Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The Sign Beth

The  Sign  Beth Hebrew letterThe following paragraph is from Dr. Asher Eder’s book The Star of David, which was published in 1987 in English in Jerusalem by Rubin Mass Ltd. The publication here is courtesy of Oren Mass
This version includes corrections and new materials that do not appear on the printed version.
As we said earlier, ,בbeth, means house, as for instance in the name Bethlehem, House of Bread. It can also stand for the whole Creation, the House the Creator provided for us. The Tanakh begins with this letter, and the question was raised: why does ,בbeth, and not ,אaleph, denote the beginning of Creation? A striking answer is that the Tanakh does not deal with theological arguments or speculations about God; it deals instead with God's laws and instructions for Man on this Earth as our "house".
The very design of the letter alludes to this idea; it opens in one direction only, namely the direction in which Hebrew is written, Hebrew being the language "by whose letters (signs, characters) and their combinations God created the world." This indicates that the whole Scripture is Torah, Divine Instruction given by the Creator from beyond ,ב beth, and directed at Man, who dwells in beth. ב

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