Teaching Hebrew and finding the Divine in the details

I’ve had the distinct blessing over the summer of teaching beginning and intermediate Hebrew to folks who have never mastered this alphabet and un-voweled language before now. It has been surprisingly rewarding and fascinating to watch other people go through the process of acquiring and absorbing the letters, sounds, syllables and words — to be reminded, well after I originally learned Hebrew in elementary school, that it’s easy to mix up resh and dalet, and that a patach under a hey at the end of the word makes the sound ha but a patach under a chet makes the sound ach, and a dozen other rules. Hebrew is hard. It conceals lots of deep understanding, but with work, it reveals big ideas and profound insights. It is mysterious and wonderful.

It’s also fun to show students a claf of a mezuzah or a page of the Torah and have them ask “Why do some letters have little decorations?” And to chuckle and tell them, “Those are called crowns. According to tradition, Moses asked God the same question.” And then to tell them the wonderous story of Moses in Rabbi Akiva’s house of study. (Google it. It’s in Talmud Menachot 29a.)

Forming letters of any kind into words and sounds, language — and here I mean any language, and any alphabet — allows humans to express themselves to other humans, in words or in writing. This is a gift that was not given to all other species. But Hebrew is believed in our tradition to have a spiritual dimension beyond that of other languages, which is why it is used for prayer and study. And Hebrew letters, with their waves and curves and crowns, have a beauty all their own, too.

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In this week’s parsha, there is a small word used in one line, and not used in another, and it becomes a moment for the Chernobyler Rabbi, Menachem Nachum Twersky, to explore the Kabbalistic meaning of the letters of Hebrew. In Deuteronomy 11:26-28 it says, “I set before you today blessing and curse: THE [et] blessing, if you obey the commandments, and curse, if you do not obey the commandments.” So the word “the,” or “et” appears for blessing, but not for curse.

The Chernobyl rabbi in his masterwork “Meor Eynayim” notes that the word et — “the” — is made up of an aleph and a tav — the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And then he quotes an idea in the Zohar — the central mystical book of Judaism — and says, “The Creator, Blessed Be, contracted God’s self into the letters.” Meaning, God is present in all of the Hebrew letters, aleph through tav. And that’s why the word et appears in the verse about blessing, and not in the verse about curse — that God wants to remind us that God is present in the blessings God gives us and prefers that we not invoke the curses.

And this is further a reminder that Hebrew is more than language — it is our connection point to the Divine, if we chose to learn, pray and explore the mysteries that both Hebrew and God have to offer. PJC

Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman is rabbi of Brith Sholom in Erie, Pennsylvania, and associate rabbi of Congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Clergy Association.