TEHILIM Psalm 18: What saves the buffalo from the lion?

In this psalm King David does not request anything from HaShem. His prayer is a prayer of gratitude.
So says in the first verse,
Pasuq 1 : “A poem by David, when God saved him from the hands of his enemies, and from the hands of Shaul” (Saul, the first King of Israel,  at one point chased David and tried to kill him).
I think this psalm, from the beginning, presents us with a great lesson. We all remember God in times of need.  And we hardly remember to thank Him. Asking HaShem is very important, but we must also learn to recognize His help, His intervention and His protection when we are good, or if we were saved from a bad experience.
The next verse, Pasuq 2, is very special:
Hebrew ארחמך ה’ חזקי. King David says to his Creator, “I will love you for ever, HaShem, You give me my strength.”
There are several levels to relate to God. There are those who believe in Him, but rarely remember Him. Some people remember HaShem only when needed. Some, also remember HaShem to thank him. And there are those who believe in God all the time. Their connection with God is so real that they cannot stop seeing His intervention and His help in everything they do. And perceive His presence in everything that happens. They cannot stop thinking about God. This is what King David felt, prompting him to say to God: “I will love you for ever”. Similar to a son or a daughter who acknowledges all her parents did for him and says with deep love and appreciation” I love you dad; I love you mom”.
This is the level of connection with God that the King of Israel felt. David “saw” Hashem at all times, perceived that God loved him and protected him. That inspired David to reflect his love to His Creator.
David also says that Hashem is the one “Who gives him his strength.”  Sometimes, what finally causes many great men to collapse, is a feeling of weariness or physical and emotional exhaustion. Even a strongest man, when he fights in many fronts at the same time, comes to a point where he says “I can no more”, “I have no more strength.” David, as explained in this Psalm, was very close to falling, collapsing from exhaustion. He wanted to stop running, and surrender, because he had no strength left. But in those moments of weariness he found out that his faith in God, i.e., knowing that HaShem is there, with Him, gave David back the energy he needed. That’s why he called HaShem חזקי, “my strength,” i.e., You renew my strength when I’m exhausted.
HaShem also granted David His protection. In a flood of poetic motifs, all related to protection, David says in
Pasuq 3: ה ‘סלעי ומצודתי ומפלטי אלי צורי אחסה בו מגיני וקרן ישעי משגבי.
“God, You are my rock” (behind which I found my protection), “You are my fortress” (where I hid from my enemies), “You are my savior” (You helped me to escape from my enemies), “You are my Almighty Protector “(You saved me working miracles),
“In You I found refuge”(You made me invisible in the eyes of those who persecuted me)”You are my shield “(You take care of me even when I do not ask you to do so, even when I do not perceive that I need Your protection).
The next metaphor, which was self evident at the time and geographical region of David haMelekh,  requires a bit more explanation: קרן ישעי literally means, “You are the horn of my salvation.” To understand this motif, you have to imagine a fight between a buffalo and a lion. The lion is the king of the jungle, and he feeds on buffalo. For the buffalo there is one element that separates him from a certain dead, the only thing with which he is able to defend itself against the powerful predator: its horns. The horns are the buffalo’s salvation, its last line of defense. The enemies that are chasing David are numerous and powerful, voracious as lions. David is their prey. An easy and vulnerable prey. “A buffalo without horns”. But HaShem saves David from the claws and teeth of his enemies. He saves David like the horns save the buffalo.
The last word of this verse is משגבי, “You are my support.” David did not have to kneel defeated before his enemies. God not only saved the life of David, He also saved his dignity and his honor.
After enumerating in detail all that HaShem did for him, David haMelekh ends this long Mizmor asserting that his gratitude to God will not be an isolated event.
Pasuq 50  says:
“For all this, God, I will thank you publicly, among the nations, I will sing my poems to You”.
Did David fulfill his promise? Of course. David did not archive his Psalms in a “private diary”. David composed his words of gratitude, writing this Psalm and much of the book of Tehillim, as a public sign of recognition of God’s kindness. And his words help us, his people Israel (and many other nations, as David predicted) to find the deepest inspiration to praise and thank HaShem.

