A Good Match
8 Tevet 5769 - Brit of Shiloh Yehudah Leib Sha'ul - Kfar Chabad (Excerpts)
The Baby’s Name: Shiloh Yehuah Leib
We heard from the child’s father, Rabbi Dror Sha’ul, the Chabad Shaliach in Darhamsala, India, that he was born on Wednesday, which corresponds to the fourth aliyah of parshat Vayechi. This aliyah recounts the blessing Jacob gave Judah, from whence came the first part of the name, Yehudah Leib. In addition, the night before the brit (last night) the mother had a thought by ru’ach hakodesh (all names given by parents to their children are inspired by ru’ach hakodesh—the holy spirit) that they should add another name—a name connected with the Mashiach (indeed, Judah’s name was given by his mother, Leah). Whether consciously or subconsciously, indeed the name Shiloh is also part of the blessing Jacob gave to Judah. So all three names are included in that blessing.
Now, the first part of the name given to the baby, Yehudah Leib is a pair of names that usually go together. Originally, this was the Maharal of Prague’s name, who was himself a direct descendant of King David. His name was Yehudah Livo, which means “lion,” and through the generations, this became Leib.
The Secrets of Judah
Judah also appears in the beginning of parshat Shemot. If you count, you will find that he is the 15th word of the parshah (hence, the 15th word of chumash Shemot). 15 is the value of the Hebrew word for “thanksgiving” (הוד ), which stems from the same root as Judah. It is also the value of the first two letters of Havayah, יה , which form a holy Name in and of themselves. Indeed, the Arizal writes that the letters of Judah, יהודה , are the same letters as (ban1) filling of this Name, יוד הה .
Judah is the only one of the tribes whose name contains all four letters of Havayah (and in order). Another interesting point is that given the way that Judah is written in Hebrew, if we would not know that it is the name of a man, we would think that it was the name of a woman. This also ties Judah with the sefirah of kingdom, the most feminine of the sefirot. Thus, Judah has the most feminine name of all the tribes, very similar in its structure to Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter.
We saw earlier that Judah was given the power of unification (ליחד יחודים ).2 All unification is between masculine and feminine. Since he himself is a male with a feminine name, he is an example of his power of unification. Looking more closely at his name, יהודה , we see that the letter dalet (ד ) appears after the first three letters of Havayah (יהו ), followed by the letter hei (ה ). The inner meaning of this is that the first three letters give to the dalet in order to transform it into a hei.
We find that there are many people who do not write the name Yehudah with a hei at the end because of its sanctity (all 4 letters of Havayah appear in order). Instead, they end it with the letter alef, like so: יהודא . In this case, it is another (the mah) filling of the same two-letter holy Name (יוד הא ). Of course, there is also a third way to fill this name, using the ab-filling, and then it would be יוד הי , which permute to spell “Jew” (יהודי ).
[All of our people are today called Jews after the tribe of Judah. The sages tell us that a Jew, by definition, is one who denounces false worship (עבודה זרה ) of God. So this must be the essential character trait of Judah—willingness to sacrifice himself to denounce false worship of God. Particularly because of his fight against the molech (a form of idolatry), Judah merits to be the king and to be the one who brings the entire people together under the God of Israel.]
Now, there is a fourth filling, the sag-filling of this Name, that is indistinguishable from the Ab-filling. It too is written יוד הי . For this reason, in some Kabbalistic texts only three fillings appear: יוד הי יוד הא יוד הה . Their gematria together is 91, the value of the unification of the two Names Havayah and Adni (יהוה אדני ) and a very important meditation for the word “Amen” (אמן ). Still, if we do explicitly add the fourth, sag-filling, then the total value will be 126 and this is the value of the 6 possible permutations of the three unique letters of Havayah: יהו הוי ויה יוה היו והי .3 126 is also the value of 7 times Chai (חי ) [today is the Chai, 18th day of Tevet].
Four Levels of Divine Presence in a Marriage
This leads us into an important chapter in our teachings about marital harmony, which we refer to by the idiom “the Divine Presence between them” (שכינה ביניהם ).4 We already talked about how Judah brings unity and harmony. We see this already in his birth. Leah was not Jacob’s favorite wife and the Torah even tells us that she felt as though her husband hated her. In choosing a name for each of her first three children, Leah expressed her pain and anguish. Reuben means, “God has seen my plight.” Shimon means, “God has heard my pain.” Levi expresses her wish that “From now on, may my husband be my companion.” But, when Judah is born the bitterness is gone and she calls him by this name explaining, “This time I give thanks to God” (as noted, Judah stems from the same root as thanksgiving”). Judah changes everything. When he is born, Leah seems to have attained a state of harmony, without any worries. Then the Torah tells us, “And she stopped giving birth.” Implying that in order to attain marital harmony with Jacob, she no longer needed to give birth to any more children. Sometimes, people read this verse as implying something negative happened—she could no longer bear children, but the deeper meaning is that she no longer needed to bear children for her husband to love her. She was now inspired and no longer required more children to attain the marital harmony she was looking for. Her later need to have more children came from an entirely different place. To have her two last children she had to feel some other form of lack that was not related to her first four births.
Where do we see that Judah is indeed the essence of marital harmony?5 As we saw, Judah’s name is the filling of the holy Name, Kah (יה ). The whole topic of “the Divine Presence between them” is learnt from the saying of Rabbi Akiva that,
If a husband and wife merit, the Divine Presence dwells between them. But, if they do not, then fire consumes them.
How does Rabbi Akiva learn this? When we take the words for “husband” (איש ) and “wife” (אשה ) we see that they have two letters in common and two letters the are different. The two common letters are אש , which mean fire and the two different letters are יה , the Name Kah. If they merit, the yud (י ) and hei (ה ) unify and create the holy Name Kah, representing the Divine Presence. But, if they do not, then the remaining letters that spell “fire” consume them and their marriage. Indeed, there are two “fire” left. One is the fire of cravings (תאוה ) and the other is the fire of anger (כעס ). The value of both together is equal to “You shall not commit adultery” (לא תנאף ), 562.
