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Creating Bridges: Spirituality & Philosophy:
Kabbalah: "Letters from Heaven:"
Spiritual Guidance from the Hebrew Alphabet
Reish:Head: Contexts
Sound: “r” as in Rubi
Numerical Value: 200
Mystery of the Pomegranate
The seeds glow like stars
Giving birth to new ideas
Blood of birth
Flesh of eternity
The head hatches a plan
For the Universe
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by Avigayil Landsman |
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Dedication
I am dedicating this teaching to my daughter, Rubi because reish is one of her favorite letters. She is a loving daughter, a deeply curious student, a creative poet and artist and compassionate guide. She’s got a sharp mind, uncanny wit and an ability to put things into a positive light. Like the reish that pivots on one small point, as a small child, Rubi used to dance around on her toes, not quite ready to fully incarnate. She is drawn to reish because it represents the head and the ideas contained therein. Rubi is a teenager, a time of making many choices. I admire her choice to escape the stress of adolescence by opening a book rather than numbing herself with drugs or sex the way so many of her peers do. She is a person who sees the glass more than half full, even when the glass of life is shaken a bit. I believe that she will be an inspiration to many because of her ability to frame life’s challenges in a positive way. I run many ideas for my column by Rubi for review and she even reminds me to write them down!
The name of the letter reish sounds close to its early derivation, rosh, the Hebrew word meaning head. The early derivation of this letter was a simple profile of a head. Reish is a bodiless head, housed in the space of thought and spirit.
Through iconic reduction the facial features were dropped and only the back of the head was used. The letter we know now is the back of the head and neck.
Where are you headed?
Rosh means the physical head of the body as well as beginning. The Jewish New Year is called Rosh HaShannah, which literally means Head of the Year. Rosh HaShannah celebrates the birthday of the world. I am deeply moved by the concept of a moment in time when creation poked its little head out of the Supernal Womb. Think about the words “head of the year” again. We all have heads that form our thoughts. Thoughts precede action. What new thoughts will I give birth to this year?
Birthdays give us the opportunity to celebrate life. It is important to reflect on the progress I’ve made since the last birthday. Each birthday is a piece of the totality of my life. As I reflect on my past I ask myself what new developments do I need to focus on? I am part of creation; the stardust from which Adman Kadmon—the primordial person was created, is in my core.
Celebrating Rosh HaShannah is a communal celebration of all humanity, of all the earth. Although a specifically Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashanah's themes of spiritual return and introspection make it a holiday for people of all faiths. Jews pray to God for guidance as we bring our heads, hearts and bodies to worship together.
In physical birth, it is important for the head to be born first to avoid complications. This is a way of saying that in the new year, make your intentions clear. Now is the time to shift your focus and align yourself with creating positive directions in your life that will be for the benefit of ALL: yourself as well as your community.
Have you followed through with the intentions you set out for yourself last year? Rosh HaShanah is a time to start again; a time to return to our essential nature of love, compassion, balance and joy. Our little heads are crowning in the dark womb of Great Mother, ready to be charged by the sun.
Reish has the strength of new beginnings. The first word of the Torah, B’reishit, meaning “with beginning” although commonly translated as “in the beginning” contains the words rosh (head) and bayit (house). B’reishit is a thought that is housed. The entire source of creation begins with the strength of cosmic consciousness. The “Beginning” is the container of thought and new ideas. The Creator’s desire for the world needed a context, a rosh—head. B’reishit teaches us that our lives are creations of context. How we frame our situations determines how we transform our lives. The same situation, given a different context offers a myriad of possibilities. This is the source of all creation. What appears to be a lump of clay to one person is a potential sculpture in the context of an artist’s imagination.
Numerically, the letter bet and reish are denominations of two. Bayt’s numerical value is two and reish’s numerical value is 200 and reish is the twentieth letter of the alef-beit, which further connects the letters bayt and reish to each other since both house and head are containers. The letters also look very much like each other except that the reish has no “floor.” The foundation line of the bayt establishes its physicality while the reish, lacking a foundation and pivoting on the smallest tip, points to the ephemeral nature of thoughts.
