The Origin of Resh
Resh (Arabic: look below) is the twentieth letter of many Semiticalphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrewר and Arabic alphabetrāʾر. Its sound value is one of a number of rhotic consonants: usually [r] or [ɾ], but also [ʁ] or [ʀ] in Hebrew. In most Semitic alphabets, the letter resh (and its equivalents) is quite similar to the letter dalet (and its equivalents). In the Syriac alphabet, the letters became so similar that now they are only distinguished by a dot: resh has a dot above the letter, and the otherwise identical dalet has a dot below the letter. In the Arabic alphabet, rāʼ has a longer tail than dāl. In the Aramaic and Hebrew square alphabet, resh is a rounded single stroke while dalet is a right-angle of two strokes. The similarity led to the variant spellings of the name Nebuchadnezzar and Nebuchadrezzar. The Phoenician letter gave rise to the GreekRho (Ρ), Etruscan r , LatinR, and CyrillicР. The word resh is usually assumed to have come from a pictogram of a head, ultimately reflecting Proto-Semitic*raʾ(i)š-. The word’s East Semitic cognate, riš, was one possible phonetic reading of the Sumerian cuneiform sign for “head” (SAG , ) in Akkadian.
The Pronunciation of Resh
The Hebrew spelling is: רֵישׁ In Hebrew, Resh represents a rhotic consonant that has different realizations for different dialects: In modern Hebrew, a voiced uvular fricative ([ʁ]), which is also the most common Resh spelling in Hebrew. In Ashkenazi pronunciations, either an alveolar approximant [ɹ] (as in English), a uvular trill [ʀ], or an alveolar trill [r]. In Sephardic and Mizrahi pronunciations, either an alveolar trill[r], or flap[ɾ]. Resh, along with Ayin, Aleph, Hei, and Het, is one of the letters that does not receive a dagesh by convention. In the Yemenite tradition, Resh is treated as most other consonants in that it can receive a dagesh hazak under certain circumstances. And in the most widely accepted version of the Hebrew Bible, there exist 17 cases where Resh is marked with a dagesh. The Sepher Yetzirah denominates resh a double letter, but it is diffucult to find any other sounds than ‘’R’’ for this letter; nor is any other so recognized by modern Hebrew grammarians; Israel Regardie think that “perhaps the French form of ‘’R’’ – pronounced with a decided roll – is the sound in question.”
The Significance of Resh
Reish is a container, just as Beith(2) and Khaf(20) are containers. But while Khaf represents forms such as a cup or house, Reish(200) represents containing the infinite, exponential growth. It also represents the constant transition, flow and change of life. It is like a constant flow of energy, breaking through, breaking down into pieces, and building anew. The Reish also relates to the Reshimo רשימו, the spiritual DNA we are meant to explore in life. It contains the secrets of Beresheet בראשית, the beginning. As the word ראש Rosh Head, it also refers to the secrets of the Crown Keter כתר, the highest of the Sephirot.
Although the letter reish is situated close to the end of the alef-beit, its primary meaning is “head” or “beginning.” There are four “beginnings” in the alef-beit (comparable to the four New Years enumerated in the beginning of the tractate Rosh Hashanah) relative to four different categories of phenomena. The ordinal beginning of the alef-beit is the letter alef. Phonetically, the vapor, the amorphic “matter” from which the pronunciation of every letter is formed, is the secret of the letter hei. In script, every letter begins from a point, the secret of the letter yud. In relation to meaning, cognizant intelligence or wisdom, reish means “beginning.” These four letters combine to spell אריה, “the lion,” the first of the four “holy animals” of the Divine chariot of Ezekiel. They further combine to spell יראה, “fear” or “awe.”
“The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.” In Chassidut we are taught that the inner experience of the soul which serves as the vessel to arouse and contain ever new flashes or insight, wisdom, is bitul, “selflessness.” Fear, the beginning of wisdom, corresponds to the source of this state in the soul. Fear “shocks” ego, breaking the innate coarseness of the heart, that coarseness or egocentricity that prevents one from being truly receptive and perceptive to reality outside oneself in general, and the Divine Essence of all reality in particular.
