Pastor Deborah
Learning letters and alphabets is for communication with one another.
It's for us to communicate with God.
To begin studying Hebrew,
you must begin with its character set or script.
Each alphabet has a chracter, meaning, power and divine energy.
It also has a picture that speaks a thousand words and a number that has meaning.
NUMBERS 1:2 NKJV
“Take (lift up) a census (rosh-the heads) of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their FAMILIES, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of NAMES, every male individually,
Parshat Bamidbar begins with a census.
In ancient times this was essential for military conscription and for taxes on people or property.
Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev noted that the “final count of Israelites in the census — 603,550 — totals the number of letters in the Torah.
Just as the absence of one letter renders a Torah scroll unfit for use, the loss of even one person prevents us from fulfilling our divine mission”
(Megaleh Amukot (186); EtzHayim, note on p.770).
And so too, the absence of one child dancing to music, the absence of one aunt picking up her niece from school, the absence of one off-duty police officer, the absence of one wife or one husband,
the loss of all these souls prevents the Jews from being the society their Jewish faith, and all faiths, helps them envision and create.
Now, certainly there are painful associations with the act of counting people.
Jews know too well where that can lead, as the Nazis tattooed numbers on the forearms of family members.
As human beings, Jews can point to endless examples in their history and in their present, where people are treated as commodities.
God’s census is one way that God expresses love for Israel, and the process of counting is adapted accordingly.
Instead of counting men and their swords, Moses “takes a census of the entire congregation of Israel by their families, by the house of their fathers, according to their names” (Numbers 1:2).
According to their names.
The Psalmist proclaims that “God counts the number of the stars and calls each one by name” (Psalms 147:4).
So too, Moses, through God’s instruction, counts people according to their names.
Within our names we find our purpose and potential, the realities we fear, the people we love.
Together, we identify common goals, we investigate, we act, we reflect and learn.
And through it all, the life force of this work remains essential — building relationships across lines of race, class and faith where we become more than bodies filling a seat.
We become a powerful force for healing and hope.
Some weeks can be more depleting, or troubling, requiring us to breathe deeply, and work a little harder as we pursue our very precious and sacred mission — to make each person count.
Always discover new ways to see each person for their name, rather than as a commodity that can help move our agenda forward.
May we feel, as our ancient ancestors did, that counting each person and seeing them as God does, as a precious being, we can stand as powerful agents in our own destiny, not as slaves to violence and exploitation, but as people who are ever striving for the freedom and well-being of all.
No one can have freedom apart from Jesus.
Only Jesus can give us freedom.
The Hebrew word for "letter" is otאוֹת) ), which can also mean "sign" or "wonder."
One letter is called an ot ("oat"); "ot" means "sign" ...
a number of letters are referred to as otiot; "otiot," of course, means "signs."
The more letters we learn in Hebrew, the more understanding we get, the more miracles and wonders we will see and happen.
Each letter of the Aleph-Bet, then, contain signs that point to wonderful truths about life.
Life is not just bread, water and money.
Life is much more than money.
According to midrash, the LORD God Himself taught the alphabet (along with the numerical values, mathematical relationships, etc. for the letters) to Adam ha-rishon, who then transmitted this knowledge to his sons,
and they passed this to their sons, and so on, until it was taught to Jacob at the School of Shem in Salem (later renamed Jerusalem).
Jacob taught the secrets of the alphabet to Joseph, who used it to decipher dreams, etc.
The Jewish mystics go so far as to say that the entire cosmos was created from the 22 consonants of the Hebrew Aleph Bet, called otiyot yesod אוֹתיּוֹת יְסוֹד) ) or "foundational letters."
Through the otiyotyesod God formed substance out of chaos and brought forth existence from nonexistence.
In other words, the entire universe is created and sustained by divine language (the Word of God).
When the LORD spoke the universe into existence, His words still echo throughout all of creation, sustaining it and preserving it in being.
Rabbi Oshaya taught: When a human king builds a palace, he does not build it with his skill alone; the king employs a builder.
Moreover, the builder does not bring it out of his own imagination, but consults a blueprint - a plan and diagram - to know how to arrange the chambers, doors, and passageways of the palace.
In the same way, God as both King and Builder consulted Torah and then created the world. - Midrash Genesis Rabbah 1:1
Yeshua the Mashiach is called devar Elohim (דְּבַר אֱלהִים), the WORD of GOD,
and the Aleph and Tav (אָלֶף וְתָו), Who upholds all of the created order by the WORD of HIS POWER.
Every holy utterance can be traced back to Him, and He is the Source and Origin of all that is good, lasting, and righteous.
Indeed, YESHUA is called "the zohar of His glory" (הוּא זהַר כְּבוֹדוֹ), that is, the radiance of the glory of God Himself, who "upholds all things by the word of His power” (נוֹשֵׂא כל בִּדְבַר גְּבוּרָתוֹ).
Hashem engraved, carved, cut, weighed, combined and transformed twenty-two foundational letters with which He fashioned the life-force of everything that has been created and everything that will be created in the future.
IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED ‘ET’ …בָּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת
Before mentioning the heavens and the earth that God created, the Hebrew text says that God created את”… ”
This little word comes in between the action of creating and the heavens and the earth that were created.
