by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair
Turn It Up To ELEVEN!!
“And I shall take out My legions – My Children of Yisrael – from the land of Egypt, with great judgments.” (7:4)
The phrase “Turn it up to eleven!” was symptomatic of the overindulgent sixties culture. But it unwittingly recognized that this world is indeed bounded by the number ten.
Ten is a magical number. It represents the completion of a series.
Eleven is the beginning of the system of ten once again.
The number ten features prominently in the Torah. The universe was created with statements – “Let there be...” (By the way, if you count them, you’ll only find nine, but the deeper sources understand the very first word in the Torah, Bereishis, is in itself a creation: the creation of ‘beginning.’)
There are the Ten Plagues and there are Ten Commandments (or more accurately, Ten Statements).
It cannot be that this theme of ten is coincidental. What is the link between these three sets of ten?
A fruit is covered by a shell. The shell prevents the fruit from being damaged before it is ripe, but it also prevents access to the fruit. On a deeper level, the Ten Statements were ‘the fruit’ of creation encased in its shell. It took the Ten Plagues to break the casing of this spiritual ‘fruit’ and this allowed the fruit to emerge on Mount Sinai with the giving of the Torah and the Ten Commandments.
The entire universe was created with letters and the words they form. But this reality is hidden from us – that is the idea of the Ten Statements encasing the secrets of existence. Each of the Ten Plagues was like a ‘nutcracker’ that revealed in each of the Ten Statements its essence – and what resulted was the Word of Hashem revealed at Sinai – the Ten Commandments.
*Sources: Based on Sfat Emet in Iturei Torah