The two letters that fill the letter reish (ריש) are יש, meaning “something,” in general identified in Chassidut with consciousness of ego or being a separate, independent entity – a “something.” Reish is the only letter “pregnant” with this “filling.” In Chassidut we are taught that though the lower “something,” the “created something” (יש הנברא), appears to be totally separate from the consciousness of its Creator and the creative force which continuously brings it into existence, nonetheless its seeming separate “somethingness” serves, in truth, to reflect the Absolute and “True Something” (יש האמיתי) who is truly and uniquely independent, “the Cause of all cause.”
The insight of Divine wisdom is the “nothing” (אַיִן) between the two states of “something,” whose ultimate purpose is to serve to draw the consciousness of the “True Something” (יש האמיתי) into the experience of the lower “something.” In the power of the process of rectification, the ego must first be “shaken” by the fear of God, the beginning of wisdom. Thereafter one’s “matter” can be purified and clarified in order to become a fitting “mirror” to reflect the True Something. This process of clarification, dependent upon wisdom and its beginning, fear, is expressed in the verse: “You have made all in wisdom.” “Made” (צשית) refers throughout the Torah to the process of rectification and clarification. The Zohar paraphrases this verse: “You have clarified them all with wisdom.” The “art of clarification” is the “beginning of the end”; the three final letters of the alef-beit, ר ש ת, are the beginning, middle, and end of the end, respectively. Just as the tzadik connects to the kuf in its full spelling (צריק), so the reish “leads in” to the shin (ריש), all of the clarifications of wisdom ascending upward to their Divine Source in the flame of the love of God and His people Israel.
The Form of Resh
The profile of a head; a bent over head.
The reish, whose meaning is “head,” profiles, in its form, the head of man. Its horizontal top depicts the head facing left (the next letter of the alef-beit, the shin), bent over. Its downward extension to its right depicts the beginning of the spinal column, the “backbone,” the support of the head.
The Form of Reish in the Worlds
A man bent over in poverty and servitude. Conformity to social norms.
As one of the meanings of the reish is רֹשׁ, “a poor man,” so at the level of Worlds, its form represents the bent-over-head of a poor man experiencing and acknowledging his state of poverty and servitude to the worldly source of his sustenance. At a deeper level, this poverty and servitude is expressed by the bowing of the head to accept the yoke of conforming to the “laws” of society with its secular culture and standards. This is the opposite of the strength of conviction and determination of the previous letter, kuf. It is actually a lower manifestation of the reish included in the form of the letter kuf, without the ability to penetrate and “fight” reality, the secret of the zayin (“weapon”) of the kuf. Physical poverty weakens one’s conviction and “backbone,” as is said: “poverty causes man to lose possession of his own da’at [his power to make decisions and forcefulness to implement them against the obstacles of nature] and the da’at of his Creator [the conviction necessary to implement the decision of God, the mitzvot of His Torah].”
No rectification in the world can take place without the power of “mind over matter.” The “poor head” has lost this power. The Ba’al Shem Tov teaches that, although being “clever” in the worldly sense may lead to negative ramifications when unconnected to the yoke of Torah, nonetheless the first mitzvah of a Jew is to be “smart,” even in relation to the level of Worlds, when committed to Torah. Otherwise he remains a “poor head” incapable of dealing forcefully with the world.
The Form of Reish in the Souls
The mind “bending over” in order to express itself in speech. Devoted service to God.
In order to speak, the thought of the mind must “bend over” and contract its own inner brilliance for the sake of communication to others. Speech is the most essential characteristic of man. When God created man “He blew into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living creature” – “a speaking spirit,” as discussed above in the letter pei. The bending over of the head in order to speak is thus the beginning of man’s assuming his true role.
We are told of two of the greatest Chassidim who could assume different postures while deeply immersed in meditation. While Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac of Homil, the great “intellect” of Chassidut, would throw back his head with open eyes gazing up, Rabbi Hillel of Poritch, the great “servant” of Chassidut, would place his thumb in his mouth and bend his head over between his knees. The ultimate purpose of meditation is devoted service, which requires the bending over of the head.
