Aleph and Nothing

I began a class on the Hebrew Aleph-bet this past week. I need to learn Biblical Hebrew, to help me understand what I am reading during services, and I found this class that focuses entirely on the Aleph-bet, going through each letter individually, and allowing the class to connect with each one on a deeper level. This seems to make sense to me, given that, in Hebrew, the letters seem to have a kind of life. They are alive, like people. They have characteristics, traits, and habits, and in reading or writing Hebrew, it seems you get to know them, like friends that form a constant conversation that surrounds you and becomes the fabric of your life.

It is not insignificant that "In the beginning, was the Word..."

And I was not the only one taking the class who had little or no background in Hebrew. Many born Jews were there, either preparing to take Hebrew for the first time, or else wanting to revisit it, since the last time they had studied it was when they were nine.

Naturally, for the first class, we looked at the Aleph. It seems fitting that the Aleph-bet begins with this character. It is the letter that represents G-d, and it also has the numerical value of one. This being the case, it follows that when Jews pray the Shema - "Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad" - they are literally saying that G-d is One. And while Echad may have more of a unifying sense rather than just the number, there is no denying that one is one, Echad is tranlated as "one," and if Aleph is one, then G-d must also Aleph. If A = B and B = C then A = C.

So G-d is represented by Aleph. But not only in the numerical sense. It is represented in the inexplicable nature of the letter itself. Here is what I wrote during the class:

How can a letter with so much presence, so much shape, that it dances across the page, arms reaching, with that bold, diagonal stroke across the center - how can such a letter have no sound? Surely it deserves a sound. And really, what's the point of creating a letter that has no sound? Why waste the ink? But it's not wasted. Just look at it. It does make a sound. It makes the sound of your soul. It makes the sound of existence.

And what is amazing to me is that they did not just create a letter with no sound, which could be like, for example, in Greek, a small mark to represent an aspiration or lack thereof preceding an initial vowel. The Yud is small, but it makes a sound. And while Aleph's nearest equivalent is our "A," Aleph literally stands for no sound at all, and it only gains sound by means of other marks and letters around it. In practice, it is a big, complicated symbol, meant to depict exactly no qualities, no vibrations, nothing. It represents nothing, and yet it is something, it is a letter.

I think it says a lot about the Jewish people that they, or whoever was creating the Aleph-bet, took the time to create a letter that represented nothing. It is exactly, as our instructor said, the "paradox of existence." And that is what we find in G-d - a paradox of existence.

G-d exists. G-d doesn't exist. Both statements are true. G-d exists, but G-d is no thing. G-d is only something when you put your mind on It and focus on It. In Quantum physics, when you look at the tiniest particles of life, they become so tiny that we cannot really look at them. We have to look at behaviors. And there are some particles and particle behaviors that exist only when we are looking at them. By the mere act of bringing our attention to them, we see something that did not exist otherwise. Like the letter Aleph. Silence is there. But until we acknowledge it it is not there, because there is nothing, in fact, to signal it. But this nothing is all around us. It is pure presence.

That is why I say the letter is like a dance. Because in a dance, you manifest your physical presence, you become manifest, you become something that attracts more attention, and yet you say nothing. Words detract from the dance. Only the dance itself is important.

And we know how important dancing is to Chasidic Judaism. Countless tales of Rebbes involve people - the Rebbe or someone else - dancing, or singing a niggun, and through the wordless expression of joy, find something more great and transforming than all the words in the world.

And this idea is embedded in all Jewish writing in Biblical Hebrew. In the beginning was the word, and in the beginning of the Aleph-bet is nothing. The word begins with nothing. All creation begins with nothing. And yet, somehow, we are here.