The First Hidden Light of Creation (What's in a Name?)

Bible, Misc. | July 5, 2022 | Ezekiel, Misc

[Ezekiel]

Day One, second day, third day:

Genesis 1

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called (named) the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

***

On day one, day one was not the first in a series of days, it was the one and only:

Each day of creation is numbered. Yet there is discontinuity in the way the days are numbered. The verse says: "There is evening and morning, Day One." But the second day doesn't say "evening and morning, Day Two." Rather, it says "evening and morning, a second day." And the Torah continues with this pattern: "Evening and morning, a third day... a fourth day... a fifth day... the sixth day." Only on the first day does the text use a different form: not "first day," but "Day One" ("Yom Echad"). 

Many English translations make the mistake of writing "a first day." That's because editors want things to be nice and consistent. But they throw out the cosmic message in the text! Because there is a qualitative difference, as Nachmanides says, between "one" and "first."One is absolute; first is comparative. Nachmanides explains that on Day One, time was created. That's a phenomenal insight. Time was created. You can't grab time. You don't even see it. You can see space, you can see matter, you can feel energy, you can see light energy. I understand a creation there. But the creation of time? Eight hundred years ago, Nachmanides attained this insight from the Torah's use of the phrase, "Day One." 

And that's exactly what Einstein taught us in the Laws of Relativity: that there was a creation, not just of space and matter, but of time itself . . . Now if the Torah were seeing time from the days of Moses and Mount Sinai -- long after Adam -- the text would not have written Day One. Because by Sinai, hundreds of thousands of days already passed. There was a lot of time with which to compare Day One. Torah would have said "A First Day." By the second day of Genesis, the Bible says "a second day," because there was already the First Day with which to compare it. You could say on the second day, "what happened on the first day." But as Nahmanides pointed out, you could not say on the first day, "what happened on the first day" because "first" implies comparison -- an existing series. And there was no existing series. Day One was all there was.

https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/18878/why-hayom-yom-rishon-not-echad

A related topic is the question (mystery) of what was the first light of the first three days, because the Sun, Moon, and stars didn't appear until the fourth day.

Here is portion of an excellent article on the subject:

The hidden light of Creation
Ohr haganuz - the light that God hid.

Ohr Ha-Ganuz

The very first act of Creation, as recorded in the Book of Genesis, was the creation of light. “And God said: There shall be light” (Gen. 1:3). What kind of light was this?

It cannot be the light that we are familiar with, the light emanating from the sun and the stars. These heavenly bodies were created much later, on the fourth day of Creation. The Sages called this primordial light Ohr Ha-Ganuz, “the Hidden Light.” Too pure for the current state of the universe, God concealed it for a future, more deserving world.

What is the nature of this special illumination introduced at the beginning of Creation?

The Sages taught (Shemot Rabbah 15:22) that certain topics mentioned cryptically in the Torah were later elucidated by David in the book of Psalms. For example, Psalm 104 speaks poetically of the creation of the heavens:

"[God] wrapped Himself in light like a garment and spread out the heavens like a curtain." (104:3)

Continued

And God called the light "DAY"...

On account of the "discontinuity in the way the days are numbered", the last letters of each of these first three days (the days of the "hidden light") are as follows, in red:

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day [יום אחד].

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day [יום שני].

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day [יום שלישי].

dalet [ד] yud [י] yud [י]

דיי

spells the English word "DAY"

Too pure for the current state of the universe, God concealed it for a future, more deserving world.

DAY reverses to YID:

ייד

***

Everything about Moshe Rabbeinu indicated a special relationship with the Ohr HaGanuz-the Hidden Light of Creation. As the Talmud points out (Chagigah 12a), this light was not a normal light, a natural light, but an extremely spiritual light–a very powerful light. So powerful was this light, in fact, says Rashi, that G-d actually hid it in the early days of creation, to keep it out of the hands of the evil people of history!

Zot HaBracha: The Man of God

The letter 'yud' has traversed a confused, almost schizophrenic path. It originally indicated the consonantal sound /y/, like our English letter "wye." Three thousand years ago, the ancient Hebrews invented another use for it, adding a vocalic role to the letter. So for most of its history it has also represented the sounds /i/ as in the "ee" of "see," and /ei/ as in the "ay" of the American pronunciation of "day."

>>>

Writing a 'yud' for /i/ caught on, but it became even more widespread than it was supposed to be. For example, the academy didn't want people to use a 'yud' in words like 'michtav', letter, but most people put one after the 'mem' anyway. Israelis therefore came to associate the single 'yud' with the sound /i/, leading to the second problem: they needed another way to write /ei/, particularly in foreign words. Their solution was a double 'yud'. So, for example, the American state of Maine is spelled 'mem-yud-yud-nun'.

