The Six Keys to the Hebrew Letters
Every Hebrew letter carries at once a form, a sound, a numerical value and a meaning.
Six families of sources let us study it: the Talmud, the Zohar and Sefer Yetzirah, the commentators, gematria, the points of articulation, and modern research.
Sefer Yetzirah counts thirty-two paths of creation: ten sefirot and twenty-two letters.
Tractate Shabbat 104a reports the teaching given by young pupils: alef-bet is read alef binah, learn wisdom; gimel-dalet is read gemol dalim, deal kindly with the poor.
Tractate Menahot adds what concerns the shape of the letters, notably the mem and the samekh that stood suspended in the Tablets.
The Zohar, on Bereshit, describes how each letter came before the Holy One to ask that the world be created through it.
Sefer Yetzirah sets out the thirty-two paths of creation: ten sefirot and twenty-two letters, divided into three mothers (א מ ש), seven doubles and twelve simples.
Rashi, Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, the Vilna Gaon and the Malbim connect form and meaning. Rav Hirsch in particular showed systematically how neighbouring roots share one concept.
Each letter carries a value: alef is one, bet is two. These values create correspondences between words that no language of convention knows.
Sefer Yetzirah divides the twenty-two letters by the place in the mouth that produces them: gutturals (אחהע), palatals (גיכק), linguals (דטלנת), dentals (זסשרץ), labials (בומף).
The work of Dr Alfred Tomatis on the frequencies of speech places Hebrew between one thousand and three thousand hertz, with high harmonics around eight thousand.
One letter carries at once a form, a sound, a number and a meaning. It is this fourfold correspondence that the six sources allow us to read, each from its own side.
Did you follow the treatise?
Five questions on the six keys.