 



SEPHARDIC RABBIS: Rabbi Hayim Carigal (1732-1777) and Yale University

The first Jews who came to America in colonial times, were Sephardic Jews who had escaped from Recife, Brazil, where they were persecuted by the Portuguese Inquisition. In September 1654 a group of about 25 Jews arrived as refugees at the port of New York, which was then called New Amsterdam. Over time other communities were formed in the American colonies. The most important of these communities was established in the city of Newport, Rhode Island.
Newport Jewish community flourished especially in the eighteenth century, with the leadership of Aaron Lopez. Aaron Lopez arrived in Newport in 1752. He was originally from Lisbon, Portugal. There, he was known as Don Duarte Lopez. For 150 years his ancestors had lived in Portugal as “Marranos”, i.e., pretending that they were Catholics, to escape the Inquisition, which forbade the practice of Judaism. Aaron Lopez became an important and very successful businessman. At one point he had his own fleet of 80 merchant ships.
Rabbi Hayim Rafael Carigal (or Karigal) was born in 1732 in the former Sephardic Kehilá of Hebron. He studied at the Yeshiba of Hebron, founded and maintained by Abraham Israel Pereira, from Amsterdam. Rabbi Carigal was a prodigious student and was ordained a rabbi at the age of 17. Although it was the spiritual center of the Jews throughout the world, the Jewish community of Israel, was very poor. And it needed the ongoing support from the Jews of the diaspora. Rabbi Carigal was appointed by his colleagues to be a “Shaliach deRabanan” a representative of the Rabbis, to raise funds to help the Yehudim of Israel. In those days, the rabbis assigned to these missions were chosen based on their erudition. The wisest men were elected for the mission because it was expected of them not only to raise funds for Israel, but also to teaching Tora to the Jews of the diaspora.
Rabbi Carigal reached Newport, Rhode Island, in 1773. He was welcomed and hosted by Mr. Aaron Lopez, who said that Rabbi Carigal was the most prominent Jewish scholar who has ever reached the Americas.
Ezra Stiles was a Protestant Minister, friend of Aaron Lopez. Stiles fervently loved and admired all matters related to Judaism, and especially the Hebrew language. He said that without a solid knowledge of Hebrew language, it was impossible to understand the Bible.
When Stiles learned of the arrival of Rabbi Carigal to Newport, he came to the famous “Touro” Synagogue to hear the sermon of Rabbi Carigal. According to Stiles memoirs, it was on the day of Shabuot, May 28, 1773. Rabbi Carigal, as was the custom in the Sephardic communities, delivered his sermon in Spanish, with a few words in Hebrew. Stiles was fascinated with the personality and erudition of Rabbi Carigal and asked to meet with him. Ezra Stiles and rabbi Carigal met 28 times. Stiles became one of the greatest admirers of Rabbi Carigal. He asked the rabbi many questions about the Jewish religion and the Hebrew language, and carefully recorded all the answers he received. Before leaving Newport, Stiles commissioned a portrait or Rabbi Carigal.
In 1778 Ezra Stiles was appointed as the 7th president of Yale University. Stiles established that all freshman students take a Hebrew language course. And while this course is no longer mandatory, much remains in Yale of what Rabbi Carigal taught Ezra Stiles. Among other things, the seal of Yale University, who reads the Hebrew words URIM VETUMIM.

