Contemplating Sefer HaBahir

Journey Into Redemptive Consciousness

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Radical Kedushah

ומנלן דהתורה נקראת ברכה
Sefer HaBahir, verse 3 excerpt

Traditional interpretation: "How do we know that Torah is called a blessing?"

נקראת begins with the letter nun נ. As a prefix, nun is the niphal verb stem in biblical hebrew associated with the idea "to do". This kind of nun may be at times be assimilated into the first consonant of the root, where it may appear as a dagesh forte. This indicates that the first root consonant is "doubled". In other words, in this case, had the nun been assimilated into the first root consonant, qof ק, its transliteration would be qq as opposed to q.

However, the nun "appears" as a dagesh forte only in the YQTL (imperfect) conjugation, and not in the QTL (perfect) conjugation where the nun remains and "appears" as the letter nun. Regardless of appearances, "the action" of doubling remains, though silent and unsounded in the perfect conjugation. Here, the nun remains "set aside" and IS BEING holy (where the niphal conjugation means "doing" the action ("be summoned") of the root verb (קרא, summon) and first consonant root letter.

Taking all this together, the nun prefix of the niphal verb stem conjugation is first of all, "summoning" a double dose of kedushah and is being holy while doing it. The kedushah of both the nun and the qof are distinctly side by side (kol tov), and not a mixture of good and evil inseparably together.