The reish included in the form of the letter kuf, at the level of Souls, is the Divine Will bending over to “force” the soul into a state of willingness to descend below. So, the letter reish itself is the inner bending over the mind to force the heart to respond in accord with the mind’s perception, to speak from the heart, thereby giving one’s words the power to penetrate the hearts of others. First the mind speaks to the heart and then the heart speaks to others. The two basic words for speech in Hebrew are אמר, “to say,” and דבר, “to speak.” In particular, אמר signifies the inner speaking of mind to heart, while דבר refers to the outward speaking of the mouth. Both roots end with a common letter, the reish.
The Form of Reish in the Realm of Divinity
The revelation of God’s thoughts through speech. The union of Kabbalah and halachah. The presence of Shabbat in the weekdays.
“The concealed things are to God, while the revealed things are to us and our children…” In Kabbalah, “the concealed things” refers to the continual union of the secret of the first two letters of the Name Havayah, י-ה, corresponding to the continual union of the two sefirot of chochmah and binah which transcend (and are thereby concealed from) the lower sephirot of Creation. The “revealed thing” refer to the last two letters of the Name Havayah, י-ה, which correspond to the to the emotions of the heart (the six sefirot from chesed to yesod) and speech (the sefirah of malchut). God Himself “bends over” His “concealed things” (His power of intellect, as it were) in order to reveal “the revealed things” and permeate them light from the realm of the concealed.
Amalek, the arch-enemy of Israel and, as it were, of God, wishes to disassociate “the concealed things,” the letters י-ה, from the “revealed things,” the letters י-ה, to separate mind from heart and speech and thus make knowledge impotent, i.e., incapable of effecting rectification of one’s emotive attributes and instinct of communication.
At a deeper, more refined level, this is like one who wishes to disassociate the study of the hidden dimension of Torah – Kabbalah and Chassidut – from the revealed body of the Law. Would the head not bend over, there would be no contact between them. The bending over of the head, in devotion to Divine service, the essence of Chassidut, as above draws Kabbalah into halachah. This is the secret of drawing Shabbat into the six days of the week, as explained by the Azizal and in Chassidut.
The Word for Resh
The word reish (רֹישׁ) means both “head” or “beginning” (רֹאשׁ) and “poor man” (רשׁ).Resh as an abbreviation can stand for Rabbi (or Rav, Rebbe, Rabban, Rabbenu, and other similar constructions). Resh may be found after a person’s name on a gravestone to indicate that they were a Rabbi or to indicate the other use of Rav, as a generic term for a teacher or a personal spiritual guide.
The Word for RESH in the Worlds
The state of poverty of this world. The experience of poverty prior to it leading to selflessness.
After the episode of David and Bat Sheva, Nathan the prophet came to David and said:
There we two men in one city, one rich and the one poor [רֹאשׁ, i.e. רֹשׁ written with an additional alef, as רֹאשׁ, “head”]. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing [ולרֹשׁ איו בל], save one little lamb, which he had bought and nurtured, and it grew up together with him and his children, it ate his own meat and drank of his own cup and lay in his bosom and was to him a daughter. And there came a traveler to the rich man and he spared to take of his own flock and his own herd… but took the poor man’s lamb…’ And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man… and Nathan said to David, ‘you are the man.’ “
As long as the poor man is in a state of “one poor,” אחד רֹאשׁ, he keeps his “head,” even in his state of poverty, connected to the one, the alef, just as the “one rich” (“There is none rich but in knowledge [of God] and there is none poor except in knowledge [of God]”). When his poverty causes him to lose “head,” the alef disappears, replaced by the words אין בל x (=111=אלף), “had nothing,” literally “had not all.” The only thing that remains to him is the physical comfort of this world, the lamb of the poor man. David’s “sin” was that he temporarily lost “head,” especially sever as he was the “head” (i.e. king) of Israel. He identifies emotionally with the poor man while in truth he behaved as the rich man.
King David is the secret of malchut, initially poor, as explained in the secret of the dalet. Chassidut explains the difference between the forms of the dalet and the reish, and their respective states of poverty, based upon the verse “the poor man had not all.” The dalet (ד), in its upper right, possesses a point of bitul, selflessness, in recognition and connection to the source of its sustenance, in recognition and connection to the source of its sustenance, whereas the reish (ר) lacks this point of “all.” The task of the reish is to internalize the alef into its very being, thus, overcoming the negative implication of the state of poverty of this world and becoming a רֹאשׁ, “head,” a leader rather than just a receiver.
