Parasha Shemot - Names
1:1 à 6:1
Updated 2026
If you have read my former posting you may be suprised reading my 2026 Posting. Like my fellow we are all in a process of transformation. My last posting go back to 2012 and 2014. Today I have come to a new and I believe more accurate understanding. I don't delate my former post because it is part of my journey.
We just left the book of B'reshit, the first book of creation "B'" from, reshit, this point. The first book reveals the intention of the Creator, to establish Ysrael, even if we will have to wait up to Ya'acov to see the Name Ysrael.
Bereshit is an attempt to bring Adam (mankind to its full potential that unfortunately will not appear. The reason will be explain in the Parasha Bereshit.
- Adam failled
- Caïn failled
- Noah who was righteous in his generation failled, he bored three sons, Shem Ham and Yaphet.
- The generation after flood, the seventy nations failled to accomplish the divine will to be Ysrael.
To understand Ysrael, it is not physical, it is above time and space and requires what we all must become: B'nei Ysrael.
HaShem found a man raised in the tent of Shem, he was the foundation of what will become Ysrael. Abram and Sarai, their names were changed unto Abraham and Sarah. They got one son Itzhkak, who also fathered two sons, Esau and Ya'acov. The first born failled, more details to come when I post all the book of Bereshit.
Ya'acov had twelve sons and adopted Ephraim and Manashe the sons from Yosef his beloved son.
After the death of Yosef, a new Pharo who didn't knew Yosef took place in Mitzrayim (Egypte) and the situation changed, the children of Ysrael were now in bondage and it will result of many struggles and suffering under the pressure of the mitzrites (Egyptians).
A man named Moshe was born and will from now on have a position until the entering in the "promised Land", Kana'an.
All what I write here everyone can read in the Torah, it is literal, what I want to try is to approach a different dimension to search the secret behind the letter. There are many ways to explore, and I will post different sources what I believe to be of interest for the reader.
The Parasha Shemot takes us into what the Children of Israel will have to go through in order to enter Kana'an.
Beyond this reading, it is our own journey that is described in this book of Shemot. We are still in the "40 years" that will lead us to our destination.
We will talk about archetypes and Kabbalah, shadow of things to come and more.
Moshe is an archetype of Mashiach, he is send by HaShem to deliver the B'nei Ysrael from their slavery in Mitzrayim, this is what the Mashaich will do when He comes, he will deliever the Children of HaShem from their modern slavery in Mitzrayim, "Egypt"
Dovid E. Yirmeyahu (Torah HaShem) write in the article:
Reality can be taught as a ladder, but it is lived as a helix. A straight line makes “above” feel far away and “below” feel abandoned. A circle makes everything feel the same. A spiral is the only shape that tells the truth at once: return, but on a different level; the same point, but deeper; the same light, but in a new vessel. “Its end is wedged in its beginning, and its beginning in its end” [Sefer Yetzirah 1:7]. In Sefer Yetzirah this line is said over the “ten sefirot belimah,” and it is sharpened by the image, “like the flame-tongue is bound to the coal,” meaning the “end” never detaches from its source even as it looks like a descent into distance [Sefer Yetzirah 1:7]. Sefer Yetzirah opens by pairing those ten sefirot with the twenty-two letters as “thirty-two paths of wisdom,” already hinting that number and letter, ladder and language, are one interface of revelation [Sefer Yetzirah 1:1-2]. And the phrase belimah is traditionally read as “without what,” pointing to a reality that is present and operative yet cannot be grasped as an object—precision without materiality [Sefer Yetzirah 1:2; Iyov 26:7]. This is also why Sefer Yetzirah can speak of “measure” and “number” while insisting the sefirot are not things in space, but modes of Divine disclosure that do not become separable entities [Sefer Yetzirah 1:5]. That one sentence is already the whole map.
The Hebrew letters are not decoration on this map. They are the vessels by which the One allows Himself to be known without ever becoming contained. Sefer Yetzirah calls them “twenty-two foundation letters,” arranged as mothers, doubles, and simples, because creation is not random sound but structured articulation [Sefer Yetzirah 1:2; Sefer Yetzirah 2:2]. Creation itself is spoken into being through Divine utterance [Bereishit 1:3], and Chazal state explicitly, “with ten utterances the world was created” [Pirkei Avot 5:1]; the Gemara notes that the opening “Bereishit” is also counted among the utterances, even though it is not phrased as “And God said,” teaching that even what appears “pre-speech” is already Divine communication [Rosh Hashanah 32a]. Midrash says this from another angle: “He looked into the Torah and created the world,” meaning that the Divine “speech” is not merely sound, but the orderly wisdom by which reality is patterned and sustained [Bereishit Rabbah 1:1]. Tehillim says the same thing in a different key: “By the word of HaShem the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host” [Tehillim 33:6]. The human being is formed in tzelem Elokim, the image-of-God capacity to receive, reflect, and align with that utterance in consciousness and action [Bereishit 1:27], and Onkelos renders the climactic difference of the human as a “speaking spirit” [Onkelos Bereishit 2:7], hinting that speech is not only expression but the boundary-point where inner worlds become outer reality. When ancient mekubalim drew ilanot—trees and spirals of letters—they weren’t drawing God. They were drawing the interface, the kosher depiction of the channels by which the Infinite touches finitude while remaining Infinite.