But, above we saw that there are four possible fillings (only three of which are unique) of this holy Name Kah that represents the Divine Presence and creates marital harmony. It follows therefore that each of these fillings represents a different type or level of marital harmony. This is a topic we have talked about in the past, but is of course very important. The more attuned a couple is to their marriage and the more ability they have to study Torah, the more they can pay attention to which level of harmony they are presently in. Incidentally, in the pre-Arizal Kabbalah it is explained that meditating on letters alone is like the Workings of Creation (מעשה בראשית ), but meditation on letter fillings is like the Workings of the Chariot (מעשה מרכבה ), a much higher and more advanced level of understanding reality. The word chariot in Hebrew also means “constructing” or “putting together.” So if all you are interested in is generic marital harmony, you can make do with the two letters yud and hei alone. But, if you are interested in marital harmony that comes from the Workings of the Divine Chariot, you have to meditate on the four possible fillings of these two letters.
Before we look at the fillings of יה , let us see another example of how fillings work. If we take the sag-filling of “Jew” (יהודי ), we get יוד הי ואו דלת יוד . Its value is 502, exactly the value of “the Divine Presence between them” (שכינה ביניהם ). 502 is also the second sag-filling of יה , יוד ואו דלת הי יוד . This does not mean that only the sag-filling is related to marital harmony, only that there is something special about it in this respect. Additionally, the soul root of Rabbi Akiva, the author of the saying about the Divine Presence dwelling between a husband and wife, is in the sag-filling of Havayah, the filling that corresponds to the mother principle. So, it is only natural that he used the phrase that equals the second sag-filling of יה .
The four possible fillings of יה correspond to the sefirot and the partzufim in the following manner:
filling
letters
sefirah
partzuf
ab filling (עב )
יוד הי
wisdom
father
sag filling (סג )
יוד הי
understanding
mother
mah filling (מה )
יוד הא
beauty
ze’er anpin
ban filling (בן )
יוד הה
kingdom
nukvah
As noted, the husband contributes the letter yud (י ) to the holy Name יה . The wife contributes the letter hei (ה ). The first point we see about the four fillings is that the filling of the male letter, the yud, is always the same. This would seem to imply that the level of marital harmony attained does not depend on the husband. His filling is always וד . What this means is that to attain the various levels of marital harmony the husband always has to do the same thing represented by these two letters, vav (ו ) and dalet (ד ). The letter yud represents a state of being aloof (it represents a dimensionless point, suspended in midair, like a person that is so disconnected that he does not even leave an imprint on his wife and his home). The husband cannot remain in this state (a state he has a natural tendency towards). Instead, he has to expand and descend through the two letters vav and dalet. As the sages say, “Descend a level and marry a woman.” The dalet thus represents his wife, and the vav represents the descent, or drawing himself down, like lowering a pail into a well (as it always does in Chassidut). So the image we get from the filling of the letter yud, the husband’s contribution to marital harmony is that the initial yud transforms into the vav by lengthening itself, by descending, and then can connect with the dalet. Indeed, this is always the case.6
Indeed, the level of marital harmony that the couple will enjoy depends on the wife. As the sages say, “Everything is from the woman.”
The second point is to differentiate between the first two fillings, the ab and sag fillings, which are externally the same. The differential is how the woman sees her husband. If she wants to take her essence and include it within his, that is the ab filling. In Kabbalah, this is the union of the supernal father and mother, where the supernal mother is enclothed within the supernal father. What is the husband’s essential point? That is selflessness. If the woman wants to annul her being and be included within her husband’s then that is the filling of ab. This is also known in Kabbalah as the understanding within wisdom (in the words of Sefer Yitzirah, “Understand in wisdom”). In a sense, the woman feels the seminal point insight that her husband has and wants to be included in him by annulling herself to this insight.
On the other hand, if the woman wants to include her husband’s essence in herself, that is the sag filling. In this case, the woman does not wish to be nullified within her husband’s essence, but rather to take that essential point, called his steadfastness, his ability to remain steady and calm and to imbue herself with it. This is the feeling a woman has when she wants to take the seed of her husband and to be impregnated by it. There is a story about the Alter Rebbe’s wife, who once said to her friends, “meiner zogt” meaning, “mine says,” referring to her husband as “mine.” This sense of ownership over her husband is not an objectification, but rather illustrates her yearning for her husband’s essence.
Let us illustrate this yearning with a story that appears in the midrash:7
A Jewish woman was married for many years, but had not had children. Her husband decided therefore to divorce her, so he went to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, of blessed memory, who told him that just as they celebrated their marriage with joy, so they should celebrate its severance with joy.
The husband prepared a great feast, at the height of which he asked wife to choose whatever of his possessions she desired, assuring her that he would not refuse her wish.
And what did she do? She served him so much wine that he got drunk and went to sleep, and then told her servants to take him on his bed into her bedroom.
The following morning, when he awoke and found himself in her home, he asked her why he had been brought there—wasn’t it clear that he intended to divorce her? She replied: “Didn’t you tell me that I could take whatever I wanted? Well, I desire neither gold, nor silver, nor precious gems, nor pearls; all I want is you. You yourself are the sole object of my desire.”
When the husband heard this, he again became enamored of his wife, and took her back. And in this merit, the Holy One, blessed be He, granted them children.
Even though they did not have children until then, the new yearning that the woman had for her husband was enough that the tzadik, Rabbi Shimon, could bless them to have children.
In the mah filling, the woman’s letter hei is filled with an alef (א ). In the Zohar, the form of the alef is likened to the form of the human being. Thus, at this level, the wife’s intent is to reproduce her husband’s form in their children. This is a very straightforward interpretation. She wants to play her part in her husband’s mitzvah of “be fruitful and multiply.” This is what the Torah notes is the revealed reason that men and women marry in the first place—they want to reproduce, to make a family.
So now, we come to the ban-filling, the filling that spells Judah (יהודה ). The Arizal explains that the ban-filling of Havayah is the secret of the Cave of the Patriarchs, the cave in Hebron where the patriarchs and matriarchs are buried, which in the Torah is called the “Doubled Cave.” There are many explanations for this name. But, what is important for our purposes is that in the ban-filling of Havayah, each letter is actually doubled: יוד הה וו הה (even the yud is filled as יוד , where the filling letters וד have the same numerical value as the root letter, י ). The first three fillings were relatively easier to understand, this one is a bit more difficult. It seems as if the wife is simply duplicating herself. At first this sounds like the sense that a woman who is not yet married would have about marriage—marriage is about finding myself in my husband. How can such a feeling lead to marital harmony?