The Word for RESH in the Souls
The conscious state of mind. The second day of Rosh HaShanah – conscious beginning. The power to procreate.
The two days of Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year, correspond, in Kabbalah, to the “depth” of keter – the unkwoable (superconscious) head – and the “depth” of chochmah – the knowable (conscious) head. The ten days of teshuvah between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the secret of the ten “depths” of the ten sefirot. Each one of these days we add to our morning prayers Psalm 130, “from the depths I can call unto You God.” Though initially only one day, Rosh Hashanah is now observed for two days and will remain so even with the coming of the Mashiach, just as now even in the land of Israel two days of Rosh Hashanah are observed, in contrast to the other holidays which are observed for two days only in the Diaspora.
The second day of Rosh Hashanah is the dead, the reish, at the level of Souls. It was first revealed by the souls of the Sages of the Oral Torah, though eternal in essence, as explained above. “Everything primordial [קַדמוֹן] is eternal [נִצחִי], but not everything eternal is [necessarily] primordial.” The first day of Rosh Hashanah is the secret of the primordial eternal, at the level of Divinity. The second day of Rosh Hashanah is the secret of the eternal alone, at the level of Souls.
The soul of Israel comes from the wisdom of God, just as the drop of seed of the son is drawn from the brain of the father, as explained in Tanya. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the sixth day of Creation, Adam and Eve were created and given the commandment not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge (which they transgressed). Though commanded “be fruitful and multiply” on this very day, God intended the fulfillment of his positive command to take place the next day, the first Shabbat of Creation, the second day of Rosh Hashanah (primordial in the secret of Shabbat, and eternal in the secret of Rosh Hashanah). Thus the secret of the second day of Rosh Hashanah is the power to reproduce souls on earth imbued with the mission “…fill the earth, conquer it and rule…”
The Word for RESH in the Divinity:
The superconscious state of mind. “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” The first day of Rosh HaShanah – unconscious beginning.
The unknowable, superconscious head of the first day of Rosh Hashanah is the secret of ” ‘for My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ says God; ‘for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.’ ” These two verses precede the verse: “Seek God while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. The wicked shall forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and he shall return to God, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God for He will abundantly pardon,” which our Sages understand to refer to the ten days of teshuvah in general and to the first day of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in particular.
The spiritual service of the first day of Rosh Hashanah is to coronate the King by our total subdual and bowing of head to accept the yoke of heaven. Thereby our own head is actually elevated to a level absolutely higher than our previous state of consciousness. The knowable head of Souls is lifted into the unknowable head of Divinity. “Your thoughts,” when totally subdued to the Will of God, are lifted into “My thoughts” and “your ways” into “My ways” (the mitzvot of Torah, the way of God)
This is the secret of “lift up the head of the Children of Israel.” The root “to lift up” in Hebrew, נאש), means the power to bear opposites, the Divine paradox of the unknowable head. When the letters רֹאשׁ, “head,” are “lifted” to the next letters of the alef-beit, they become שבת, Shabbat, the secret of the Primordial One, as explained above. one of the great tzadikim of Chassidut, Rabbi Chaim of Tchernovitch, is said to have actually become a head taller on Shabbat.
The Number of Resh
Resh in gematria represents the number 200. Two hundred.
The Number of Resh in the Worlds
The upper limit of poverty – two hundred zuz. The two hundred lights that shine out of the self. “The sun is charity.”
So long as a man possesses up to 199 zuz, he is halachically considered a poor man, worthy of receiving charity. upon obtaining the 200th zuz he leaves the category of a poor man and is not longer eligible to receive charity. The word “charity” (צדקה) equals 199.
The upper limit of charity, 200, is thus the secret of רֹאשׁ, “poor man” (רֹשׁ) with an alef (א), i.e. no longer poor but a רֹאשׁ, “head,” in control of his worldly affairs. This is hinted at in the verse: “the thousand is to you, Solomon, and two hundred to the keepers of its fruits.” The “thousand” (האלף) is the secret of the letter alef; in its source – one, which completes (Solomon, שלםה, means “completion”) the 200 to become a “head” worthy of keeping the fruit of the garden – i.e., responsibility attending for the nature of Worlds.