Rabbi DovBer explains the use of the word את in Genesis 1:1 in Or Torah, [1]: “Et is an untranslatable word used to indicate that “a definite direct object is next” (so there needs to be an et before the heavens and the earth).”
The Hebrew text literally reads: In the beginning, created God את the heavens and את the earth.
As “את” denotes the Hebrew alphabet, he reasons, “In the beginning God created the Aleph-Bet.
Since God did this before creating the heavens and the earth, the letters are considered to be the primordial ‘building blocks’ of all of creation.”
Our building block is the Word of God.
Spiritual material.
He wants to give us health, healing, financial and blessings.
We speak God's word and become the building block.
WE COULD SAY THAT IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED …את: THE ALPHABET
God created the capacity for words and language.
And then he SPOKE all of creation into being with WORDS.
Which are formed with letters.
Each aspect of creation was called into being with words from God,
and today we speak of the the DNA ‘language’ that runs through creation.
God not only gave us his word in the Scriptures, but he gave us his Word made flesh, who dwelt among us.
HEBREWS 1:3 TPT
The SON is the dazzling radiance of God’s splendor, the exact expression of God’s true nature—his mirror image!
HE HOLDS the UNIVERSE TOGETHER and EXPANDS it by the mighty power of HIS SPOKEN WORD.
He accomplished for us the complete cleansing of sins, and then took his seat on the highest throne at the right hand of the majestic One.
Since He is the First and the Last, we can see that the otiyot will all reveal something about Him.
As various acrostics in Scripture reveal, the Hebrew letters and their order are of divine origin.
It is fitting to speak of the letters as “arriving” based on a teaching of the Alter Rebbe of Lubavitch, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi zy”a.
The Rebbe taught that the word “os” אות) ), meaning “letter,” shares a root with the Aramaic word “osa” אתא)), “to arrive,” because everything in creation arrives from somewhere beyond (see his Torah Ohr, Mikeitz).
But that somewhere, it turns out, is actually a Someone, and that Someone is constantly weaving particles of physical matter out of the primordial letters of creation because He wants to have a relationship with us.
Jesus has arrived to redeem us from sin.
Main purpose of His arrival is His Word.
The son of God is the Word of God.
His Word is spirit and life.
For centuries, our Sages chose to identify the most elemental forces in creation as “the twenty-two letters of the AlefBeis.”
This was long before we knew how to speak of “code” or “software.”
If so, what were they trying to convey?
Wouldn’t it have made more sense to speak of creation as emanating from some other materia prima, as did the alchemists or the Greek philosophers?
Once we acknowledge, however, that letters inform the rudimentary phonemes of speech (the basic building blocks of all conversation), we will have no trouble understanding their intention.
To be sure, describing the Divine medium for creation in terms that are evocative of human communication is a radical statement about the nature of our purpose here on Earth.
Declaring that the universe is animated by letters is just another way of saying that physical creation is Hashem’s bid at conversation with us, and that He is daring us to climb the letter-ladder of creation which leads back up to Him.
In a way, then, the opening verse of the Torah—the creation of the eisא-ת) ) of the heavens, and the eisא-ת) ) of the earth—seems to be suggesting that our every interaction with Hashem’s World, is, in reality, an interaction with Hashem’s Word.
We interact in this created world.
God created this world using letters for the purpose of letters create this world and He wants to communicate and fellowship with us using words.
Words are building blocks of communication with God.
He talks to us through His Word.
We develop a conversation with God.
JOHN 1:1-3 EASY
In the beginning, the Word was already there.
The Word was with God.
The Word was God.
He was with God from the beginning.
God made all things through the Word.
God did not make anything without him.
JOHN 1:4-7 EASY
It is the Word who caused everything to live.
Because of this, he has brought light to all people.
The light shines in the dark, and the dark cannot put out the light.
God sent a man to bring his message.
His name was John.
He came to tell people about the light.
God wanted everyone to believe in the one who is the light.
JOHN 1:8-10 EASY
John himself was not that light.
God sent him to tell people about the light.
The true light gives light to every person.
That light was now coming into the world.
The Word was now in the world.
God had made the world through him.
But the people in the world did not know who he was.
JOHN 1:11-13 EASY
He came to his own place, but his own people did not accept him.
Some people did accept him and they believed in him.
He gave authority to those people to become God's children.
They did not become God's children in the usual human way.
They were not born because some people wanted to have children.
They were not born because of what any man decided. No!
They were born from God.
JOHN 1:14-15 EASY
The Word became a man.
He lived among us.
We saw his great glory.
He has the glory of the Father's one true Son.
He is full of God's grace and truth.
John told people about the Word.
He shouted, ‘This is the man that I told you about.
He comes after me.
But he is greater than I am.
He was already there before I was born.’
JOHN 1:16-18 EASY
The Word is full of everything that we need.
We have all received one good thing after another good thing.
God gave his Law to us through Moses.
But Jesus Christ brought God's grace and his truth to us.
Nobody has ever seen God.
But GOD'S only SON has shown God to us.
He is very near to the Father, and HE HIMSELF is GOD.
The Word leads us to wonderful truth about Jesus Christ.
When we go to the Word, we go to Jesus.
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