Another possible explanation would be that the woman seeks to have only daughters with her husband, but this too is not good enough.
To understand the significance of the ban-filling, we have to recall that this filling corresponds to the sefirah of kingdom. Let us start by making an observation. Most women are not interested and would rather have no part in their husband becoming the ruler, the king, over the entire world. The sages say that, “one who is without a wife is without a wall.” Normally, the woman’s role is to protect her husband and this includes ensuring that his imagination does not get the better of him, to dissuade if he decides to seek positions and status that are simply too big for him. A woman who protects her husband encourages him to be close to his home, to make an honorable living, to set time for studying Torah, to be a talmid chacham. Normally a woman is not pleased (to say the least) if her husband decides to enter politics and she does her best to keep him from doing so.
But there is such a thing as a real king and a real queen.
There are of course superficial women, the type that would send their husband into politics in order to grab the limelight. Such women seek fame and honor and are willing to sacrifice their husbands (and themselves) for it. But, we are talking about a holy woman. How can a woman who is holy, who is modest, that wants her husband to be modest, how can such a woman and her husband assume the role of king and queen? If we would argue that the husband of such a woman should simply ignore her, if his calling is indeed in politics, then what of the Zohar’s statement that a king without a queen is neither a king nor is he great. The previous Lubavitcher Rebbe quoted this in his discourse at his son-in-law’s the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s wedding.8 In holiness, there cannot be a king without a queen; everything depends on the wife.
The nature of the woman of holiness, the woman who can be a true queen is that she endorses her husband’s sovereignty and she encourages it. Most women cannot bear to share their husband with others. But, there is a woman who is of such great stature and has so much self-confidence that she can (subconsciously) encourage others to develop a relationship that is the duplicate of her own with her husband. Of course, it goes without saying that we do not mean to say that she will let anyone else marry her husband—duplicating her relationship encompasses her spiritual and emotional relationship but not her physical. For her husband to be the king she has to project every other aspect of her relationship with her husband, the king, so that it can inspire and be shared by every one of his subjects.
So we have to explain that the duplication of the wife means that she sees the bigger picture. She realizes that her husband can be king only if her relationship with him can be duplicated and shared by others. She is the feminine kingdom, the kingdom of the world of Emanation, who acts to duplicate her relationship with her husband, the Ze’er Anpin of Emanation upon all the worlds below emanation. This is how the kingdom of emanation works in Kabbalah. It takes the relationship it has with its husband, the Ze’er Anpin of the world of Emanation and duplicates it for all the creatures that inhabit the three lower worlds, Creation, Formation, and Action. Relative to the king, all the subjects are feminine, because the king is meant to provide for everyone. So it is only thanks to the queen that the subjects know how to relate to their king in the first place. For them, she provides the example of how to relate to the king properly, how to respect and honor him in the right way (and how to get along with him). When all is said and done, she is responsible for making the rest of the world follow her husband.
Again, the ban-filling is not an alef or a yud, which would indicate something other than herself, but rather a hei, her letter. The ban-filling implies that she fills reality with herself, in the sense of her loving relationship with her husband, the king.
For the woman who enjoys this type of marital harmony, the power of the relationship is so strong that she finds that she can figuratively make room for the rest of the world in her own home. In practice, different subjects will adopt different types of relationships with the king (relationships in which they see the king as either their sovereign, their father, or their husband9), but they will all in the end be inspired by the queen’s harmony with the king. A woman who can inspire the entire world in this way—while at the same time protecting the king, her husband, from false self-aggrandizement and from ill-willed suitors—merits to affect the verse, “A king in his beauty shall your eyes see.”10
Incidentally, when we look at the history of the early kingship in the Jewish people, we can say that the reason that David was able to eventually take the kingdom from Saul was because all the women fell in love with David, a fact that is readily apparent after David’s victory over Goliath.11 In practice, David was only allowed to have 18 wives, and in our present day, when we are limited to marrying only one woman the king will of course have only one wife. Still when we look at this phrase numerically, “one wife” (אשה אחת ) is equal to “everything” (הכל ) times “one” (אחד ), implying that it has always been that one particular wife inspires everything, i.e., all the king’s subjects, to become one. We noted earlier that for King David, his one special wife was Bathsheba.
Ok. This has been in short an explanation of what the four levels of marital harmony mean from the wife’s perspective. We said that the husband seems to be constant through all the levels, and indeed his only task is to come down, to meet his wife where she is, at her level. But, in practice, depending on where his wife is, the husband has to come down in different ways in order to enjoy the marital harmony with her. In effect, each level of marital harmony also projects a different meaning onto the two filling letters of the yud (י )—vav and dalet (וד ). Let us see how this works.
We noted earlier that the dalet represents the woman. But, more specifically, the letter dalet also means “to elevate,” like in the beginning of parshat Shemot, where we find the verse, “he brought up water for us and he watered the flock”12 (דלה דלה לנו וישק את הצאן ). Also in the verse, “I exalt you God, for you have brought me up….”13 There is a principle in the Talmud that the woman ascends when her husband ascends, but she does not descend with him when he does.
So, if his wife is entirely nullified before him, as we saw in the ab-filling, then the vav dalet of her husband signifies that he gives himself entirely over to her. An example of this is when God gave us the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Since we were entirely nullified before Him, He gave His very essence to us in the Torah, as the sages say that the first word of the Ten Commandments (which we heard directly from God), I am (אנכי ) is the initials of the phrase, “I wrote Myself and I gave Myself [to you]” (אנא נפשי כתבית יהבית ).14 In other words, God did not just give as a glimpse, a reflection of His essence; He gave us His very essence. At this level of marital harmony, the husband’s descent is dynamic. It is meant to result in an ascent of the couple together, in harmony. At the very end of this ascent, the woman actually rises higher than does her husband, the secret of the verse, “a woman of valor is her husband’s crown.” So the vav signifies that his essence descends to her and the dalet signifies their united ascent up to infinity.