 



13 PRINCIPLES: Monotheism vs. Syncrethysm

אני מאמין באמונה שלמה, שהבורא יתברך שמו, הוא אחד ויחיד
In this column, we are analyzing one by one the 13 principles of the Jewish faith. Earlier, we saw the first principle: Believing that God exists. The second principle, monotheism is the belief that God is one.
Monotheism also includes another important element, which is explicitly stated in the second of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not have other gods before Me.”
This element, “exclusivity”, is the way the Jewish people practicedmonotheism since its beginning. And in this sense, monotheism was, perhaps, what protected the people of Israel more than any other value during its long history, and also the most costly one …
To understand in depth these two angles of monotheism, we must first know what “syncretism” is. In ancient times, it was common for peoples and civilizations to constantly fight against each other. There were very few periods of peace. Much, much less, than there is now. Empires rose on the ruins of empires, and were continually trying to conquer all the peoples around them. These wars of conquest were waged by empires or powerful nations to get richer: especially charging heavy taxes to the conquered people, slave trade, spoils of war, etc. When one nation conquered another nation the conquerors also imposed their religion, their gods. But when imposing their gods, they did not demand that the defeated people get rid of their local idols. Simply, they demanded that now they must serve in addition the gods of the victorious. This was an extremely common phenomenon and nobody in a polytheist society considered it as something wrong. What difference does it make between serving five and ten gods? Serving new gods was not only the prerogative of the defeated. Thus, when the Assyrians conquered the Phoenicians, they imposed their god Marduk, but also adopted the Phoenician god Melkart, who was fashionable in the entire Mediterranean.
This phenomenon, serving simultaneously two different religions and their idols, is known as “syncretism”.
Syncretism was also very common when two or more people wanted to forge an alliance and form a united front against a common enemy. Adopting the gods of other peoples without waiving your own, was a gesture of friendship between peoples.
Syncretism was accepted among all peoples of the world, with one exception: Israel.
The monotheism of the Tora not only opposes polytheism, it also opposes syncretism. When Alexander the Great conquered Judea, around the year 350 BCE, he demanded, as the most natural thing, that Jews place a statue of Zeus in their Temple. And he could not understand why Jews were willing to sacrifice their lives before accepting Zeus. At the end of the day, Alexander reasoned, we are not demanding them to stop serving their God, just to accept an additional god, as the rest of the world does!
Many historians say that the rejection of syncretism practiced by our parents, and for which they were willing to give their lives, helped triggering the first anti-Jewish feelings. Why? Because the peoples of the world did not understand that the belief in one God means that God has to be worshipped  in “exclusivity”. So it was not surprising that the Gentiles perceived us as “intolerant”,  “intransigent”, “close minded”.
They did not recognize the idea of “exclusivity” as it is learned from the second of the Ten Commandments. And without this exclusivity the Jewish people would have disappeared a long time ago. Our values and principies would had diluted and mixed with multiple cultures and religions.
If we would have given up the practice of monotheism ח”ו, we would now be where the Phoenicians, the Assyrians and the Greeks are. In the museums of ancient history

 



TEHILIM 17: How do you say in Hebrew “good heart”?

