Lexicon

Chagigah 12b builds the world on pillars, water, mountains, wind and storm, each with its own verse, and then refuses to add a sixth layer. Iyov removes the floor altogether: He hangs the earth upon nothing.

Shabbat 119b calls a person who says one paragraph on Friday night a partner in the work of creation. Sanhedrin 65b has Rava build a man whose only failure was that he could not speak. We are running that test again this decade.

The verse on the wall across from the United Nations is Yeshayahu 2:4. The sentence above it says where the peace comes from: from Zion goes out Torah. The swords are not destroyed in that verse, they are given a new job.

The Gemara names four craftsmen in Zechariah’s vision: Mashiach ben David, Mashiach ben Yosef, Eliyahu and the righteous Kohen. Who ben Yosef is, why Zechariah mourns him, and why Yosef is the flame.

His brothers called him ba’al hachalomot, the owner of the dreams. A dream is one sixtieth of prophecy, an unread dream is an unopened letter, and the master of dreams became the mashbir who opened the storehouses to the world.

Reish Lakish says shemen kik is the oil of Yonah’s kikayon, the plant taken from the prophet who refused to let Nineveh in. The ketoret counted the foul galbanum in. A blend can carry what one oil alone cannot.

The blessing went on Gerizim and the curse on Eival, and the Torah builds the altar and the joy on Eival. The Mishnah has the tribes on the mountains, Rebbi has everyone in the valley, and both are the words of the living God.

The ring Pharaoh gave Yosef and the sea that sank his army share one root. The Mishnah uses it for God stamping every person with one seal so that no two come out alike.

HaKol is everything and HaKol is the voice, one word in the ear and two on the page. The bones in the valley came together at a sound, and Sinai showed nothing but a voice.