In the sag-filling the vav-dalet signify a different type of descent. Whereas in the ab-filling the husband gave all of his essence, in the sag-filling he gives all of his attention, all of his understanding to his wife. His descending to meet her where she is focuses on understanding her as much as he can. This not unlike a psychologist who, given a certain situation has to try to reconstruct where it came from. Of course, the sages tell us that a woman has more understanding than does a man, so the husband cannot fully understand his wife, but he has to try. This is the meaning of the vav, the descent. Both here an in the next level, the mah-filling, the dalet signifies filling his wife’s needs to the best of his ability. Indeed, in the “meiner zogt” story mentioned earlier, the Alter Rebbe came down (from his Divine meditation) in order to understand what his wife meant when she said, “mine says!” The excitement that he experienced when he understood what this statement means is typical of the Alter Rebbe, whose excitement in general originates in the sag-filling of Havayah, which corresponds to “with all of your all.”15
The mah-filling is very similar to the sag-filling. Again the husband’s descent, symbolized by the letter vav, is in order to understand and empathize with his wife. But, here the vav takes on an additional meaning. The Name Havayah is broken up into two halves, the first half (the first two letters, yud and hei) signify the concealed aspects of God. The second half (the last two letters, vav and hei) signify His revealed aspects. The revealed aspects thus begin with the letter vav. Here too, the vav does not only signify a concealed descent, i.e., a descent that is entirely psychological or spiritual. Now the vav signifies a descent that has a revealed effect. This effect can be divided into two parts, just as the vav signifies the six sefirot from loving-kindness to foundation, which are divided into two triplets. The first part, corresponding to the emotional sefirot loving-kindness, might, and beauty (known by their initials chagat, חג"ת ), means providing her with emotional support. The second part, corresponding to the habitual sefirot victory, thanksgiving, and foundation (known by their initials nehi, נה"י ), means providing her physical needs, the ones the husband committed to when he signed the ketubah (marriage contract). In short, we can describe this type of descent as taking responsibility for his wife’s needs.
Now, obviously the final level, the ban-filling, has to be something more. Here the husband’s vav-dalet signifies more than just taking responsibility for what the husband is required according to the ketubah and according to Jewish law as elaborated in the Shuchan Aruch. A husband whose wife treats her relationship with him as that of a queen with her king, such a husband wants to give his wife that which is fitting for a queen—in short, he wants to give her everything, infinitely beyond that which he is responsible for giving. In the time of the sages, this meant providing her with thousands of servants. Today, this would be translated as giving her thousands of whatever else might fit the bill.
An important point to make is that a man may think that if he gives his wife too much she will begin to spend it on the wrong things, but this is very non-regal thought. When the marital harmony is that of a king and a queen, then the wife deserves everything. Indeed, this does not mean that I (as a king) also deserve the same (or, perhaps even more)—on the contrary, exactly the opposite is true. In the classic anthology of wise idioms called Mivchar Hapninim, it says that a person should give up on the world. What it means to say is that a person should feel that he does not deserve anything in this world—because nothing belongs to him. Indeed, nothing belongs to me, so who does it belong to? It belongs to my wife! Therefore, she is entitled to everything I can give her, not because she is lacking anything. This is like the prayer of a rich man, as explained elsewhere by the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
In any case, the vav-dalet of the ban-filling implies giving your wife an infinite amount. This itself will reveal in her the hei filling of her hei, the secret of the Double Cave, the Cave of the Patriarchs, as above. Now the dalet, in this case, is like the famous kavanah (intent) of the dalet when we say the Shema’s final word “one” (אחד ). We know that there it means that God is king all around the world, in all 4 corners. The value of the dalet is 4. Giving your wife an infinite amount is to make her the queen of the entire world.
(Based on a lecture given on the 18th of Tevet, 5769 in Kfar Chabad)
Notes:
1. There are four major fillings of Havayah. See What You Need to Know About Kabbalah, pp. 141ff. The ban filling corresponds to the sefirah of kingdom.
2. Editor’s note: in the part of the lecture not translated, the Rav discussed the Hayom Yom for the day of the lecture, the 18th of Tevet. There the Lubavitcher Rebbe quotes that Jacob sent Judah before him to Egypt in order to set up a yeshivah (Torah academy) there. This ensured that all of Jacob’s descendants would be unified and in for this reason, the years Jacob spent in Egypt were the best years of his life. The Rav stressed that what created the unity was the yeshivah that Judah had set up prior to their coming. He also connected this with the Alter Rebbe’s mission statement for Chassidut: that all the Chassidim, all his followers, would be as one family united by Torah.
3. See in length in the section titled "Permutation Theory," here.
4. This is the title of Harav Ginsburgh’s first book on marriage in Hebrew, selections from which make up the main body of The Mystery of Marriage.
5. Marital harmony or more literally “peace in the home” (שלום בית ) is equal to the union of David (דוד ) and Bathsheba (בת שבע ). The initial letters of their names (Bathsheba is two words in Hebrew) spell the word “honey” (דבש ), and the Arizal adds that “honey” is equal to “woman” (אשה ). From their union comes Solomon and the Mashiach comes out of both David and Solomon.
6. As far as offering marriage counseling to the husband goes, it is always the same: Come down! You have to meet your wife where she is. The husband, more than the wife, suffers from a natural state of egotism, which he has to break if he hopes to connect with his wife.
7. The Mystery of Marriage, p. 87.
8. Sefer Hama’amarim Kuntresim, vol. 1, 20a, s.v. Lecha Dodi
9. These three types of relationship with the king are of course a metaphor for the three types of relationships we have with the Almighty, as our father, as our king, and as our husband. They are discussed in depth and length in the first article of our Hebrew volume, Ani Ledodi Vedodi Li.