This Mizmor (Psalm) of Tehillim is a “Tefila” (prayer) in which King David asks God to protect him from his enemies. We do not know if those enemies are external enemies, the Pelishtim (Philistines) or other peoples against whom David fought once he was king, or internal enemies, nobles and other men who conspired against David. Perhaps, it may refer to the soldiers of King Saul, who sought to kill David before he was King. If this were the case, we know that in the end, the soldiers stopped from pursuing David because King Shaul had to mobilize his troops to confront the Pelishtim. If this is the case, we would know how and when the “prayer of David” was answered by God.
This Psalm is relatively long, and abounds in metaphors and literary motifs. We will explain only a couple of these metaphors.
David describes with two motifs how he wishes HaShem to protect him from those who persecute him.
Pasuq 8: “Guard me as the pupil of the eye, conceal me under the shadow of Your wings.”
The pupil is the most sensitive part of the eye. And it is protected by the eyelids in a wonderful way. If a foreign object approaches menacingly toward the eye, it is not necessary for the person to make a voluntary movement to protect his eye. The eyelids will close automatically, instantly. David asks God to protect him from his enemies as the eyelids protect the pupil. That is, that even when David does not suspected of being threatened, HaShem would operate its defenses to guard him.
“Conceal me under the shadow of your wings.” In this case, David has Melekh asks God to protect him like the eagle protects its young. Eagles cover their young “fully” with their wings, in a way that perhaps no other animals do (except, perhaps kangaroos). Concealing its chicks from the eyes of their predators. David asks HaShem (and this interpretation is perhaps further evidence that these enemies are the soldiers of King Shaul) to protect him from its enemies, “making him invisible”, in other words, making his enemies not to see him, not discovering him when he hides.
It is also interesting to see how King David describes his enemies.
In Pasuq 10, the King of Israel says: “Fat enclosing [their heart], and their mouths speak vanity.”
The second part of this pasuq (Bible verse) is very clear: the King’s enemies are not humble men, who seek the truth or the good of the people. All they seek is their own benefit. Increase their power to enjoy the reverence of the people. Ultimately, what these individuals want is to satisfy their thirst for honor and their insatiable vanity.
The first part of pasuq, “fat on the heart” requires a less short explanation.
According to Rashi, King David describes his enemies of having “hearts” surrounded by fat. What does it mean?
First, in Hebrew, like in English or Spanish, the heart is the organ related to feelings, especially to sensitivity. When we say about someone that he or she have “a good heart”, we do not mean to say what a cardiologist says when describing one of her healthy patients. Rather, we mean to say that he is a good person.
And yet, there is a curious difference between Hebrew and other languages in terms of motifs used with reference to the heart. For some reason (which I really ignore) in English or Spanish you can describe a good person as someone having a “heart of gold” , i.e.,  very good feelings. In biblical (not modern!) Hebrew, a heart of gold might be an offensive expression. The prophet Yehezqel, for example in pasuq 36:26, speaks of two hearts: a bad hard heart, made of “stone” as oppose to a good and soft heart, made of  “flesh”. I imagine that in the universe of Biblical metaphors, and although not explicitly mentioned by Yehezqel, a “heart of gold”, being that is hard, would be closer to a heart of “stone” than to a heart of “flesh”. In other words, the ideal heart for the Hebrew Bible is not stone or gold, but soft and fleshy.
And yet, there is a further metaphor, indicating that even a heart of flesh sometimes needs repair.
The Tora says in Debarim 10:16 ומלתם את ערלת לבבכם “You should circumcise the foreskin of your heart …”.
What does the circumcision of the heart mean? Our hearts are capable of creating an adipose tissue (“fat” in the metaphor of Tehillim) which is considered as a foreskin of the heart. This additional layer is formed when we lose sensitivity, and we stop feeling uncomfortable in front of injustice, corruption, suffering and other bad things happening around us. A heart surrounded by fat, is a callous heart. That heart,  according to the Tora, must be circumcised. King David describes his enemies with this profound Biblical metaphor. They are people with a heart covered by a “prepuce” (“heartless”, we would say in English), with feelings that are buried under a thick layer of fat, that has grown around it, and they have failed to remove it.

 



