The story of the Aleph: the most shy letter of the Hebrew alphabet

This bizarre idea, expressed by the imminent scholar and wonderful essayist Thomas Browne in the 17th century, while seemingly a Christian idea, can be found in the opening chapters of Jewish Midrash known to us as Bereshit Rabbah. In the Talmudic Midrash on the book of Genesis the Torah (The Hebrew name for the Bible) itself claims to precede the world and all the things that are in it, and so to contain the whole of history between its pages. When God came to create the heavens and the earth he looked first in the Torah:

This is a marvelous concept. As a book that was written by an endless intelligence (i.e. by God the all-knowing), everything that happened or will happen is already written in it. That means that Creation itself is but a story foretold in the Torah.

This might be a clever way for the Talmudic sages to join together the biblical story of creation with that of the people of Israel, just as Christianity joined together creation and Jesus. The creation of the world, and even of men, is a universal story, perhaps the universal story of the Bible. The formation of the people of Israel comes only 11 chapters later, with the coming of Abraham the first patriarch.

By centering creation on the Torah in the Midrash, the Jewish Scripture becomes the point of origin: The plan of creation and its main tool. Stéphane Mallarmé may have wished to write the world into a book. The Jewish sages saw The Torah as a mirror image of the French poet’s wish: A book which God uses as an architectural plan for the universe - just like a flesh and blood king who builds a palace.

The Jewish Kabbalah took this idea a step further.

Sefer Yetzirah and the letters of creation

In the ancient Jewish Mystical work known as 'Sefer Yetzirah' (Book of Creation), there is no mention of prayer, life after death, the end of days or messianic redemption. Even the people of Israel are not mentioned. What we find - and in abundance - are references to creation. So how was the world created according to the Book of Creation? The 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet together with the ten Sefirot (probably the first ten numbers) are the building blocks that make up the world. Creation, therefore, is based on the laws of language.

It is not only the words that forms the stories in the Torah that are the building blocks to reality, but the letters in themselves. The Hebrew letters. In the immortal words of the Sefer Yezirah:

Ever since the opening chapter of Genesis no Hebrew book claimed such revolutionary claims without forviding us with traditional sources to rely on. The Talmudic sages use the Torah as evidence. Sefer Yetzirah does no.

The Kabbalists who delved into this book (and virtually all did) were ignited with boundless potentialities. If the letters of the alphabet are the building blocks of creation, then you can do powerful stuff with them. Least of all tell amazing stories about them, their function and even personalities… Take the letter Aleph (א) for example. This is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

According to the ancient Hebrew script, in its original form the letter Aleph resembled the horns of a bull - an animal of unparallel importance at a time when most of the population was engaged in agriculture.

However, the Kabbalists learn from Sefer Yezirah that the letters are much more than symbols that represent human speech. And when they talked about the Aleph, it seems that they could not contain their enthusiasm. As the first tool of God’s creation the Aleph for them was The supreme head of heads, The illuminating letter in the light of the ancient light, The depth of the well from which all blessings flow and come out and are found, and even: The signal letter from which everything is built, everything is nourished, and in it the Holy One, blessed be He, protects Israel and breaks their enemies before them.

Because of the Aleph position as the first letter, she (the letters are always female in the Kabbalah) became a point from which all the letters came out, as written in the New Zohar (Book of Splendor): and twenty-two letters spread out and begin to shine from the head of the ancient light [that is, from the Aleph] in the unique secret, because from there the letters begin to be revealed and from there the letters light up and rise: from the Aleph, which is the secret of the letters, the one secret.

What is most interesting about the Aleph is her own understanding of her position, or lack of it. It seems that despite the many praises heaped upon her, the kabbalists also considered her modest and even shy in character. A story we find in the ancient Midrash named Alphabet of Rabbi Akiva tells of a fierce competition between the letters of the Alphabet for the coveted title, the one that will open the Bible. One by one, the letters came to God, each letter with a justification of her own. The 22 letters arrived in reverse order – Taf (ת), the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet arrived first, Shin (ש, the second to last) followed and on and on. And so when it came time for the Aleph to appear before God, she discovered that the Almighty already created his world with the second letter, with Beit (ב). As is said in Genesis 1:1:

God noticed that one of the letters, the Aleph, was standing aside and being silent:

Even in our modern culture, the Aleph has gained a place of honor. When Jorge Luis Borges was looking for a name for a story about a place from which one can simultaneously look out over the entire world without distortion or overlap, he chose to call that fantastic point with the appropriate name: Aleph. "Aleph is one of the points in space that contains all other points," wrote Borges.

Last thought: reading scriptures in translation versus in the original

While Christianity sees Jesus as the one who precedes the world and all of creation, Judaism talks about the Torah. This idea will be later transferred to Islam, where the holy Quran is seen as one of the attributes of God.

The late Yosef Dan, a scholar of Jewish mysticism, argued that because Christianity does not read its holy scriptures in the language they were originated in, Ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek, that the concept of the original language of God is not central to it. The meaning is found in the text, and the sayings and stories but not necessarily in deconstructing the language.

Only in Judaism (and possibly in Islam) can an interpretation like that of the Jewish thinker Nachmanides could arise: The 13th century rabbi and kabbalist developed the notion that the whole of the Torah is made from the names of God, so you can theoretically divide each and every word or words in the Bible in any way you like and there you can find a hidden encrypted meaning. This view is nonsensical if you read the Christian Bible in translation. Even if you the reader knows Koine Greek perfectly, Jesus himself spoke Aramaic. Which means that the words of God the son comes to us as a translation of a translation.