A VISION

A VISION

M. GLIKMAN, ISRAEL               

                                                                                      4.09.2017

   The Almighty often directs our thoughts back to the distant or not so distant past. The event described below occurred four months ago. 

   A Saturday evening in Ashdod visiting friends. Usually it would be a ceremonial reception with quite a few guests. But this time there were just us (my wife and I) and an old friend of our hospitable hosts – an artist Vladimir Pain.

   As usually happens when we meet, the conversation turned to my research on the stones of the breastplate of the High Priest. We discussed the topic of the stones being inside the hoshen and the glowing letters. This was all new to Vladimir, he neither read any of my articles nor did he know much about the breastplate.  He listened with interest to my “popular science” narrative. When I said that it was still not completely clear in which way the names of the tribes (sons and grandsons of the forefather Jacob) had been placed on the stone, he replied: “Wait a second, I’ll try to solve this problem now.” I looked at him skeptically and thought to myself that since we already had a few drinks there is no use to argue with the man, otherwise he might take offense. 

   Meanwhile Vladimir set about his “sacred ritual”. He covered his eyes with the left hand, stretched his right hand in front of him slightly spreading the fingers and started moving the hand from left to right while murmuring something to himself. Unfortunately, I did not time him. When the artist “returned to us”, he said: “Ok, it was like this: the stones served as kind of “a container” for the letters. Remember your first grade in school, there was always a container with letters hanging by the blackboard and each letter had its own slot. A teacher would pick the letters necessary to make up a word. The students also had such containers on their desks… When the High Priest received an answer from the Almighty, the letters carved in the stones stood out and formed the words of the answer. That’s what I just saw.”  

    I had a very strange feeling. I thought about the story of King Shaul, especially its end after he consulted the fortune-teller. I thanked Vladimir and changed the subject of the conversation. During the following months I have not thought about the encounter at all. 

     And yet, the information sank in somewhere in the back of my mind and even came back to the surface albeit in a different reinterpreted form.

   THE NAMES OF THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL HAD BEEN PLACED ON THE BREASTPLATE OF THE HIGH PRIEST IN THE ALPHABETICAL ORDER from right to left on the stones attached to the inner surface of the outer fold of the hoshen fabric in the following way:

Gad                Benyamin (Benjamin)               Asher                Ephraim

אפרים                אשר                          בנימין                              גד       

Issachar            Yehuda (Judah)                        Zevulun (Zebulun)            Dan

דן                               זבולן                                        יהודה                     יששכר

Shimon (Simeon)            Reuven (Reuben)                   Naphtali          Menashe

מנשה              נפתלי                                   ראובן                                שמעון       

      Note. In Hebrew the name Ephraim begins with “alef”, the first letter of the alphabet.  The names are written in English transliteration but from right to left. The stones are arranged in columns, the first stone in the upper right corner is odem, in the upper left corner is yashpe.   

    Perhaps, the method of teaching children the Russian language using the containers with letters goes back to the ancient times of the Exodus. The Russian alphabet has roots in Greek, which, in turn, is related to the Phoenician letters and Hebrew.  

     I decided to invite Vladimir to become my co-author and to believe in his assumption, treating it as “the vision” for our own entertainment. Upon hearing my suggestion (over the phone) he replied very seriously: “Prepare the questions. I’ll do some more snooping if I get an access to the information field.”   

   However, the story unexpectedly took a “mythical” turn. It would seem that it was somehow influenced by the  information about the Torah codes. I simply wrote down all the first letters of the names of the tribes in a columnar form:

     א   א    ב   ג    

     ד    ז    י   י      

    מ   נ   ר   ש                         

Reading the Hebrew columns, I got quite an intelligible sentence:   

      אדם   א  זנב    ירגיש            (adam a(alef) zanav irgish) that could be translated as follows: “man will feel “a” a tail”. The letter “alef: might mean the first letter of the name of the Creator “Adonai Elohim -  אלוחים אדוני". Then the text acquires a special meaning: a man is the creation of the Creator and must follow Him.  

    I decided to check, what if the above-mentioned sentence has already been featured in religious literature in one form or another and launched a search on the Internet for the sentence in Hebrew. To my surprise, the search proofed successful.  

    In the Torah, the book of Devarim 28:13 it is written: “And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them.” And should the Israelites not heed the commandments then: “The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you… he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail.” (ibid, 28:43-44)

    In the book of the Prophet Isaiah 9:14-15 we read the following: “Therefore, the Lord will cut off head and tail from Israel …  The elder and honorable, he is the head; The prophet who teaches lies, he is the tail.”

    On a website dedicated to the Mishnah Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) ( משנה בפרקי  אבות  - פ"ד מט"ו ), there was a discussion dealing with the teaching by Rabbi Matya ben Charash that one should always greet others first and that it is better to be the tail of a lion than the head of a fox.

"רבי מתיא בן חרש אומר : הוי  מקדים בשלום כל אדם , והוי  זנב  לאריות  ואל תהי ראש  לשועלים"

The discussion was concluded with the following sentence:

  .", והזנב ירגיש כי הוא זנב של הראש  ויחד יפעלו הראש יזקור כי  יש מאחוריו  זנב  …"

Literally: the head will remember that there is a tail behind it, while the tail will feel that it is the tail of the head and they will act together. The greatest success is in the union between a man and G-d.
  

www.yesmalot.co.il/shiurhtml /malotsh1825.asp

   Was it a coincidence or a confirmation, albeit indirect, that the correct placement of the names of the tribes on the hoshen stones has been discovered? I believe that once again I received a gift from Heaven.  A small crack opened up slightly and allowed us to read the most ancient remainder to men: NEVERE FORGET THAT THE ALMIGHTY IS THE HEAD OF EVERYTHING.  

   Thanks to Y. Klingman for sound advice while discussing the article.