HEBREW LANGUAGE: Tell me your name, and I’ll tell you your password

In Hebrew, each letter has a numerical value, according to the order in which that letter appears on the alphabet. ALEF is the first letter of the alphabet, its numerical value is therefore 1. BET, the second is 2. YOD is the tenth letter, and its numerical value is 10. The next letter, KAF is 20, LAMED is 30, etc. The 19th letter QOF, has the numerical value of 100. The following letter, RESH 200, and the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, TAV, equals 400.
This simple technique is known as GEMATARIA (or gematria, numerical value of letters). GEMATARIA is often used by Hakhamim to associate between different words with identical numerical value, and establish certain comparisons between ideas that these words suggest. For example,  the Gemara explains in Masekhet Makot: תורה צוה לנו משה “The Tora was  commanded to us by Moses …”, the Hebrew word Tora in GEMATARIA  is 611 (TAV = 400, VAV = 6, RESH=200, HE = 5) and reminds us that of the 613 precepts, 611 were delivered to us by Moses while the other two, the first two commandments, which are written in the first person singular, were transmitted directly by HaShem.
In general, we have always used letters to write numbers before the modern numbering system (1,2,3) was established. The numbering system for Hebrew letters is still in use. For example, for page numbering or references in traditional Jewish books, as Siddurim, etc. In the Gemara the pages are identified by letters (page KAF DALET = 24). Biblical chapters and verses are also referenced with letters, not with numbers. One more example: the Hebrew calendar is expressed in letters. We are now in the year 5776 which in Hebrew is HE (5) TAV (400) SHIN (300) ‘AYIN (70) VAV (6) = התשע”ו.
I suggest that those who wish to practice and learn the Hebrew alphabet and the numerical value of its letters use this method to build their personal passwords. Nowadays we need passwords that can be easily remembered and / or retrieved from memory when we have forgotten them.
The following is an idea to create strong, secure passwords, while learning or practicing the Hebrew alphabet:
1. First you must reduce all the numeric values of the letters to their minimum value, i.e., a single digit. For example, although the numerical value of the letter TAV is 400, for us it will be 4. The same will happen with the letter KAF, instead of 20 will be
2. Once we understood this principle we can proceed to “translate” our name into Hebrew numbers. My Hebrew name is Yosef. In Hebrew letters, YOD=10, VAV= 6, SAMAJ= 60, PE= 80. According to what I explained above, when we reduce the numerical value to a single digit, the numerical value of YOSEF is then “1668”. If I ever  forget the number 1668, all I have to do is to translate  my Hebrew name into four numbers.
3. There are several possible combinations to make a very strong password. I can write my name in Hebrew numbers 1668 and then adding my last name in letters. I think that “1668Bitton” or “Bitton1668” are solid, powerful, hard to forget and easy-for-you to recover password.
4. One more example, with the most popular Hebrew name I know: Daniel Cohen (I have seven friends named Daniel Cohen!). “DANIEL” דניאל DALET = 4, NUN = 50,  YOD=10, ALEF = 1, LAMED = 30. “COHEN” כהן KAF = 20, HE = 5, NUN =50. The name “Daniel Cohen” can then be written   “45113Cohen” or  “Daniel255”,  or if we convert both, the first and last names into numbers would get 45113255: 4 (DALET), 5 (NUN), 1 (YOD) 1 (ALEF) 3 (LAMED) 2 (KAF) 5 (HE) 5 (NUN).
This system works only in one direction: you can convert your Hebrew name into numbers and then easily remember the number. But it is not easy to guess that “1668” corresponds to “Yosef,” or that 45113255 belongs to my seven friends “Daniel Cohen”

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13 PRINCIPLES: Science, creation, Creator

Principle # 1: God exists
In his Pirush Mishnayot, Maimonides (1135-1204) formulated the 13 principles of the Jewish faith. “The first principle is to believe in the existence of God… and that He is the cause of the existence of all that exists.” In other words, Maimonides explains that the belief in God consist of believing in the existence of a Creator of the Universe. That’s the first thing we should know about God.
There was always opposition to this principle. For centuries, the idea that prevailed was that of Aristotle, who held that the World was not created by God, is eternal and has always existed as we see it today.
It took a long time until this idea changed. In 1929 Edwin Hubble discovered something revolutionary. The universe is not static, neither is moving in an orbital circular way. The universe, Hubble proved, is expanding! And if it is expanding, it must have had a starting time, a point zero when it all began. That was the first indication in the history of scientific thought that the universe had a Creator. As I explained in my book “Awesome Creation”, secular scientists of that time (the 1930’s, Albert Einstein, Arthur Eddington and many others) strongly rejected the idea of an expanding universe, because they considered it a “religious” concept. The idea of the beginning of the universe is very close to the idea of Creation, these naturalist scientists reasoned. With unusual candor Eddington said: “Philosophically, the idea that the universe had a beginning, is repugnant to me …”.
Either way, from that time, Aristotle’s idea of the eternal universe, which dominated the thinking of the scientific world for over 25 centuries, finally collapsed.
And although many scientists will always persist in denying that what science is discovering reinforces the belief in the existence of a Creator, these evidences are now stronger than ever. Why? Because in the same way the powerful telescope Hubble developed in Pasadena, helped humanity to “discover” the Creator of the universe, microscopes are helping us today to appreciate more than ever the sophistication of the microcosm, especially, the incredible complexity of the cell and its components: “Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than -10^20  grams, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machinery built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world. Each microscopic cell is as functionally complex as a small city. It is irreducibly complex. When magnified 50,000 times through electron micrographs, we see that a cell is made up of multiple complex structures, each with a different role in the cell’s operation. As we delve further into the cellular world, technology is revealing black boxes within previous black boxes. As science advances, more of these black boxes are being opened, exposing an “unanticipated Lilliputian world” of enormous complexity that has pushed the theory of evolution to a breaking point.
Today, thanks to the possibilities we have to observe the incredible complexity of the macrocosm and the microcosm around us, perceiving the exquisite design of Creation, and the subsequent existence of God, as its intelligent Creator, is more accessible than ever