10. Isaiah 33:17.
11. See I Samuel 18:6-8.
12. Exodus 2:19.
13. Psalms 30:2.
14. Indeed, as the Zohar says that the Torah came out of wisdom, the sefirah corresponding to the ab-filling.
15. See Deuteronomy 6:7.
The Baby’s Name: Shiloh Yehuah Leib
We heard from the child’s father, Rabbi Dror Sha’ul, the Chabad Shaliach in Darhamsala, India, that he was born on Wednesday, which corresponds to the fourth aliyah of parshat Vayechi. This aliyah recounts the blessing Jacob gave Judah, from whence came the first part of the name, Yehudah Leib. In addition, the night before the brit (last night) the mother had a thought by ru’ach hakodesh (all names given by parents to their children are inspired by ru’ach hakodesh—the holy spirit) that they should add another name—a name connected with the Mashiach (indeed, Judah’s name was given by his mother, Leah). Whether consciously or subconsciously, indeed the name Shiloh is also part of the blessing Jacob gave to Judah. So all three names are included in that blessing.
Now, the first part of the name given to the baby, Yehudah Leib is a pair of names that usually go together. Originally, this was the Maharal of Prague’s name, who was himself a direct descendant of King David. His name was Yehudah Livo, which means “lion,” and through the generations, this became Leib.
The Secrets of Judah
Judah also appears in the beginning of parshat Shemot. If you count, you will find that he is the 15th word of the parshah (hence, the 15th word of chumash Shemot). 15 is the value of the Hebrew word for “thanksgiving” (הוד ), which stems from the same root as Judah. It is also the value of the first two letters of Havayah, יה , which form a holy Name in and of themselves. Indeed, the Arizal writes that the letters of Judah, יהודה , are the same letters as (ban1) filling of this Name, יוד הה .
Judah is the only one of the tribes whose name contains all four letters of Havayah (and in order). Another interesting point is that given the way that Judah is written in Hebrew, if we would not know that it is the name of a man, we would think that it was the name of a woman. This also ties Judah with the sefirah of kingdom, the most feminine of the sefirot. Thus, Judah has the most feminine name of all the tribes, very similar in its structure to Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter.
We saw earlier that Judah was given the power of unification (ליחד יחודים ).2 All unification is between masculine and feminine. Since he himself is a male with a feminine name, he is an example of his power of unification. Looking more closely at his name, יהודה , we see that the letter dalet (ד ) appears after the first three letters of Havayah (יהו ), followed by the letter hei (ה ). The inner meaning of this is that the first three letters give to the dalet in order to transform it into a hei.
We find that there are many people who do not write the name Yehudah with a hei at the end because of its sanctity (all 4 letters of Havayah appear in order). Instead, they end it with the letter alef, like so: יהודא . In this case, it is another (the mah) filling of the same two-letter holy Name (יוד הא ). Of course, there is also a third way to fill this name, using the ab-filling, and then it would be יוד הי , which permute to spell “Jew” (יהודי ).
[All of our people are today called Jews after the tribe of Judah. The sages tell us that a Jew, by definition, is one who denounces false worship (עבודה זרה ) of God. So this must be the essential character trait of Judah—willingness to sacrifice himself to denounce false worship of God. Particularly because of his fight against the molech (a form of idolatry), Judah merits to be the king and to be the one who brings the entire people together under the God of Israel.]
Now, there is a fourth filling, the sag-filling of this Name, that is indistinguishable from the Ab-filling. It too is written יוד הי . For this reason, in some Kabbalistic texts only three fillings appear: יוד הי יוד הא יוד הה . Their gematria together is 91, the value of the unification of the two Names Havayah and Adni (יהוה אדני ) and a very important meditation for the word “Amen” (אמן ). Still, if we do explicitly add the fourth, sag-filling, then the total value will be 126 and this is the value of the 6 possible permutations of the three unique letters of Havayah: יהו הוי ויה יוה היו והי .3 126 is also the value of 7 times Chai (חי ) [today is the Chai, 18th day of Tevet].
Four Levels of Divine Presence in a Marriage
This leads us into an important chapter in our teachings about marital harmony, which we refer to by the idiom “the Divine Presence between them” (שכינה ביניהם ).4 We already talked about how Judah brings unity and harmony. We see this already in his birth. Leah was not Jacob’s favorite wife and the Torah even tells us that she felt as though her husband hated her. In choosing a name for each of her first three children, Leah expressed her pain and anguish. Reuben means, “God has seen my plight.” Shimon means, “God has heard my pain.” Levi expresses her wish that “From now on, may my husband be my companion.” But, when Judah is born the bitterness is gone and she calls him by this name explaining, “This time I give thanks to God” (as noted, Judah stems from the same root as thanksgiving”). Judah changes everything. When he is born, Leah seems to have attained a state of harmony, without any worries. Then the Torah tells us, “And she stopped giving birth.” Implying that in order to attain marital harmony with Jacob, she no longer needed to give birth to any more children. Sometimes, people read this verse as implying something negative happened—she could no longer bear children, but the deeper meaning is that she no longer needed to bear children for her husband to love her. She was now inspired and no longer required more children to attain the marital harmony she was looking for. Her later need to have more children came from an entirely different place. To have her two last children she had to feel some other form of lack that was not related to her first four births.
Where do we see that Judah is indeed the essence of marital harmony?5 As we saw, Judah’s name is the filling of the holy Name, Kah (יה ). The whole topic of “the Divine Presence between them” is learnt from the saying of Rabbi Akiva that,
If a husband and wife merit, the Divine Presence dwells between them. But, if they do not, then fire consumes them.
How does Rabbi Akiva learn this? When we take the words for “husband” (איש ) and “wife” (אשה ) we see that they have two letters in common and two letters the are different. The two common letters are אש , which mean fire and the two different letters are יה , the Name Kah. If they merit, the yud (י ) and hei (ה ) unify and create the holy Name Kah, representing the Divine Presence. But, if they do not, then the remaining letters that spell “fire” consume them and their marriage. Indeed, there are two “fire” left. One is the fire of cravings (תאוה ) and the other is the fire of anger (כעס ). The value of both together is equal to “You shall not commit adultery” (לא תנאף ), 562.
