THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL
The Book of Genesis, like the entire Torah, ends with blessings given by the leader of the generation to the Tribes of Israel. In parashat Vayechi it is the patriarch Jacob who blesses them and in parashat Berachah it is Moses.
There is some confusion regarding how to count the Tribes of Israel. Are there twelve or thirteen? Are Ephraim and Menasheh considered distinct tribes, or are they both part of Joseph?
We find several orders of the Tribes in the Torah. The one we are going to focus on is the one presented by the Arizal, Rabbi Isaac Luria—the order of the offerings brought by the kings of each of the Tribes when the Tabernacle was inaugurated. This is also the order of the Tribes encampment around the Tabernacle. It is markedly different from the order of birth of the sons of Jacob, and from the order of Jacob’s blessings given in parashat Vayechi (as well as the order of Moses’ blessings).
The most important and revealing correspondence the Arizal draws in his study is between the Tribes and the months of the year, beginning with Nissan. In Sefer Yetzirah, each of the months is associated with a particular mazal (constellation) in the Zodiac, one of the 12 “simple” letters in Hebrew, a “sense” in the psyche, and a controlling organ in the body. By adding the correspondence between the Tribes and the months of the year, the Arizal provides us with one of the richest partzufim in all of Torah. To the Arizal’s correspondence, we will add the sefirot. At first thought, this may seem impossible, since there are 12 months and 12 Tribes, but only 10 sefirot (or 11 if we count both knowledge and crown). Nonetheless, there is a well-founded tradition that identifies three distinct elements in the crown—the most complex of all the sefirot—known as heads.
When we add these three heads in the crown to the 10 sefirot (including knowledge), we have 13 powers of the soul, 10 which are conscious and 3 that are super-conscious. 13 is 12 plus 1, hinting to the intercalated month (chodesh ha'ibur) added to the Hebrew calendar 7 times every 19 years. The 13th month corresponds to the tribe of Levi, as we shall see.
Let us first present a unique way to picture our partzuf. The division of 13 into 12 and 1 is beautifully reflected in the figure of the Magen David (Star of David), which geometrically is composed of 12 triangles surrounding a central hexagon. The 12 triangles correspond to the 12 Tribes and the hexagon to the Tribe of Levi.