From inside that interface, אהבה is not only a word for love; it is a signature of unity. Alef–Heh–Bet–Heh is 13, and אחד is 13. Love and oneness share the same inner number, because real love is the experience of “I am not outside.” The Shema places these two words as sequential destiny—“HaShem is One” and “you shall love” [Devarim 6:4-5]—because the heart’s אהבה is meant to become the lived extension of the mind’s אחד. And the verse does not leave love as abstraction: it specifies “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might,” implying that yichud must descend from idea to life-force to actual resources and choices [Devarim 6:5]. Chazal unpack this descent with sharp concreteness: “with all your heart” includes both inclinations, “with all your soul” even if it is taken, and “with all your might” with all your resources—so that love is measured by the totality of what a person actually is and has [Berakhot 54a; Berakhot 61b]. The Rambam likewise counts love of HaShem as a commanded avodah rooted in knowledge that flowers into desire, so that אהבה is not sentiment but a disciplined cleaving of mind and will to the One [Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvot, Aseh 3; Rambam, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 2:1-2]. The four-letter Name, Yud–Heh–Vav–Heh, is not a sound to be thrown into the air; it is Shem Havayah, the Name of Being/Becoming, the steady pulse of existence itself. Chazal describe the Divine self-disclosure to Moshe as “I am He Who has been, Who is now, and Who will be in the future,” linking the meaning of the Name to HaShem’s constancy across time [Shemot Rabbah 3:6]. And the Torah itself anchors that Name as the covenantal “memorial” across generat ions—presence that accompanies history without being reduced to history [Shemot 3:15]. It is read as “Adonai,” and spoken as “HaShem,” because the point is not pronunciation—it is perception; the Gemara formulates it as a feature of this world that it is “written with yod-heh and read with alef-dalet,” a gap between writing and reading that itself trains the soul in reverence and restraint [Pesachim 50a:19]. The same sugya ties this to the future promise “HaShem will be One and His Name One,” teaching that the current split between written and read is itself part of the exile of perception, destined for repair [Zekarya 14:9; Pesachim 50a]. The Name indicates that all levels, all “dimensions,” are variations in revelation, not variations in God. And already at the opening of Torah, Chazal frame this in the pairing of Names—HaShem and Elokim—as a way to speak of one God disclosed through differing modes, rachamim and din, without implying any division in the One Himself [Rashi on Bereishit 1:1].
Now the helix becomes readable. From the top, the light begins in Keter—crown, will, the point where desire has not yet become thought. Beneath that, Chokhmah flashes like an atom of insight, and Binah expands it into comprehensible structure. Then the Vav unfolds: six inner expansions, Chesed through Yesod, the emotional-spiritual architecture that translates higher intention into relational reality. Finally the last Heh appears as Malchut: Shekhinah, Knesset Yisrael, the universe, the earth, the embodied moment. The classic Kabbalistic alignment that binds these layers to the very letters of Havayah is already articulated in the foundational “Patach Eliyahu,” which maps the sefirot to the inner human and calls Malchut “the mouth,” the place where what is within becomes articulated without [Patach Eliyahu; Tikunei Zohar, Introduction (Patach Eliyahu)]. And the same tradition often points to a “crown” above the Name—Keter as the “kotz of the yud”—to indicate that even the holiest letters are already a constriction of something higher than letter [Tikunei Zohar, Tikkun 70]. All are true, because all are Malchut seen from different heights. Malchut is not “only physical.” It is the receiving presence of every world, the place where light becomes “here.” In that same spirit, the four letters of Havayah are used by later Kabbalistic teaching to describe the descent through the four worlds—Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, Asiyah—so that “worlds” are read not as places in space but as gradations of concealment and disclosure [R. Chaim Vital, Etz Chaim, Sha’ar HaKlallim]. This doctrine is treated as a central architecture of seder hishtalshelut in the Arizal as recorded by Rabbi Chaim Vital, where the language of olamot becomes a precise map of how Divine vitality is progressively clothed in vessels [R. Chaim Vital, Etz Chaim, Sha’ar HaKlallim]. And the Torah’s own telos for that descent is stated as a dwelling below: “They shall make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them,” meaning the goal is not escape upward but habitation downward [Shemot 25:8]. Chazal stress the intimacy of that phrase “among them” as within Israel, so that the sanctuary is both a place in space and a training of the heart to become a mikdash for the Shekhinah [Shemot Rabbah 33:1].
