At the very core of Torah symbolism are the Hebrew letters, the basic building blocks of creation. Each letter is a channel of Divine flow and concentrated packet of spiritual energy manifesting in all realms of the physical world, and at all levels of human consciousness. The Hebrew letters are understood by the Kabbalists as the creative conduits of Divine wisdom and revelation. As a scientist views atoms, molecules and elements as the building blocks of creation, the Torah considers the Hebrew letters to be fulfilling the same function. According to Jewish tradition God created, and continues to create, the world from speech and through the use of the Hebrew letters.
The form, name and number of each letter thus contains profound insight and reveals wisdom from the practical to the mystical. A word in Hebrew is not just a combination of linguistic symbols of sounds, but is the spiritual force animating and giving life-force to that which it describes. The name is the actual essence of the object or entity.
In order to understand these ideas deeper let us consider what we can learn from the Hebrew letters which comprise the word for sukkah: samech – vav – chaf – hei.
The shape of the letter samech ( ס )is a circle. The word in Hebrew to surround, sovev, thus begins with the letter samech, as a circle represents surrounding energy on many different levels. This is manifest on Sukkot in a number of related ways. Firstly, dwelling in a sukkah is meant to give us the feeling of being surrounded on all six sides by the Clouds of Glory and God’s Divine Presence. Related to this is the six directions that we shake the four species in, thus creating, through our own actions, a Divine space around us (See the previous article, “A Meditation for Elul,” and the upcoming article “The Ushpizin and Shaking the Four Species” for more on this six-sided sacred space). Therefore, when we stand in the sukkah we are surrounded by both the aura of God’s Presence and the energy of our own initiative generated through the intentional act of fulfilling the mitzvah of the four species.
Additionally, the daily circular hakafah or circuit we make around the synagogue while holding the four species, as well as the seven hakafot of Hoshanah Rabbah, the last and concluding day of Sukkot, futher emphasize this aspect of surrounding energy.
The root of the word samech, when used as a verb, means to assist and support. Among the many concepts represented by the letter nun, the letter which precedes the letter samech in the Hebrew alphabet, is the idea of falling; as the verb “falls” (nofel) begins with the letter nun. Psalm 145, written by King David, is constructed as an acrostic following the order of the Hebrew alphabet. Only the letter nun is absent as David did not want to even allude to any future downfalls or hardships the Jewish people would suffer. Nonetheless, aware of such potential downfalls, the very next verse, which begins with the letter samech, states that God supports all those who have fallen. This verse, which encapsulates the surrounding energy of the samech, provides crucial encouragement for all those who do eventually experience life’s inevitable setbacks.
What’s more, David is referred to in the Talmud as the “fallen one,” a term that idiomatically denotes a stillbirth or miscarriage. According to tradition, David’s soul was not granted any time in this world. When Adam prophetically witnessed David’s stillbirth, he volunteered to give David seventy of his allotted one thousand years. Despite Adam’s generosity, David experienced each moment of life as if in a constant state of existential freefall, while simultaneously and paradoxically feeling embraced by God’s constant support, as expressed so powerfully in his poetic psalms.
The following phrase is added to Grace After Meals on Sukkot: “O Merciful One, lift up the fallen sukkah of David.” All the trials and tribulations of the Jewish people over the years are referred to symbolically as David’s fallen sukkah, while the eventual restoration of spiritual and social balance and peace is represented by the very sukkah we construct and sit within each year.
The next letter in the word sukkah is the letter vav. The form of the letter vav (ו ) represents a pillar, or a man standing upright with his feet on the earth and his head reaching the heavens. The first appearance of the letter vav in the Torah is in the first verse: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The letter vav means “and”; its form itself, a line, is a symbol of connection between different entities. The letter vav equals six and in the above verse it is the first letter of the sixth word. It is the twenty-second letter of the Torah, and it begins the word את, comprised of the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The power of the vav is to connect all the individual forces of creation, symbolized by the twenty-two Hebrew letters, into a higher order of integral wholeness.
As we have mentioned before, Sukkot is the time to gather all the prayers and good intentions from the month of Elul, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and to begin the process of connecting and integrating all these various ideas into our lives in a cohesive and pro-active manner. Sukkot is thus a time to connect heaven to earth, bringing creative inspiration into partnership with a firm plan of implementation.
A unique aspect of the letter vav is that it is used in the Torah to invert the apparent tense of a verb from past to future and future to past. This unique grammatical function of the vav is referred to as the Vav HaHipuch. This phenomenon gives the Torah an eternal quality, a sense of being both within and yet outside of time. This ability to transform the future into the past and the past into the future is the secret of teshuvah, repentance.
We are taught that when one returns to God in sincere repentance motivated by the fear or awe of God, his or her past deliberate sins become like inadvertent errors. But, when one returns to God out of pure love, their past transgressions are actually converted into merits, as they now motivate them to serve God with added commitment and enthusiasm. The period from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur represents teshuvah based on yirah, fear or awe of God, while Sukkot represents teshuvah based on ahavah, love. It is therefore on Sukkot that we reach this redemptive point in the process of Tishrei, during which we are actively attempting to rectify our past in order to inspire a positive future.
Just as we have the power to transform our past into the future, we also have the ability to draw the future into the present, and even the past. Through shaking the four species we manifest the energy of our ideally projected future within the present, and even reflect it back into the past as we change our perspective in the moment. The World to Come, a future state of perfected existence, is in fact already manifest, albeit hidden in the present, for those who are able to connect and draw upon that energy and state of consciousness. Once this primordial light is accessed, it illuminates all the shadows from one’s past.
