Baruch HaKol: Everything Is His Voice

Say it out loud: baruch hakol. Blessed is everything. Listen to what you said. הַכֹּל is everything. הַקּוֹל is the voice. In the ear they are one word.

On the page they split. הכל is written with a kaf and הקול with a kuf. The identity lives only in a mouth and an ear, which is where the work of the third book of Kol Tehom gets done.

The voice comes first

וַיְהִי קוֹל כְּהִנָּבְאִי וְהִנֵּה רַעַשׁ וַתִּקְרְבוּ עֲצָמוֹת עֶצֶם אֶל עַצְמוֹ

There was a sound as I prophesied, and behold a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. Yechezkel 37:7

Before sinew, before flesh, before the breath arrives from the four winds, there is a noise in a valley of dry bones. No hand pushes the pieces together. A sound is made, and they move toward each other.

קוֹל דְּבָרִים אַתֶּם שֹׁמְעִים וּתְמוּנָה אֵינְכֶם רֹאִים זוּלָתִי קוֹל

You heard the sound of words, and you saw no form, only a voice. Devarim 4:12

At Sinai everything was present, and the report says the only thing in the frame was a voice.

A voice nobody hears

אֵין אֹמֶר וְאֵין דְּבָרִים בְּלִי נִשְׁמָע קוֹלָם בְּכָל הָאָרֶץ יָצָא קַוָּם

There is no speech and there are no words, their voice is not heard; their line has gone out through all the earth. Tehillim 19:4–5

The heavens tell the glory of God without a word, and their line runs to the end of the world. A voice everywhere and heard nowhere is the voice you are standing inside right now.

Blessing the whole inventory

חַיָּב אָדָם לְבָרֵךְ עַל הָרָעָה כְּשֵׁם שֶׁהוּא מְבָרֵךְ עַל הַטּוֹבָה

A person is obligated to bless on the bad exactly as he blesses on the good. Mishnah Berachot 9:5

The same Gemara gives a blessing over a sage of Israel and another over a sage of the nations, said by the same person on the same road.

שֶׁחָלַק מֵחָכְמָתוֹ לִירֵאָיו · שֶׁנָּתַן מֵחָכְמָתוֹ לְבָשָׂר וָדָם

Who apportioned of His wisdom to those who fear Him. Who gave of His wisdom to flesh and blood. Berachot 58a

The wisdom is His in both, and both get a bracha. If everything is His voice, the trees, the animals, the sciences and the other languages are the same utterance in registers we do not use.

Genesis with God

The Gemara counts nine hundred and seventy-four generations that were meant to be created before the world, and were folded away.

אֵלּוּ תְּשַׁע מֵאוֹת וְשִׁבְעִים וְאַרְבַּע דּוֹרוֹת שֶׁקּוּמְּטוּ לְהִיבָּרְאוֹת קוֹדֶם שֶׁנִּבְרָא הָעוֹלָם

These are the nine hundred and seventy-four generations that were folded away before the world was created. Chagigah 13b

The book reads each folded generation as a bereishit made together with Hashem, a beginning in which the answer came out another way. That reading is the author’s own and is marked as his. It leaves you with a job: every blessing said over the bad and the good, every word spoken at the right pause, is a beginning made with the Speaker.

The world was spoken. It has not stopped being spoken. You are a word in it, and you get to say baruch hakol back.

The words are also cast on the Baruch HaKol bracelet.

From the third book of Kol Tehom, N-Door: Standing Water.