The word rosh is spelled: reish, aleph, shin. A permutation of these letters: aleph, shin reish, spells the Hebrew word asher, which means happy. When we accept everything we experience with gratitude and thereby reveal the hidden sparks of holiness contained within, we are happy.
There’s a wonderful line in the psalms that says, “Oh, God, I called to You from my constriction and You answered me with expansiveness." This line expresses the energy of reish. When we change the context of our thoughts, our world-view changes, our wearied hearts lighten.
The Whole Fruit and Nothing but the Fruit
Another Hebrew word that begins with the letter reish is rimon, pomegranate. The fruit has always been a symbol of health, fertility and regeneration, and believed to have mystical healing powers. We wish a “refuah shlema,” a “complete healing” to an ill person. The name, Raphael, angel of healing, has the same etymological root as the word refuah, meaning healing. Women value the high level of phyto-estrogens of pomegranates, which are helpful during menopause. And this rosy fruit contains the compounds to protect the skin from the harmful rays of the sun.
The pomegranate is used in the sensual love poem, “Song of Songs” where a woman’s cheek is compared to a pomegranate. When opened, the seed pockets often resemble a woman’s reproductive organs, extending the sensuous nature of the fruit.
The Talmud says that at the Rosh Hashanah meal, we can offer a prayer that relates to the foods eaten. After eating pomegranate, we could say, “may it be Your will, Adonai, that our merits increase as the seeds of a pomegranate.” The sages found the pomegranate useful for teaching about the mitzvahs, or 613 laws in the Torah. One expression says, "filled with mitzvah as a pomegranate is filled with seeds." Although each of the seeds is a separate entity, they are altogether an integral part of the fruit itself; the Torah being the fruit and the mitzvah being the seeds.
There are two more Hebrew words that begin with the letter reish: rechem and rachamim, meaning womb and compassion, respectively. Rechem is the root of the word for compassion. We will explore the weaving of these words later. It’s a matter of context.
Below are my thoughts on other metaphors of the pomegranate.
The Mystery of Shabbat revealed through the bells on Aaron’s robe
Based on Exodus 28:33-34
“On its (lower) hem you shall make pomegranates of greenish-blue wool, dark red wool, and crimson wool—around its lower hem. There shall be gold bells between them, all around. A gold bell and a pomegranate, a gold bell and a pomegranate, on the lower hem of the robe all around.”
The bells on Aaron’s robe remind us of Shabbat. Why? The bell itself is empty which reminds us that God’s had to pull back in order to make all of Creation. Shabbat, (the Jewish Sabbath, a day of rest-- something everyone needs and deserves!) the seventh day of Creation was the day God rested from God's labors. Likewise, Jews are instructed to observe Shabbat, to cease from our labors, to take time to reflect in a time of emptiness, free of distraction. Then we can feel our inner contours, like the shell of the bell.
Rashi says that the pomegranates were in the shape of an egg, sign of fertility. The Hebrew word that translates as "between" (There shall be gold bells between them) can also be translated as "inside," indicating that the bell was shaped like a pomegranate. The pomegranates can represent the six workdays, filled with many seeds, much activity. The clappers (seeds) on all those pomegranate bells would make quite a bit of noise!
It is said in the Talmud that without the yetzer hara (desire for satisfying physical needs), you wouldn’t be able to find one fertile egg in an entire village. This is because we need the yetzer hara during the week in order for us to be productive and maintain our survival. There is another survival though; it is the survival and maintenance of the soul that we focus on during Shabbat. It is a time to be freed from ego. The clapper of the bell, gil, has the same root as gilah, joy. What we learn from this is that from the emptiness of Shabbat, from the pulling back of our labors, we are given joy. The joy comes from entering the holy place of emptiness.
Through the cessation of work, we are now identified not through the works of our hands but through the holiness of our essential goodness, our connection to God, who also stands in the holiness of being rather than doing. What is our Holy of Holies? Where is it and how do we find it? Our Holy of Holies is the hidden spark of divinity that resides in each of us. We can find it through being very still. Stillness is achieved through gently pulling away the outside layers, the masks we create to survive in the world of doing. It is often a very painful process because having worn these masks for so long, we believe that they accurately represent our inner truth. But these masks are only coping tools, shields from the harshness and cruelty that we encounter during the week.