In addition to the vav connecting all points in time, it also represents the six planes of a cube, the cardinal symbol of space. This spatial understanding of the vav of course relates to both the six planes of the physical sukkah, as well as to the six directions towards which we shake the four species.
Thus, the vav represents the force that connects space and time in what Einstein called the space-time continuum. This is the secret of God creating the world in six days. The Sages point out that in the first verse of the Torah the letter alef appears six times. Alef means “one thousand,” and its six-fold appearance in the first verse of the Torah serves as textual support for the tradition that this present cycle of history will last six thousand years, followed by the Messianic era. This idea is directly connected to the choice of the haftorah on the first day of Sukkot, which is one of the most dramatic prophetic descriptions of the final wars before Mashiach comes, as well as a poetic description of Sukkot as the universal holiday of the future.
The third letter of the word sukkah is a chaf. Its shape is a vertically-oriented half circle with an opening on the left side, but when a chaf is turned ninety degrees on its side, forming a horizontally-oriented half circle open on the bottom, its form is similar to a crown or a skull-cap. That is why both the word crown, keter, and cap, kippah, the traditional head covering for a man, both begin with the letter chaf. Therefore, the letter chaf, in both its shape and meaning, similar to the letter samech, means to surround. Once again, we see the pervasive energy of the Sukkah as the experience of being surrounded by God’s Presence and protection.
Keter is the highest of the sefirot and represents the super-conscious levels of soul that hover above the lower sefirot of intellect and the emotions. Indeed, the spiritual ambiance of the physical sukkah has the power to connect an individual to an even higher state of consciousness than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
The word for the shrubbery “roof” covering of the sukkah is sechach, consisting of two letters chaf. The sechach in fact is the most important and essential part of the sukkah, as it gives us the feeling of being lovingly surrounded and protected from Above by Divinity; and in the words of the Arizal, being “hugged” by God.
In Jewish law, the height of a sukkah cannot exceed 20 cubits (around 30 feet). The reason for this is that our eyes are meant to always have the sechach in view without the need to lift our heads. Interestingly enough, the numeric value of the letter chaf equals 20!
The last letter of the word sukkah is the letter hei, which appears in God’s most essential Name of four letters, not once but twice, alluding to God’s Presence and revelation. The letter hei actually means expression and its sound is used in many different languages as a means of expression, revelation and, most commonly, as a way of grabbing someone’s attention (“Hey you!”). As will be discussed in the next section, Sukkot is a time for not only expressive joy, but also of revelation and prophecy.
The numerical value of the letter hei is five, which relates to the sukkah in many ways. Above we discussed how the letter vav unifies the dimensions of time and space. Yet, the various dimensions of reality described by the Sefer Yetzirah include not only space and time, but include soul or consciousness as well. These dimensions are called “world” or “space” (olam); “year” or “time” (shanah); “soul” or “consciousness” (nefesh) — which is a dimension, according to the Sefer Yetzirah, as real as the other physical dimensions.
Albert Einstein revealed just one hundred years ago that time can also be considered a dimension, similar to the three dimensions of space, thus introducing us to the fourth dimension and the idea of the space-time continuum. Although science has yet to deem “soul” a dimension per se, quantum physics now recognizes that consciousness is not merely a passive observer, but is actually a critical determinant of reality. This, according to Sefer Yetzirah, is the fifth dimension, represented by the letter hei, which equals five.
We discussed above how shaking the four species unites the four dimensions of time and space. Here we will add an even deeper fifth level of consciousness.
When holding the four species we hold the etrog in the left hand and the other three species in the right hand. Each hand of course has five fingers. In the section on Rosh Hashanah we discussed at length the symbolism of holding the four species in our two hands as a symbol of gathering the more ethereal prayers of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in order to harness and actualize them. Our two hands, in which we hold and shake the four species, allude to the two letter heis in God’s essential Name.
Furthermore, on Hoshanah Rabbah, after completing seven hakafot and their accompanying prayers with the four species in hand, we put them down and pick up five willows. After a number of dramatic prayers, we hit the ground with the willows five times to indicate the final sealing of the judgments began during the previous holidays. This represents not only God’s final sealing of our judgment, but also expresses our active participation and contribution to the results of that judgment, as well as our acknowledgement of our responsibility to actively co-create and positively influence our own destiny.
It is important to note that the Talmud uses the very same method of analyzing the meanings and shapes of the letters in the word sukkah in order to determine the number of walls a sukkah must have in order to be kosher. The samech, as a circle, is closed on all four sides, alluding to a sukkah of four walls. The chaf, a semi-circle, is made of three sides, hinting that a sukkah of three walls is also acceptable. The hei consists of two long lines and a third short line, which teaches us that even a sukkah of two and a half walls is permissible.
As stated in the beginning of this section, the Hebrew letters, which are the instruments of creation, have infinite levels of meaning ranging from the practical to the mystical, from the physical to the spiritual, and from the literal to the symbolic. A word is in essence a higher expression of the energetic interplay and inter-inclusion of its constituent letters. Truly the sukkah surrounds (samech), connects (vav), crowns (chaf), and expresses (hei) our highest visions and heartfelt hopes for a redeemed future!
