We know the Torah, as the ‘revelation’ of an “infinite G-d’ has many ‘layers of understanding.’ One of the first things a student learns about ‘interpretation,’ are the 4-levels of Pardes along with the 7 Rules of Hillel. Then come the revelations found when studying the texts from the oral Torah of Judaism, be they Talmudic, Midrashic or Kabbalistic. They all reveal hidden layers of connectivity, while hinting ‘how much more there is.’
Then you have things like gematria, which is both numerical values to the Hebrew letters and words, as well as the ‘spiritual geometry’ of combining these and their related concepts. Lately, “Torah Codes” have become popular, though the ‘jury is still out’ as these are subjective and (for now at least) more ‘interesting’ than conducive to learning Torah concepts.
There is one other area that enables deeper understanding of how interconnected the Torah is, and that is the study of terms and phrases and how they relate to the ten Sefirot and ‘names’ of G-d. By associating the words of the text with specific ‘nodes’ we can find relationships and patterns not seen at the literal level, or even using these other methodologies.
The primary text for this study is called Sha’are Orah which is ‘Gates of Light.’ This text goes back to the 13th century and in its day was more well known than the Zohar. What we’ve done for this part of our ‘Seven Weeks’ study is taken a glossary of terms from each of the first seven chapters of the 10 found in the book. (Note that the Omer count begins with Chesed and Sha’are Orah begins with Malchut, so the first day this week will correspond with the 7th chapter of the book.)
As time permits in the weeks and months ahead, we will post specific examples from the Torah text. We will also post the three remaining chapters (related to Binah, Chokmah and Keter) on a separate page. For a full understanding, we recommend getting the book of course!
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