LETTERS WITH A STORY - APPROPRIATE ACTION

Dear Family,

I hope everyone is well.

Mazal Tov to Baty on her birthday next week. And wishing you and the Family success in your new accommodation in North Shore. It should be a year of much success and happiness with nachas from all your children, and good parnassa. Also we remember that you and Shmueli got engaged today on Yud Shvat. So triple mazal tov!

There is another engagement today, and that is Mendel Sarfati got engaged to Devorah Leah’s sister Rivka. So it is a kind of double simcha for us all, because we are related to both sides of the families. BH! Mazal Tov to all, and it should be that each simcha will open the gates for more such simchos for all of us.

Tonight is Yud Shvat, the day of passing of the Frierdike Rebbe in 1950, and exactly a year later to the day The Rebbe accepted to take the place of the Frierdike Rebbe.

As a continuation of what we spoke last week regarding the beams of the Mishkan being made of cedar wood (atzei shittim), the Frierdike Rebbe (in his maamer Basi Legani) continued to talk about the letters constituting the word for the beams ie KESHER – קשר

These letters can also form the word שקר which means falsity.

This was looked at in comparison to the letters גדה

Shapes of the Hebrew letters reflect an interesting story, and show the difference between Holiness and the opposite of Holiness

The letters גדה represent Holiness, and ק and ר refer to the opposite, as follows. (look at the shapes and meanings of the letters)

Both the words dalet, and resh mean a poor person in Hebrew.

The shapes of the dalet and resh are almost identical except the dalet has a small extra extension in the shape of a small yud on its top right side. This extra yud adds a dimension of humility to the dalet putting it onto the side of holiness (yud is the smallest of the letters and also represents Hashem)

This is missing from the resh which places it on the side of evil.

Similarly the heh and kuf look very similar to each other. The difference is in the left leg where the heh is short and at the same level as the right leg, whereas the left leg of the kuf is much longer, extending downwards.

the 3 parts of the heh and kuf represent the 3 garments of the soul thought, speech and action – action being represented by the left leg of each letter.

So the heh is a dalet with a short left leg (holiness), and the kuf is a resh with a long left leg (opposite of holiness)

When one trains oneself to have holy thoughts, holy speech and holy actions, then even one’s mundane actions will tend to be APPROPRIATE – like the letter heh, where the leg representing action is level and stable.

If ones thoughts, and speech are of an unholy nature, this will result in INAPPROPRIATE ACTIONS like the letter kuf where the leg representing action is heading in a downward direction.

For example someone who is training in holiness, even when he goes out to business will try to set up his work in a way of honesty, or when he eats and drinks he will try and see that these actions are for necessity to maintain health, and not just for impulsive desire. – represented by letter heh.

Whereas the resh represents unholy thoughts and speech like idle talk, gossip and slander etc, which leads to inappropriate actions like indulgence in eating etc, which sets one off onto a downhill descent, represented by the long leg of the letter kuf. Kuf in Hebrew also means monkey.

The purpose of the Mishkan was to convert darkness into light, and in this case the beams (Keresh) should convert our unholy and inappropriate bad habits (sheker), into Holy and appropriate ones.

Wishing everyone a happy and Holy Shabbos