PSALM 16: True Jewish Faith

שויתי ה’ לנגדי תמיד
In this beautiful Mizmor, King David describes his faith in HaShem. In verse 5 he explains that if we really want to achieve the right level of faith we need to reeducate ourselves in terms of what is and what is not our goal in life; our mission statement.
Then, in pasuq 8, he describes the real Jewish faith. This verse is so important that it is written in most Synagogues, above the Hekhal, the Tora Ark, visible to all those presents at the time of prayers.
In the last pasuq, verse 11, David concludes his idea. His connection to God is the source of happiness and pleasure in this world and beyond.
Les us see now in depth these three verses.
David asserts that HaShem is his ultimate Protector and Savior. He knows that all the good things that happened to him, have come from God. The King of Israel rejects all form of idol worshipping, and any other service except serving the true God.
ה’ מנת חלקי וכוסי
In verse 5 he expresses a very profound idea “HaShem, you are my possession and my cup”. Radaq (Rabbi David Qimhi, Spain 1160-1235) explains the  meaning of these words. While for most people their main goal in life (ultimate “possession”) and their deepest desire is to gain money and possess riches, so they can satisfy all their desires and instincts (“cup”), for the King of Israel, his main aspiration is connecting to God. Feeling close to HaShem satisfies all of the King’s desires and ambitions. He also hints that if we really want to feel God’s presence, we should first unfocus ourselves from the pursuit of pure material goals.
אתה תומיך גורלי 
“You sustain my destiny”. For King David is not necessary to resort to oracles, fortune tellers of psychics, like idol-worshippers do, when they are fearful about the future. If I’m close to HaShem, David haMelekh reasons, He will guide my destiny, and I will have nothing to fear. For even when things do not go my way, I know and believe that HaShem is sustaining and guiding my destiny.
שויתי ה’ לנגדי תמיד
In verse 8, David writes what is considered the maximum expression of Jewish faith “I have set HaShem continuously in front of me, on my right side, so I will not stumble” .  For David haMelekh “emuna” (Jewish faith) is not just a matter of belief. The true “emuna” obviously begins with the element of belief, but it goes way beyond belief. Emuna means to visualize (=”set”) and feel that HaShem is present.  The key word is the hebrew word “tamid”, always, continuously.  My Emuna grows when I have a more and continuous awareness of HaShem’s presence. And vice-versa.  If my awareness of HaShem presence is sporadic, and it awakes almost exclusively in times of need, then my Emuná is far from perfect, even if I do declare that I believe in God.  The mission statement of a Jew is to develop an awareness of God’s presence that stays with him or her, as much time as possible.
כי מימיני בל אמוט 
“Because when He is at my right side, I will not stumble” .   What is the consequence of having a permanent awareness of HaShem?  When I set HaShem’s Presence as the main guideline of my life, when I live a life “under His sight”, then I will live a life of righteousness . I will not stumble, morally speaking.
Alternatively: what is the way to maintain a continuous consciousness of HaShem’s presence?
Living a righteous life, a life guided by His Tora, will help me to have HaShem always in front o me, and will prevent me from deviating from the path of righteousness.
תודיעני אורח חיים שובע שמחות את פניך  נעימות מימיניך נצח
In the last pasuq (verse 11) David haMelekh concludes:   תודיעני אורח חיים “Keep teaching me the ways of life”, Your Tora. in doing so שובע שמחות את פניך I will find everlasting happiness,  coming from living in Your presence; נעימות מימיניך נצח  and while other pleasures in life are just temporary, limited gratifications, I surely declare that the pleasure and enjoyment that comes from being connected with You, is unlimited and eternal.