But, above we saw that there are four possible fillings (only three of which are unique) of this holy Name Kah that represents the Divine Presence and creates marital harmony. It follows therefore that each of these fillings represents a different type or level of marital harmony. This is a topic we have talked about in the past, but is of course very important. The more attuned a couple is to their marriage and the more ability they have to study Torah, the more they can pay attention to which level of harmony they are presently in. Incidentally, in the pre-Arizal Kabbalah it is explained that meditating on letters alone is like the Workings of Creation (מעשה בראשית ), but meditation on letter fillings is like the Workings of the Chariot (מעשה מרכבה ), a much higher and more advanced level of understanding reality. The word chariot in Hebrew also means “constructing” or “putting together.” So if all you are interested in is generic marital harmony, you can make do with the two letters yud and hei alone. But, if you are interested in marital harmony that comes from the Workings of the Divine Chariot, you have to meditate on the four possible fillings of these two letters.
Before we look at the fillings of יה , let us see another example of how fillings work. If we take the sag-filling of “Jew” (יהודי ), we get יוד הי ואו דלת יוד . Its value is 502, exactly the value of “the Divine Presence between them” (שכינה ביניהם ). 502 is also the second sag-filling of יה , יוד ואו דלת הי יוד . This does not mean that only the sag-filling is related to marital harmony, only that there is something special about it in this respect. Additionally, the soul root of Rabbi Akiva, the author of the saying about the Divine Presence dwelling between a husband and wife, is in the sag-filling of Havayah, the filling that corresponds to the mother principle. So, it is only natural that he used the phrase that equals the second sag-filling of יה .
The four possible fillings of יה correspond to the sefirot and the partzufim in the following manner:
filling
letters
sefirah
partzuf
ab filling (עב )
יוד הי
wisdom
father
sag filling (סג )
יוד הי
understanding
mother
mah filling (מה )
יוד הא
beauty
ze’er anpin
ban filling (בן )
יוד הה
kingdom
nukvah
As noted, the husband contributes the letter yud (י ) to the holy Name יה . The wife contributes the letter hei (ה ). The first point we see about the four fillings is that the filling of the male letter, the yud, is always the same. This would seem to imply that the level of marital harmony attained does not depend on the husband. His filling is always וד . What this means is that to attain the various levels of marital harmony the husband always has to do the same thing represented by these two letters, vav (ו ) and dalet (ד ). The letter yud represents a state of being aloof (it represents a dimensionless point, suspended in midair, like a person that is so disconnected that he does not even leave an imprint on his wife and his home). The husband cannot remain in this state (a state he has a natural tendency towards). Instead, he has to expand and descend through the two letters vav and dalet. As the sages say, “Descend a level and marry a woman.” The dalet thus represents his wife, and the vav represents the descent, or drawing himself down, like lowering a pail into a well (as it always does in Chassidut). So the image we get from the filling of the letter yud, the husband’s contribution to marital harmony is that the initial yud transforms into the vav by lengthening itself, by descending, and then can connect with the dalet. Indeed, this is always the case.6
Indeed, the level of marital harmony that the couple will enjoy depends on the wife. As the sages say, “Everything is from the woman.”
The second point is to differentiate between the first two fillings, the ab and sag fillings, which are externally the same. The differential is how the woman sees her husband. If she wants to take her essence and include it within his, that is the ab filling. In Kabbalah, this is the union of the supernal father and mother, where the supernal mother is enclothed within the supernal father. What is the husband’s essential point? That is selflessness. If the woman wants to annul her being and be included within her husband’s then that is the filling of ab. This is also known in Kabbalah as the understanding within wisdom (in the words of Sefer Yitzirah, “Understand in wisdom”). In a sense, the woman feels the seminal point insight that her husband has and wants to be included in him by annulling herself to this insight.
On the other hand, if the woman wants to include her husband’s essence in herself, that is the sag filling. In this case, the woman does not wish to be nullified within her husband’s essence, but rather to take that essential point, called his steadfastness, his ability to remain steady and calm and to imbue herself with it. This is the feeling a woman has when she wants to take the seed of her husband and to be impregnated by it. There is a story about the Alter Rebbe’s wife, who once said to her friends, “meiner zogt” meaning, “mine says,” referring to her husband as “mine.” This sense of ownership over her husband is not an objectification, but rather illustrates her yearning for her husband’s essence.
Let us illustrate this yearning with a story that appears in the midrash:7
A Jewish woman was married for many years, but had not had children. Her husband decided therefore to divorce her, so he went to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, of blessed memory, who told him that just as they celebrated their marriage with joy, so they should celebrate its severance with joy.
The husband prepared a great feast, at the height of which he asked wife to choose whatever of his possessions she desired, assuring her that he would not refuse her wish.
And what did she do? She served him so much wine that he got drunk and went to sleep, and then told her servants to take him on his bed into her bedroom.
The following morning, when he awoke and found himself in her home, he asked her why he had been brought there—wasn’t it clear that he intended to divorce her? She replied: “Didn’t you tell me that I could take whatever I wanted? Well, I desire neither gold, nor silver, nor precious gems, nor pearls; all I want is you. You yourself are the sole object of my desire.”
When the husband heard this, he again became enamored of his wife, and took her back. And in this merit, the Holy One, blessed be He, granted them children.
Even though they did not have children until then, the new yearning that the woman had for her husband was enough that the tzadik, Rabbi Shimon, could bless them to have children.
In the mah filling, the woman’s letter hei is filled with an alef (א ). In the Zohar, the form of the alef is likened to the form of the human being. Thus, at this level, the wife’s intent is to reproduce her husband’s form in their children. This is a very straightforward interpretation. She wants to play her part in her husband’s mitzvah of “be fruitful and multiply.” This is what the Torah notes is the revealed reason that men and women marry in the first place—they want to reproduce, to make a family.
So now, we come to the ban-filling, the filling that spells Judah (יהודה ). The Arizal explains that the ban-filling of Havayah is the secret of the Cave of the Patriarchs, the cave in Hebron where the patriarchs and matriarchs are buried, which in the Torah is called the “Doubled Cave.” There are many explanations for this name. But, what is important for our purposes is that in the ban-filling of Havayah, each letter is actually doubled: יוד הה וו הה (even the yud is filled as יוד , where the filling letters וד have the same numerical value as the root letter, י ). The first three fillings were relatively easier to understand, this one is a bit more difficult. It seems as if the wife is simply duplicating herself. At first this sounds like the sense that a woman who is not yet married would have about marriage—marriage is about finding myself in my husband. How can such a feeling lead to marital harmony?
