Letter Yud Meaning According Kabbalah
The letter Yud is the smallest of all of the letters. It is referred to as: the little that holds a lot.
Hebrew Letter Yud- The First Letter of God
The hebew letter Yod is the first letter of God’s name out of four letters which indicated this letter’s importance and powerfulness.
The great kabbalistics explained that, for an infinite God to create a finite world it necessitated what was called “Tsimsum”, which means” a contraction, because in a philosophical sense, where would an infinite God put a finite world.
The letter Yud more than any other letter, represents this concept of contraction, and that is why it’s called the little that holds a lot.
Now, this is very similar to modern sciences explanation of the Big Bang Theory, where our present universe of tens of billions of galaxies, each with tens of billions of stars, we’re told all came from an infinitely small point that exploded. This is the archetype of energy represented by the Yud, in the worlds in the souls and the level of divinity.
The Value of Letter Yud is Ten
The number Yud equals ten, and because of its importance as the first letter of god’s name, and the fact that all 22 letters conceptually have a Yud in them.
When you put a pen towards the paper, that first point, that is the Yud. Just like science explains that all of physical reality is made up of atoms, and that if one wanted to envision all of creation it’s just in a sense a virtually endless series of atoms.
But we look at the Yud in the same way. it’s as if all of creation is an infinite series of Yuds.
We’re told in Kabbalah, that any number when it’s multiplied by 10 represents its full manifestation. So, 10 is ten times 1, in other words the oneness of God is manifest in plurality through the letter Yud.
Thus the number ten, of all of the numbers is one of the most important, and there are countless different ideas in our tradition, that have ten in them.
On the level of worlds, we have the ten expressions, through which God brings the world into being.
We’re told in our tradition that there were ten things created on the first day, there were ten things created at dusk of the sixth day.
On the level of souls, we see that Abraham, the first Jew had ten tests, all of which he passed, and through that he merited as it says in the Torah to inherit a land of ten nation’s.
Number ten is the day of “Yom Kippur”, which is called the holiest day of the year, and it comes out in the tenth day of the month.
We give a tenth of our income to charity, and when we take our crops from the field, we also give a tenth in the ancient time, before we could enjoy it, this is what’s called tithing.
On the level of divinity, we have the ten plagues through which God revealed his power, and his caring and ability to act in the world, and this culminated when we came out of Egypt and God giving us the Ten Commandments.
In Conclusion- Meditation
A very profound meditation on the letter Yud is to look deeply inside, and to understand how much potential is there, how much holiness is contracted within us, and to be able to focus on that, and how to bring that into fruition and into the world.