 



HEBREW LANGUAGE: How to spell in English Hebrew letters?

Question from a reader:
Rabbi, I have a question that may be insignificant: why do you use the “Q” instead of “K” to translate the Hebrew into English, for example, when you write “Bet haMiqdash”? I have seen that you also write “Qabbala “instead of” Kabbala “, why is that?
Dear friend, the Hebrew language is very different from English or Spanish. And not all consonants in Hebrew have their perfect equivalence in English. If we review the vocabulary we would see that, for example, the letter ח HET and especially the ע AYIN, are impossible to transliterate (or translate, as you say). So when transliterating from Hebrew into English, there is no right or wrong. We rather adopt certain conventionalism. I, for example, have chosen to write the letter צ, which has no equivalent in non-Semitic languages, as “ts” instead of “tz”, because this is how the first Jews who wrote Tora books in Castilian (16th Century ) or in English (17th century) wrote this letter. Again, this does not mean that this is the only way to write this letter. 
 
Regarding the Hebrew letter ק by Q, it is much easier to explain.
If you compare the two vocabularies, Hebrew and English, you would immediately see that there is a fairly precise equivalence in the order of the two vocabularies.
Very briefly
The letter א is a silent letter, and is equivalent to the mute “H”, in modern Spanish, but the ordinal equivalent would be the letter A.
The letter ב obviously is B.
The letter ג equals C. There are some words that still preserve this equivalence ג = C. As גמל, “Gamal”, “camel”.
Then, the Hebrew letter ד, is obviously the D.
Up to here, as you can see, we have the almost perfect equivalent of ABCD.
Then it gets more complicated, but only a little.
In Hebrew, the vowels are not part of the alphabet, as they are in English. That’s why the letter ה becomes E.
The Hebrew letter ו, a “v”,  is very close to F (labio-dental).
The ז is close to a G, when it is followed by an “e” or “i” for example, “genes” or “page”.
The letter ח in Israel often is expressed with H, as in “Haifa” or “Hadera”. Some people write CH or H with a dot underneath.  
The letter ט, has no equivalent in the English alphabet. I really do not know why ….
The letter י is the “I”.
The Hebrew letter כ is the “K”.
ל letters, מ, נ, are L, M, N.
The ס has no clear equivalent in the English ABC. It is possible, but I’m not sure, that letters which repeat themselves (there are two “T” and three “S” in Hebrew) are expressed in the English alphabet only once …
The letter ע, becomes a vowel. Arbitrarily, the “O”. Same thing happened with the א , which became A and with the ה , that became E.
The letter פ is the “P”.
The צ has no equivalent …. (it is close to the “S”, and if so, the “S: will be transferred into English only once).
And finally we come to the letter you asked me about, the ק, which obviously equals Q, not K. That is why I prefer to write “Miqdash” rather than “Mikdash”, etc.
Finally, the next three letters, do not require much explanation: ר, ש, ת are obviously equivalent to R, S, T.

 



Rabbi Yehuda Hayyat (d. 1510), and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain

The city of Mantova, Italy
יום מאורי חשך בגרוש קאסטיליא….