Another possible explanation would be that the woman seeks to have only daughters with her husband, but this too is not good enough.
To understand the significance of the ban-filling, we have to recall that this filling corresponds to the sefirah of kingdom. Let us start by making an observation. Most women are not interested and would rather have no part in their husband becoming the ruler, the king, over the entire world. The sages say that, “one who is without a wife is without a wall.” Normally, the woman’s role is to protect her husband and this includes ensuring that his imagination does not get the better of him, to dissuade if he decides to seek positions and status that are simply too big for him. A woman who protects her husband encourages him to be close to his home, to make an honorable living, to set time for studying Torah, to be a talmid chacham. Normally a woman is not pleased (to say the least) if her husband decides to enter politics and she does her best to keep him from doing so.
But there is such a thing as a real king and a real queen.
There are of course superficial women, the type that would send their husband into politics in order to grab the limelight. Such women seek fame and honor and are willing to sacrifice their husbands (and themselves) for it. But, we are talking about a holy woman. How can a woman who is holy, who is modest, that wants her husband to be modest, how can such a woman and her husband assume the role of king and queen? If we would argue that the husband of such a woman should simply ignore her, if his calling is indeed in politics, then what of the Zohar’s statement that a king without a queen is neither a king nor is he great. The previous Lubavitcher Rebbe quoted this in his discourse at his son-in-law’s the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s wedding.8 In holiness, there cannot be a king without a queen; everything depends on the wife.
The nature of the woman of holiness, the woman who can be a true queen is that she endorses her husband’s sovereignty and she encourages it. Most women cannot bear to share their husband with others. But, there is a woman who is of such great stature and has so much self-confidence that she can (subconsciously) encourage others to develop a relationship that is the duplicate of her own with her husband. Of course, it goes without saying that we do not mean to say that she will let anyone else marry her husband—duplicating her relationship encompasses her spiritual and emotional relationship but not her physical. For her husband to be the king she has to project every other aspect of her relationship with her husband, the king, so that it can inspire and be shared by every one of his subjects.
So we have to explain that the duplication of the wife means that she sees the bigger picture. She realizes that her husband can be king only if her relationship with him can be duplicated and shared by others. She is the feminine kingdom, the kingdom of the world of Emanation, who acts to duplicate her relationship with her husband, the Ze’er Anpin of Emanation upon all the worlds below emanation. This is how the kingdom of emanation works in Kabbalah. It takes the relationship it has with its husband, the Ze’er Anpin of the world of Emanation and duplicates it for all the creatures that inhabit the three lower worlds, Creation, Formation, and Action. Relative to the king, all the subjects are feminine, because the king is meant to provide for everyone. So it is only thanks to the queen that the subjects know how to relate to their king in the first place. For them, she provides the example of how to relate to the king properly, how to respect and honor him in the right way (and how to get along with him). When all is said and done, she is responsible for making the rest of the world follow her husband.
Again, the ban-filling is not an alef or a yud, which would indicate something other than herself, but rather a hei, her letter. The ban-filling implies that she fills reality with herself, in the sense of her loving relationship with her husband, the king.
For the woman who enjoys this type of marital harmony, the power of the relationship is so strong that she finds that she can figuratively make room for the rest of the world in her own home. In practice, different subjects will adopt different types of relationships with the king (relationships in which they see the king as either their sovereign, their father, or their husband9), but they will all in the end be inspired by the queen’s harmony with the king. A woman who can inspire the entire world in this way—while at the same time protecting the king, her husband, from false self-aggrandizement and from ill-willed suitors—merits to affect the verse, “A king in his beauty shall your eyes see.”10
Incidentally, when we look at the history of the early kingship in the Jewish people, we can say that the reason that David was able to eventually take the kingdom from Saul was because all the women fell in love with David, a fact that is readily apparent after David’s victory over Goliath.11 In practice, David was only allowed to have 18 wives, and in our present day, when we are limited to marrying only one woman the king will of course have only one wife. Still when we look at this phrase numerically, “one wife” (אשה אחת ) is equal to “everything” (הכל ) times “one” (אחד ), implying that it has always been that one particular wife inspires everything, i.e., all the king’s subjects, to become one. We noted earlier that for King David, his one special wife was Bathsheba.
Ok. This has been in short an explanation of what the four levels of marital harmony mean from the wife’s perspective. We said that the husband seems to be constant through all the levels, and indeed his only task is to come down, to meet his wife where she is, at her level. But, in practice, depending on where his wife is, the husband has to come down in different ways in order to enjoy the marital harmony with her. In effect, each level of marital harmony also projects a different meaning onto the two filling letters of the yud (י )—vav and dalet (וד ). Let us see how this works.
We noted earlier that the dalet represents the woman. But, more specifically, the letter dalet also means “to elevate,” like in the beginning of parshat Shemot, where we find the verse, “he brought up water for us and he watered the flock”12 (דלה דלה לנו וישק את הצאן ). Also in the verse, “I exalt you God, for you have brought me up….”13 There is a principle in the Talmud that the woman ascends when her husband ascends, but she does not descend with him when he does.
So, if his wife is entirely nullified before him, as we saw in the ab-filling, then the vav dalet of her husband signifies that he gives himself entirely over to her. An example of this is when God gave us the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Since we were entirely nullified before Him, He gave His very essence to us in the Torah, as the sages say that the first word of the Ten Commandments (which we heard directly from God), I am (אנכי ) is the initials of the phrase, “I wrote Myself and I gave Myself [to you]” (אנא נפשי כתבית יהבית ).14 In other words, God did not just give as a glimpse, a reflection of His essence; He gave us His very essence. At this level of marital harmony, the husband’s descent is dynamic. It is meant to result in an ascent of the couple together, in harmony. At the very end of this ascent, the woman actually rises higher than does her husband, the secret of the verse, “a woman of valor is her husband’s crown.” So the vav signifies that his essence descends to her and the dalet signifies their united ascent up to infinity.