When the alef of Solomon is joined to the reish of the “keepers” by the connecting force of the letter vav, the word אוֹר (“light”) is spelled. Initially the thousand are the secret of the “thousand lights” which shines inwardly to the “completed” self. The two hundred, the “fifth” of the thousand are those lights which shine outwardly to the other. In the word אוֹר, “light,” the two, opposite “vector” forces of light combine, the inner drawn down to augment the outer.
At the level of Worlds, “lights,” אוֹר, means fruit (and vegetables) in Hebrew. This is an obvious allusion to the phenomenon to photosynthesis, where physical sunlight is transformed into the lifeforce of vegetation. This relates to the phrase שמש צדקה, “the sun is charity.” The essence of the sun first consummates the 199 (=צדקה) to become 200 (ד), and then joins the 1,000 (its own inwardly shining lights) to the 200 (outwardly shining lights), in the full secret of the word אוֹר, “[sun]light.”
The Number of Resh in the Souls
Two hundred heads of the Sanhedrin from the tribe of Issachar. Time.
“And form the children of Issachar were those that knew the understanding of times, to know what Israel aught to do, their heads were two hundred and all their brethren were by [the word of] their mouth.” Our mother Leah, in her strong desire to keep (bear) the fruit (seed) of Jacob, merited to give birth to Issachar, as told in Genesis and elucidated by the Sages. The tribe of Issachar, the wisest of the tribes in knowledge of Torah in general, and especially in knowledge of “the secret of impregnation,” possessed 200 heads (reish at both levels of Number and name) of the Sanhedrin.
Issachar was the ninth tribe to be born to Jacob, alluding to the secret of the nine months of pregnancy. Reish (ריש) is the only letter of the alef-beit pregnant with “something” (יש), as explained above. In general, pregnancy is the secret of process in time. Issachar xxxxxxxxxxxx, “knows the understanding of times,” in the secret of “if there is no da’at [knowledge] there is no binah [understanding] and if there is no binah there is no da’at.” The two sefirot of binah (בינה=67) and da’at (דעת=474) unite numerically to equal Israel (ישראל = 541)-“to know what Israel ought to do.” This union takes place in the womb of binah (the mother), oriented to experience process and time as happiness: “The mother of children is happy,” as explained in Chassidut. The “times” of the Jewish calendar are times of joy. Even on days of mourning one is conscious that in the future they will be transformed into days of greatest joy. This is the experience of time at the level of Souls.
The Number of Resh in Divinity
The numerical half way point of the alef-beit. Creation begins from the “middle point” of God’s Infinite Light. The evolving of the “Kingdom of the Infinite.” The King and His people.
Though the reish – the 20th of the 22 letters of the alef-beit – is the “beginning of the end,” nonetheless, numerically, its value is the halfway point between that of the alef, one, and that of the tav, four hundred. As a circle can be seen to begin form its center, the “circle” of the alef-beit (whose diameter equals 400=ת) “begins” (ראש – ריש) from its middle-point, the reish, 200. (In addition, since the reish is the 2oth letter, the circle of the alef-beit can be seen to be a square of its center, 20 at the second power = 400.)
In Kabbalah we are taught that the tzimtzum of the Infinite Light took place in its “middle point,” leaving over an “impression” of “dark” light within the vaccum-point of the tzimtzum. (“Impression,” reshimu (רשימו), begins with the syllable reish; the mem of the root שרם is one of the “non-essential” letters האמנתיו, and thus not an essential part of the root.) To speak of a “middle point” within infinite expanse is itself a paradox, as explained in Kabbalah. The secret of the middle point is the “Kingdom of the Infinite” (מלכות דאינ סוף), the point through which the Creator “emerges” into His Creation as King (“head”) of the universe. This “emerging” of the King is represented by the word “King,” מלך, evolving in three stages beginning from its first letter: מלך+ מל +מ, which together equal 2000, reish. The two letters of the second stage of “emergence,” מל, combine numerically to become the letter ayin (=70), which then links, backwards, to the mem of the first stage to spell עַם, “people,” in the secret of אין מלך ללא עם, “there is no king without a people.” First the people are potential in the root of the Being of the King. Thereafter they become an external reality which bows down, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, to coronate the King and ultimately to become one with Him, in the secret of עַם (people) + מלך (king) = ר = מלך + מל + מ, reish.