Glamour of Grammar: Helping hands

For example, the English name David (DAY-vid):

דייוויד

 

Continued from Zot HaBracha: The Man of God:

However, Moshe, according to the "Tradition," always had access to this light, which is why he was born thirty-six years after the slavery began–a number associated with this light (it shone for 36 hours in the Garden of Eden before being hidden). Furthermore, it says:

It is written here, "… And she saw that he was good …" (Shemos 2:2) and there it is written [regarding the Hidden Light], "G-d saw the light, that it was good" (Bereishis 1:4). (Sotah 12a)

The Talmud seems to equate Moshe and the Light itself.

[telescope115]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. time, the passage of time, time travel, have always fascinated me.
We used to have a museum locally, the Time Museum, which quite literally, was world class.
A local industrialist collected timepieces-watches, clocks, even an atomic clock, and it was quite a collection.
Alas, there wasn’t enough interest in it to keep the doors open and the lights on. The local astronomy enthusiasts, myself included, weren’t enough to keep it open.
Here’s a link: https://www.roadtripamerica.com/places/timemus.htm

[Ezekiel]

All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected.
But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.

This reminds me of another long-standing mystery, a subject of much commentary.

Genesis 49

1. And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.
2 Gather yourselves together, and hear, ye sons of Jacob; and hearken unto Israel your father.
3 Reuben...

(Reuben means "see a son")

But then he goes on to give blessings seemingly unrelated to the stated purpose. There are several opinions; e.g. that Jacob knew that the time was very long and he changed his mind so as not to demoralize his sons, or that God removed the knowledge from him so Jacob wouldn't be able to say, or that Jacob encoded the time within the wording of the blessings.

Here's one example of the thought that goes into these matters:

In fact, Jacob never revealed to his sons when the final redemption would take place. According to the Midrash, this secret — the time of redemption — was hidden from Jacob. The Midrash uses the following parable to explain what transpired between Jacob and his sons at Jacob’s death bed.

The Parable of the Devoted Servant

https://www.ravkooktorah.org/VAYEHI64.htm

What I haven't seen proposed, is that these first verses actually make plain sense -- that they *are* the revelation of the big mystery.

Yeah but why spoil the surprise? ;)

[Ezekiel]

More fun:

That gal sure gets around.

 

From (I had linked this thread in my first comment, before this post appeared)...

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4076086/posts?page=22#22

Where she goes, nobody knows. Wife of Zephyrus, the personification of the west wind:

John 3:8 The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

Looking up!

For those who don't know:

This grand garden statue of Flora mysteriously appeared for a time in a Maine field. Location: MarsHill, facing south in the direction of Mountain Road and the Big Rock. The field is north of the "Y" (where Mountain road meets Knoxford Rd.)

This is the place of first light in the summer in the lower 48.

(It's the place of First Wind as well. It's on the Wiki link. And the address of the Big Rock is 37 Graves. What are the odds?)

Time for a mighty rescue (mayday):

The earliest known May celebrations appeared with the Floralia, festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, held from 27 April – 3 May during the Roman Republic era, and the Maiouma or Maiuma, a festival celebrating Dionysus and Aphrodite held every three years during the month of May.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day

The first light of DAY...

Their solution was a double 'yud'. So, for example, the American state of Maine is spelled 'mem-yud-yud-nun'.

And wouldn't you know it...

Maine [מיין] also spells m'yayin, "from wine", and wine is the code for secret:

"When wine enters, secrets are revealed". (Eruvin 65a)

Wine [in Hebrew "yayin"] comes from a hidden place; therefore its numerical value is 70, which is the same as the word "secret" [in Hebrew, "sod"]. (Chidushei Aggadah, Sanhedrin)

https://www.chabad.org/kabbalah/article_cdo/aid/652345/jewish/Purim-and-the-Secret-of-Wine.htm

The ancient "hidden place" is the north. Here's a simple list (in English and Hebrew) of related words.

Place of the or rishon, first light. north is the location of the sky where the sun doesn't travel, so who'd look up there? Ingenious!

nth: denoting an unspecified member of a series of numbers or enumerated items.

On day one, day one was not the first in a series of days, it was the one and only

Full circle. It's the art and science of the Spirit. It can even make a missing statue sing (unlike the idols of stone that are dead).

Time for a mighty rescue: free the mind. Where we're going we don't need roads. :)

[Seven_0]

Yes, God is light, but “darkness was upon the face of the deep” until He created light, then three days later He created the source of light.

. What is the difference between “created” and “made”?

Genesis 2:3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

Some things were created and other things were made. Look at Genesis 1. Three times God created but since God is light, light was neither created nor made. Since God is omnipresent, darkness did not exist.

Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

Peace and light existed but Darkness and evil did not exist.

[SouthernClaire]

Thank you, Ezekiel!