Asof Asef: Harvest, Ruin, and the Lamp That Tells Them Apart
Rachel names her son twice in one breath, and the two verbs point in opposite directions. אָסַף אֱלֹהִים אֶת חֶרְפָּתִי…
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With Smells We Smelt Light
Ore is metal locked inside rock, and heat alone will not release it. A fire hot enough to melt the…
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Hakol · הַכֹּל and הַקּוֹל
הַכֹּל · הַקּוֹל Everything, and the voice. Two different words, two different spellings, and one sound. They are homophones rather…
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Chorev: the Mountain Whose Name Is Running
Every mountain in the Torah is reached by somebody. The one where the voice comes is reached twice, four centuries…
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Yosef, the Redeemer Who Inherited on a Technicality
Gematria assigns every Hebrew letter a number and adds them. Run it on Yosef and on Zion and the same…
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Reiach: the Sense That Came Through Eden Unbroken
Of the five senses, one is singled out by the Gemara as a transaction the body is not party to….
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The Pach: From Garbage Can to Holy Vessel
When the Greeks contaminated the Temple, the Maccabees searched for oil that was still fit to use. What they found…
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Tzion: the Place the World Came Out Of
Zion is treated as a location, and the sources keep declining to leave it at that. The world came out…
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Nun: Bent, Straight, Suspended, Missing
Nun is the fourteenth letter and its value is fifty. It is also the only letter the tradition hands over…
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Shemen: Oil Is the Soul of the Tree
Halacha establishes that oil may be poured for a lamp. It never says why oil should matter more than any…
