling Joseph into slavery. It is an all-inclusive sin because the entire Jewish people were involved. When we say that everyone was involved, this does not exclude the possibility of there being exceptions.[9] Indeed, Benjamin was not present when Joseph was sold, just as the Levites did not participate in the Golden Calf. In fact, at first the brothers decided to kill Joseph, having tried him and concluding that he should be put to death. However, halachah dictates that if all the judges unanimously find someone guilty of a capital offense, that person is freed. Likewise, if all the brothers had been present and they would have unanimously decided that he was liable for death, then Joseph would have been set free.
Putting a spotlight on the essence of the sin of selling Joseph, we see that it was fueled by a doubt whether a son of Rachel was akin to the sons of Jacob’s other wives. In other words, the focus was on the status of maternal descent, since all the brothers shared a common father, Jacob.
Adding this sin to the series also fills in what seemed to be too big a spiritual leap from the Tree of Knowledge to the Golden Calf, as we will now see.
Constructing the Partzuf
Since we have 4 all-inclusive sins, it follows that we should correspond them to the best-known Torah model of the four letters of God’s essential Name, Havayah. Whenever we have 4 elements that are well-ordered in the Torah, logic dictates that their order be retained. Thus, we create the following partzuf:
| letter of Havayah | sefirah | All-inclusive Sin | Sin against | |
| yud | Wisdom | Tree of Knowledge | Self | י |
| hei | Understanding | Selling Joseph | Brotherhood/Mothers | ה |
| vav | Beauty (Knowledge) | Worshipping Golden Calf | Moses | ו |
| hei | Kingdom | Spies | Land of Israel | ה |
Let us walk through the parts of this partzuf in a bit more detail, although a complete treatment is beyond our scope here.
First, we want to look at who the sin was aimed at. On first inspection we would say that the first and third sins—eating from the Tree of Knowledge and Worshipping the Golden Calf—were sins aimed at God, while the second sin was against Joseph and the fourth was perhaps against Moses. However, on closer inspection
, we can analyze the sins differently.
Even though eating from the Tree of Knowledge seems to be a sin against God Himself, in reality it was a form of self-harm, akin to suicide. Because God had warned Adam that eating from the tree would lead to his certain death, Adam choosing to in fact eat from the tree was a suicidal act. In fact, this is the root of all sin—ignoring one’s own well-being and acting in a masochistic manner, inflicting self-harm. But at each level of sin, the harm is inflicted on a more distant and seemingly less intimate part of the self.
All four all-inclusive sins present various degrees of self-inflicted harm. Adam harmed himself directly. His sin attacked the very essence of his being, known as the “power of the essence” (כֹּחַ מַה), one of the permutations of “wisdom” (חָכְמָה).
Joseph’s brothers attacked one of their own, one level removed from harming the self. The connection between the brothers and Joseph was a familial one, but as mentioned earlier, because they were not from the same mother, the attack was against motherhood as the basis of nationhood. In Hebrew (as well as other Semitic languages), the word for “nation” (אֻמָּה) is derived from “mother” (אֵם).
The sin of the Golden Calf was not against God. As Maimonides and others explain, the people were replacing Moses—God’s emissary—not God Himself. As such, the Golden Calf was an attack on Moses’ leadership.
Finally, the Sin of the Spies was directed not only against Moses, who promised to bring the Israelites to the Holy land, but against Moses’ leadership as it would be elevated to the status of being a king, specifically in the Land of Israel. And so, it was an attack against one’s homeland.
Let us summarize this additional analysis with an augmented form of our partzuf:
| letter of Havayah | sefirah | All-inclusive Sin | Sin against | |
| yud | Wisdom | Tree of Knowledge | Self | י |
| hei | Understanding | Selling Joseph | Nation | ה |
| vav | Beauty (Knowledge) | Worshipping Golden Calf | Leadership | ו |
| hei | Kingdom | Spies | Homeland | ה |
[1]. Deuteronomy 13:4.
[2]. Genesis 38:26.
[3]. 2 Samuel 12:13.
[4]. Shabbat 146b and Yevamot 103b.
[5]. Numbers 15:24. Incidentally, this is the basis of the well-known custom mentioned in Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 583:2) not to eat nuts on Rosh Hashanah since the value of “nut” (אֱגוֹז) is the same as the value of sin, when written without the alef (חֵט) as in this verse.
[6]. Bereishit Rabbah 1:4.
[7]. Following Deuteronomy 29:28. The first two letters, yud and hei, allude to the relatively hidden intellectual powers, wisdom and understanding. The final two letters, vav and hei (alluded to in the word “and the concealed,” וְהַנִּגְלֹת) allude to the revealed emotional and active powers, beauty (tiferet) and kingdom (malchut).
[8]. There are a number of different reckonings of the number of verses in Yitro. They depend on how the text of the Ten Commandments is divided into verse. However, 72 is the number assigned by the mesorah and brought in most Chumashim.
[9]. Once again, demonstrating the principle that, “the exception proves the rule,” or in the language of the sages, “there is no rule that does not have an exception” (אֵין כְּלָל שֶׁאֵין לוֹ יוֹצֵא מִן הַכְּלָל).