That is why PaRDeS is not merely a method of interpretation; it is a map of the soul’s own dimensional perception. Pshat is the world as it stands, the ground of action—nefesh. Remez is the hint of pattern and correspondence—the beginning of ruach, where meaning breathes. Derash is the expanding moral and spiritual demand—neshamah, the higher mind that hears Torah calling the person into alignment. Sod is not a fourth layer added on top; it is the inner current that was always present, now revealed. And the very word PaRDeS is sealed in the tradition by the account of “four who entered the pardes,” warning that depth without vessels can wound, and that true ascent requires humility, guidance, and integration [Chagigah 14b]. The tradition of the five soul-levels—nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, yechidah—appears as a standard ladder of consciousness in the writings of the mekubalim, famously organized by the Arizal as recorded by Rabbi Chaim Vital [Sha’ar HaGilgulim 1:1], and it clarifies that there is a level of living “encircling life” called chayah that can be tasted as transcendent vitality even before the absolute point of yechidah. And above PaRDeS stands yechidah, the point of oneness in the soul that does not merely understand secrets but is grasped by the One. This is why the most hidden level is not “more information.” It is more unity.
When “dimensions” are spoken of in this language, they are not sci-fi coordinates. They are degrees of face. A thing can be close and still hidden, and it can be far and still intimate. The Torah calls the highest intimacy “face-to-face” [Devarim 5:4]. It also acknowledges a state of “behind and before,” a back-to-backness where relation exist.
Moses was raised in the palace of Pharaoh as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, Basya, who had found him floating in a wicker basket on the Nile when he was an infant. When Moses is grown, he leaves the palace and encounters an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave. Moses “turned this way and that way, and he saw that there was no man; so he struck the Egyptian (killing him) and hid him in the sand” (Exodus 2:12). On the simple level, the verse tells us that prior to killing the Egyptian, Moses looked around to determine if there were any witnesses, and when he saw that there were none, he struck the attacker and rescued the Hebrew slave. This seems to imply that Moses’ act was illicit, and that had there been others present, he would not have done it. Rashi therefore clarifies, explaining the verse to mean that Moses’s “turning this way and that” was a careful analysis of the situation before acting. Using his power of vision, he was able to see what the Egyptian taskmaster “had done to him in the house and what he had done to him in the field.” When the slave was away from home, the Egyptian had raped his wife, and when the slave realized what had been done, the Egyptian abused him in the field. Rashi continues to explain that “he saw that there was no man” means that Moses looked into the future to determine whether there would be any penitents who would descend from the Egyptian’s lineage. Only after he saw that there were none and that his act would harm no righteous offspring, he killed the man and buried him in the sand. Here we find that Moses’s act was no mere knee jerk reaction to his emotions. He witnessed a gross injustice and knew that it was his responsibility to respond, but he thoroughly assessed the situation utilizing his power of prophetic perception, and only then acted accordingly. We can expound the phrase “he saw that there was no man” on an even deeper level. The fact is that there was indeed a man, and even two men: both the Egyptian and the Hebrew slave. Therefore, we could suggest that the “man” that Moses was looking for was his own self or ego. Prior to executing justice on the wicked Egyptian, he looked “this way and that way,” searching himself for his genuine motives. Was he acting from anger, jealousy, vengeance, or any other emotions that characterize “man,” or was he transcending his human inclinations and responding only from the dictates of his divine essence? Of course this does not give us license to enact vigilante justice. None of us possesses Moses’ prophetic vision. Yet we are instructed to pursue justice even when no one else will, as Hillel encourages us “in a place where there are no men, strive to be a man” (Avos 2:5). At the same time, we must be scrupulous in the analysis of our true motives, acting decisively, as Moses did, only when we look every way within ourselves and determine that “there is no man,” i.e. no ego or hidden self-interest. Another approach in the view of Pnei HaShem: was raised in the palace of Pharaoh as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, Basya, who had found him floating in a wicker basket on the Nile when he was an infant. When Moses is grown, he leaves the palace and encounters an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave. Moses “turned this way and that way, and he saw that there was no man; so he struck the Egyptian (killing him) and hid him in the sand” (Exodus 2:12). On the simple level, the verse tells us that prior to killing the Egyptian, Moses looked around to determine if there were any witnesses, and when he saw that there were none, he struck the attacker and rescued the Hebrew slave. This seems to imply that Moses’ act was illicit, and that had there been others present, he would not have done it. Rashi therefore clarifies, explaining the verse to mean that Moses’s “turning this way and that” was a careful analysis of the situation before acting. Using his power of vision, he was able to see what the Egyptian taskmaster “had done to him in the house and what he had done to him in the field.” When the slave was awa Moses y from home, the Egyptian had raped his wife, and when the slave realized what had been done, the Egyptian abused him in the field.
