Who speaks me into life? Who convicts me that I should die? Who revives me and gives life to my mortal body?
Let me divide the world in 2 - into two sets of eleven. Under aleph I am constituted. Aleph gives me a future as it is written: wherever you go, I will go - כִּי אֶל־אֲשֶׁר תֵּלְכִי אֵלֵךְ
Aleph has beginning but no ending and I am in it since I am first person imperfect and of common gender.
And I acknowledge the same by my mark - ת - my mark. Taf is also a continuing of my imperfection - so all imperfect verbs lead with taf when I take myself in the second person both individually and collectively or severally. Yod י and nun נ continue me, י in my female aspect and נ in the first person plural.
So letters 1, 10, 14, and 22 are singled out as grammatical markers. What others can we rope into the first 11? Vav ו (letter 6) is a natural - it is the universal connector. (Vav means hook in Hebrew and is used as a hook both in the construction of the tabernacle and in the construction of sentences and stories!) Taf and yod also connect: infinitives, nouns and pronouns and yod for me and thee has its own person. ה (letter 5) begins the reflexive (hitpael) as נ allows the passive (nifal). These two conspire into the feminine plural and so drag in ם mem (letter 13) as pluralizer of nouns and mem and caf כ (letter 11) as male second plural persons.
Now we have 8 of the first 11 - what are the others that Saadya chose that will reveal or let us hear his division of the alef-bet into two?
Two remaining candidates are ב bet (letter 2), and ל lamed (letter 12), who must join the already captured מ mem, נ nun, and ה he as common prefixes. And the third is שׁ shin (letter 21) in its abbreviating of asher אֲשֶׁר, a relative pronoun that evokes the assonance of Psalm 1. These are the 11 letters that form themselves and the other letters into their grammatical space. They comprise the full set of all prefixes and suffixes in Hebrew. Do they really speak me or constitute my assembly?
Note this - אִישׁ ish and אִשָּׁה ishah and their plurals אֲנָשִׁים and נָּשִׁים are all composed of these letters only! Could we divide all the words of Hebrew into piles - those that use the first 11, those that are used by the first eleven, those that are independent of them? How do the first 11 behave in their roots and stems?
And what of my being - if I chose to be הָיָה and share the becoming of יְהֹוָה Hashem, or what of my death מוּתי and my harvest יְבוּלי?
(I had to work to spell life, death and resurrection with my first 11 only. Yes, I used to play cricket too. Stimulus for this post here and here.)
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
From aleph to taf - my constitution
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