This is the gift of Shabbat. May we become like the bells on the hem of the High Priest’s robe, emptied enough to hear the song of joy within.
and Applying Reish to our Daily Lives
The rimon, pomegranate is filled with fertile ideas, represented by many seeds. If the context is positively charged, the ideas will lead to healing. One could look at the pomegranate and think of the terrible stain it will make on his or her face when he or she bites into it. That’s one context. A person in search of healing might look upon it as a source of strength and a fan of poetry might look upon it and think of the ruddy cheek of the lover in "Song of Songs." How we look at the pomegranate is a matter of how we put it into context.
How we look at the current situation is also a matter of context. One day while waiting at a traffic light, Rubi pointed out that on average, we spend about eight years of our lives waiting at traffic lights. I considered this tidbit of information carefully. Given the magnitude of this waiting, I responded, do we make the best use of the time spent at traffic lights? We discussed what we can do while we wait. Sometimes I am impatient, or annoyed that I just missed the yellow light’s leniency and at other times, I use the momentary break to take deep breaths, enjoy the sky. Sky gazing, particularly if there are birds, beautiful clouds or twilight colors in it is my favorite pastime while waiting for traffic lights since while driving, I shouldn’t focus on the sky as much as the road! When I looked up at the red light, it reminded me of a pomegranate! The newer lights have lots of little lights within them. The little lights looked like glowing seeds.
Weeks after this experience, I had one of my all-nighters where I spent hours and hours poring over my books and then, seemingly out of nowhere, the introductory poem came to mind. I didn’t quite understand it, but over time it inspired the picture for the card, combining the rosh, rimon and rechem: head, pomegranate and womb. Here we see the pomegranate/womb as the Universe itself, of which we are a part, “giving birth to new ideas” that flow from our consciousness to the cosmos. What we do and how we view the world matters so choose your thoughts and deeds carefully. Your thoughts take form as powerfully as your deeds.
When we contemplate the many ways we see this picture, we get a glimmer of how we are approaching our current situation and can learn to change our perspective for a healthier outlook.
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Avigayil Landsman,
Torah Scholar, Calligrapher, Lecturer, Teacher & Creator of the "Letters From Heaven" Deck
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Avigayil has been a serious student of Torah for the last ten years and has written many d'vrai Torah(Torah lectures). She is the creator of Letters from Heaven, a Jewish divination system that incorporates the mystical meanings of the Hebrew letters, her chiddushim (new insights into Torah) and their application to the challenges of daily life. Her LFH readings offer seekers of all persuasions spiritual direction in finding one's authentic voice.
Avigayil is a multi-media artist who is best-known for the beaded breastplate that adorns the Woodstock Jewish Congregation's Torah. She creates personalized ketubot, beeswax Shabbat candles, shiviti plaques and other judaica as well as secular art in Sculpey, paint, and shadow boxes that combine disparate objects such as feathers, beads and wood.
Her Judaica (beeswax Shabbat and havdallah candles, havdallah spice boxes, shiviti plaques) and calligraphy cards are available for purchase at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation's judaica shop, Miriam's Well and her home. She also does private commissions.
Avigayil has taught enrichment classes in calligraphy for the Woodstock Jewish Congregation's Hebrew school. She prepares children and adults for becoming Bat/bar-mitzvah with humor and deep wisdom that come from her own unique way of living through the lessons of Torah. She has also given workshops and lectures on the spiritual meaning of the Hebrew letters and Letters from Heaven at Omega and Mount St. Alphonsus.
"Avigayil Landsman's interpretations of the Hebrew letters are original, witty, steeped in scholarship, and above all a genuine opening to our own spiritual wisdom." Rachel Pollack, creator of Shining Tribe Tarot Deck
www.rachelpollack.com
Avigayil is available for art commissions and LFH readings in person or on the phone. She may be contacted by e-mail at:
Avigayil1@earthlink.net
Website:
www.jewish-wisdom
-and-art.4t.com
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