In the sag-filling the vav-dalet signify a different type of descent. Whereas in the ab-filling the husband gave all of his essence, in the sag-filling he gives all of his attention, all of his understanding to his wife. His descending to meet her where she is focuses on understanding her as much as he can. This not unlike a psychologist who, given a certain situation has to try to reconstruct where it came from. Of course, the sages tell us that a woman has more understanding than does a man, so the husband cannot fully understand his wife, but he has to try. This is the meaning of the vav, the descent. Both here an in the next level, the mah-filling, the dalet signifies filling his wife’s needs to the best of his ability. Indeed, in the “meiner zogt” story mentioned earlier, the Alter Rebbe came down (from his Divine meditation) in order to understand what his wife meant when she said, “mine says!” The excitement that he experienced when he understood what this statement means is typical of the Alter Rebbe, whose excitement in general originates in the sag-filling of Havayah, which corresponds to “with all of your all.”15
The mah-filling is very similar to the sag-filling. Again the husband’s descent, symbolized by the letter vav, is in order to understand and empathize with his wife. But, here the vav takes on an additional meaning. The Name Havayah is broken up into two halves, the first half (the first two letters, yud and hei) signify the concealed aspects of God. The second half (the last two letters, vav and hei) signify His revealed aspects. The revealed aspects thus begin with the letter vav. Here too, the vav does not only signify a concealed descent, i.e., a descent that is entirely psychological or spiritual. Now the vav signifies a descent that has a revealed effect. This effect can be divided into two parts, just as the vav signifies the six sefirot from loving-kindness to foundation, which are divided into two triplets. The first part, corresponding to the emotional sefirot loving-kindness, might, and beauty (known by their initials chagat, חג"ת ), means providing her with emotional support. The second part, corresponding to the habitual sefirot victory, thanksgiving, and foundation (known by their initials nehi, נה"י ), means providing her physical needs, the ones the husband committed to when he signed the ketubah (marriage contract). In short, we can describe this type of descent as taking responsibility for his wife’s needs.
Now, obviously the final level, the ban-filling, has to be something more. Here the husband’s vav-dalet signifies more than just taking responsibility for what the husband is required according to the ketubah and according to Jewish law as elaborated in the Shuchan Aruch. A husband whose wife treats her relationship with him as that of a queen with her king, such a husband wants to give his wife that which is fitting for a queen—in short, he wants to give her everything, infinitely beyond that which he is responsible for giving. In the time of the sages, this meant providing her with thousands of servants. Today, this would be translated as giving her thousands of whatever else might fit the bill.
An important point to make is that a man may think that if he gives his wife too much she will begin to spend it on the wrong things, but this is very non-regal thought. When the marital harmony is that of a king and a queen, then the wife deserves everything. Indeed, this does not mean that I (as a king) also deserve the same (or, perhaps even more)—on the contrary, exactly the opposite is true. In the classic anthology of wise idioms called Mivchar Hapninim, it says that a person should give up on the world. What it means to say is that a person should feel that he does not deserve anything in this world—because nothing belongs to him. Indeed, nothing belongs to me, so who does it belong to? It belongs to my wife! Therefore, she is entitled to everything I can give her, not because she is lacking anything. This is like the prayer of a rich man, as explained elsewhere by the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
In any case, the vav-dalet of the ban-filling implies giving your wife an infinite amount. This itself will reveal in her the hei filling of her hei, the secret of the Double Cave, the Cave of the Patriarchs, as above. Now the dalet, in this case, is like the famous kavanah (intent) of the dalet when we say the Shema’s final word “one” (אחד ). We know that there it means that God is king all around the world, in all 4 corners. The value of the dalet is 4. Giving your wife an infinite amount is to make her the queen of the entire world.
(Based on a lecture given on the 18th of Tevet, 5769 in Kfar Chabad)
Notes:
1. There are four major fillings of Havayah. See What You Need to Know About Kabbalah, pp. 141ff. The ban filling corresponds to the sefirah of kingdom.
2. Editor’s note: in the part of the lecture not translated, the Rav discussed the Hayom Yom for the day of the lecture, the 18th of Tevet. There the Lubavitcher Rebbe quotes that Jacob sent Judah before him to Egypt in order to set up a yeshivah (Torah academy) there. This ensured that all of Jacob’s descendants would be unified and in for this reason, the years Jacob spent in Egypt were the best years of his life. The Rav stressed that what created the unity was the yeshivah that Judah had set up prior to their coming. He also connected this with the Alter Rebbe’s mission statement for Chassidut: that all the Chassidim, all his followers, would be as one family united by Torah.
3. See in length in the section titled "Permutation Theory," here.
4. This is the title of Harav Ginsburgh’s first book on marriage in Hebrew, selections from which make up the main body of The Mystery of Marriage.
5. Marital harmony or more literally “peace in the home” (שלום בית ) is equal to the union of David (דוד ) and Bathsheba (בת שבע ). The initial letters of their names (Bathsheba is two words in Hebrew) spell the word “honey” (דבש ), and the Arizal adds that “honey” is equal to “woman” (אשה ). From their union comes Solomon and the Mashiach comes out of both David and Solomon.
6. As far as offering marriage counseling to the husband goes, it is always the same: Come down! You have to meet your wife where she is. The husband, more than the wife, suffers from a natural state of egotism, which he has to break if he hopes to connect with his wife.
7. The Mystery of Marriage, p. 87.
8. Sefer Hama’amarim Kuntresim, vol. 1, 20a, s.v. Lecha Dodi
9. These three types of relationship with the king are of course a metaphor for the three types of relationships we have with the Almighty, as our father, as our king, and as our husband. They are discussed in depth and length in the first article of our Hebrew volume, Ani Ledodi Vedodi Li.
10. Isaiah 33:17.
11. See I Samuel 18:6-8.
12. Exodus 2:19.
13. Psalms 30:2.
14. Indeed, as the Zohar says that the Torah came out of wisdom, the sefirah corresponding to the ab-filling.
15. See Deuteronomy 6:7.
posted by kirte at 2:41:00 AM
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