The Symbolism of Resh
Although the letter reish is situated close to the end of the alef-beit,”its primary meaning is “head” or “beginning.” There are four “beginnings” in the alef-beit (comparable to the four New Years enumerated in the beginning of the tractate Rosh HaShanah) relative to four different categories of phenomena. The ordinal beginning of the alef-beit is the letter alef. Phonetically, the vapor, the amorphous “matter” from which the pronunciation of every letter is formed, is the secret of the letter hei. In script, every letter begins from a point, the secret of the letter yud. In relation to meaning, cognizant intelligence or wisdom, reish means “beginning.” These four letters combine to spell aryeh, “the lion,” the first of the four “holy animals” of the Divine chariot of Ezekiel. They further combine to spell yirah, “fear” or “awe.”
“The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.” In Chassidut we are taught that the inner experience of the soul which serves as the vessel to arouse and contain ever new flashes of insight, wisdom, is bitul, “selflessness.” Fear, the beginning of wisdom, corresponds to the source of this state in the soul. Fear “shocks” ego, breaking the innate coarseness of the heart, that coarseness or egocentricity that prevents one from being truly receptive and perceptive to reality outside oneself in general, and the Divine Essence of all reality in particular.
The two letters that fill the letter reish are yud and shin, spelling yeish, which means “something,” in general identified in Chassidut with the consciousness of ego or being a separate, independent entity – a “something.” Reish is the only letter “pregnant” with this “filling.” In Chassidut we are taught that though the lower “something,” the “created something,” appears to be totally separate from the consciousness of its Creator and the creative force which continuously brings it into existence, nonetheless its seeming separate “somethingness” serves, in truth, to reflect the Absolute and “True Something” who is truly and uniquely independent, the “Cause of all causes.”
The insight of Divine wisdom is the “nothing” between the two states of “something,” whose ultimate purpose is to serve to draw the consciousness of the “True Something” into the experience of the lower “something.” In the power of the process of rectification, the ego must first be “shaken” by the fear of God, the beginning of wisdom. Thereafter one’s “matter” can be purified and clarified in order to become a fitting “mirror” to reflect the True Something. This process of clarification, dependent upon wisdom and its beginning, fear, is expressed in the verse: “You have made all in wisdom.” “Made” refers throughout the Torah to the process of rectification and clarification. The Zohar paraphrases this verse: “You have clarified them all with wisdom.” The “art of clarification” is the “beginning of the end”; the three final letters of the alef-beit, are the beginning, middle, and end of the end, respectively. Just as the tzadik connects to the kuf in its full spelling, so the “reish” “leads in” to the shin, all the clarifications of wisdom ascending upward to their Divine Source in the flame of the love of God and His people Israel.
The Tarot Attribution for Resh: XIX – The Sun
A. E. Waite suggested that this card is associated with attained knowledge. An infant rides a white horse under the anthropomorphized sun, with sunflowers in the background. The child of life holds a red flag, representing the blood of renewal while a smiling sun shines down on him, representing accomplishment. The conscious mind prevails over the fears and illusions of the unconscious. Innocence is renewed through discovery, bringing hope for the future. This card is generally considered positive. It is said to reflect happiness and contentment, vitality, self-confidence and success. Sometimes referred to as the best card in Tarot, it represents good things and positive outcomes to current struggles.
The Qabalistic Path Attribution for Resh
The Hebrew letter Resh is attributed to the thirtieth path of the qabalistic Tree of Life. It is the path joining Hod to Yesod. Resh means ‘a head’. The keynote for this path goes like this: “Joining the principle of vital energy with that of the intellect, the mind becomes filled with great, triumphant forces.” The magical motto of this path is “A man’s wisdom maketh his face to shine.”