Fifth Reading: Healing with Divine Names
The Lowest Common Denominator of God’s Names
The value of the phrase, “the scall is healed; the person is pure” (אפְּרִנ קֶתֶנַּה רֹהוָט הוּא) is 1118, the famous value of the Shema, “Hear O’ Israel, Havayah is our God, Havayah is One” (דחֶא הוה-י ינוּהֵלֹ-ֱא הוה-י לֵאָרְׂשִי עַמְׁש). The Shema is the quintessential statement of Jewish faith in God’s oneness, specifically, that the two Names of God, Havayah, designating His transcendence above all, and Elokim, referring to His immanence within all, are one and the same. The values of Havayah (י-הוה) and Elokim (ֱא-יםִהֹל) are 26 and 86, respectively and 1118 is the lowest common denominator of these two numbers. Thus, 1118 mathematically mirrors the unity between these two Names of God, just as the Shema states their unity with words. This simultaneous multilingual—mathematical and linguistic—reflection of unity is enough to demonstrate the crucial importance of analyzing the Torah quantitatively.
Divine Names and Kabbalah
Anyone intimately familiar with Kabbalah, especially its Lurianic exposition and restatement, recognizes the importance of these two Names, Havayah and Elokim, in laying out the foundation of this unofficial Torah theology. Rabbi Isaac Luria, the Arizal, identifies the “fillings” of these two Names as seminal in constructing the framework of Kabbalistic thought.
The Name Havayah has 27 possible fillings, of which 4 are identified as central by the Arizal: יוד הי ויו הי, יוד הי ואו הי, יוד הא ואו הא, and יוד הה וו הה. Their values are 72, 63, 45, and 52, respectively, and their sum is 232.
The Name Elokim only has 3 possible fillings whose values are 300 (אלף למד הי יוד מם), 291 (אלף למד הא יוד מם), and 295 (אלף למד הה יוד מם). Their sum is 886.
Tying everything together, we realize that the sum of these seven fillings of Havayah and Elokim, is also 1118!
Turning to our phrase, “the scall is healed; the person is pure” (אפְּרִנ קֶתֶנַּה רֹהוָט הוּא), whose value is as noted 1118, we now notice that it divides into two subphrases (with the semicolon providing the division). Amazingly, the first half, “the scall is healed” (אפְּרִנ קֶתֶנַּה) equals 886, and the second half, “the person is pure” (רֹהוָט הוּא) equals 232!!!
Revealing God in Nature
The netek, or scall, in Hebrew literally means a detachment, and thus this type of lesion alludes to a disconnect from Godliness, the ultimate reason for tzara’at specifically and for all illness, spiritual or physical, in general. To say that the scall is healed implies that a new connection to Godliness has been formed and that it is stronger than ever before.
It is to this unification that the Shema alludes to. The Name Elokim represents God as Nature (the value of Elokim, 86, is also the value of “nature” עַבֶּטַה, the realm in which God is concealed. Havayah on the other hand, represents an eternal, ongoing, and direct awareness of God. When Elokim is unified with Havayah, even Nature, even the human body, reveals that all is God and God is all.
Two Stages of Healing
Healing here occurs in two stages. The first is affected by the Name Elokim—corresponding to the first two words of the phrase, “the scall is healed” (אפְּרִנ קֶתֶנַּה), which equals 886 and is the sum of the fillings of Elokim. This Name acts to sweeten the harsh judgments at their source, specifically.
Then the second stage, corresponding to the final two words in our phrase, “the person is pure” (רֹהוָט הוּא), whose sum is 232, is affected by the Name Havayah, which affects the revelation of the soul’s very essence, about which we say in the morning prayers, “It is pure” (רָהֹטְהו הִיא). The soul is described in this way because its source is in the supernal Tahiru (טְהִירוּ עִלָּאָה), a realm that is pure Divine consciousness and the source of all the Hebrew letter pairs that form the basis of the Hebrew language through the 231 Gates.
Jealousy
One final observation about this phrase. The first and last letters of its first two words, “the scall is healed” (נרְפָּא הַנֶּתֶק), which we said represent the sweetening of the harsh judgments at their source, also reveal where the root cause of the onset of the tzara’at lies. These four letters spell the word “jealousy” (הָאְנִק), revealing that tzara’at is caused by jealousy, which when nullified and healed bring about recovery from the disease.
(from Weekly Mathematical Meditation)