Rabbi Yehuda ben Ya’aqob Hayyat z”l suffered all the tribulations that fell upon the Jews as a consequence of their expulsion from Spain. His dramatic life story exemplifies the adversities of hundreds of thousands of Jews who were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula for refusing to abandon their religion.

.In his book “Minhat Yehuda” Rabbi Hayyat describes the calamities he lived for about two years

When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, about 120,000 of them fled to Portugal. The Portuguese King Juan II, accepted the Jews, but demanded them to pay an exorbitant sum of money to stay there. A year after arriving into Portugal, in 1493, the king decided that Jews could not stay any longer in his kingdom unless they converted to Catholicism or pay again a huge amount of money. The Jews were poor refugees, and when they were expelled from Spain all their properties were expropriated. In addition,  it was forbidden for them to take silver, gold, or anything of value. In Portugal, they were living in extreme poverty and were not able to afford the payment that the King demanded

Along with 250 other Jewish refugees, Rabbi Hayyat left Portugal and sailed from the port of Lisbon in a precarious ship toward the coast of Morocco. Conditions on board were so unhealthy that after a few days at sea an epidemic broke out on the ship. In those conditions  they would not disembark into any other port. The ship was taken to the port of Malaga. There, several priests were awaiting for those Jews. When the desperate Jewish passengers asked the Catholic clerics to give them water and bread, the priests refused, unless they accepted baptism …. The poor Jews stayed for five days in the ship. Close to hundred of those Jews chose to convert in order to save their lives. And about fifty of those Jews, among them, Rabbi Hayyat’s wife, died of thirst and starvation

After two months, the precarious vessel reached the coast of Morocco. But upon stepping on solid ground, a moorish that recognized Rabbi Hayyat from Spain, accused him of being an infidel and the Rabbi was immediately imprisoned and sentenced to death by Muslim fanatics, who claimed that his religious beliefs and practices offend Islam. To save his life, they said, he had to convert to Islam. If he would do, they would honor him and grant hi all he wishes. For forty days Rabbi Hayyat was imprisoned in a dark underground hole living in inhuman conditions, surrounded by rodents, snakes, and scorpions

In the end, some Jewish refugees from the Moroccan village of Shorshan, who were extremely poor, managed to raise some money to bribe the jailers and save Rabbi Hayyat from a certain death. Rabbi Hayyat gave them in exchange and as a token of gratitude 200 books that he had brought with him from Spain. He escaped to the city of Fes, a little further south. Fes was the refuge of tens of thousands of exiled Jews from Spain. But there too Rabbi Hayyat found only more tribulations

He writes in his book

“Fes suffered from a terrible famine… people were forced to eat grass to survive. Every day I work grinding some grains with my bare hands in the house of a Muslim family to earn a small and this morsel of bread. … like other Jews who escaped from Spain, we have no home or shelter. And at night, in the winter, we would dig to ourselves into the dumps hole, in the outskirts of the city, to sleep. “

After being in Fes for 8 months, the rabbi narrates, “… a terrible fire broke out in the city and many people died in the flames … After the fire, and as a result of the great drought, over 20,000 (sic.) Jews perished of starvation and epidemics. And when they saw this, many Jews who came from Spain and Portugal, decided to return there, to avoid a certain death for them and their children. “

A contemporary Spanish historian Andrés Bernáldez (1450-1513) writes in his book “History of the Catholic kings” (p. 78) that the Jews who left Fes were victims of all forms of abuse… on the roads they were attacked by Moors, who kidnapped and raped their wives and daughters, and opened their bodies to see whether they had hidden silver or gold in their stomachs

Rabbi Hayyat managed to leave Morocco and embarked for Italy. First, he arrived into Naples, but at that time (1494) Naples was at war and the French King expelled the Jews from the  city. Then, Rabbi Hayyat arrived at the port of Venice alone, as he had lost his entire family, and half-naked. When the Spanish Jews living in Venice recognized him, they took care of him. From Venezia, Rabbi Hayyat reached the Italian city of Mantova, where he lived until his last days

HIS WORKS

In Mantova Rabbi Hayyat found and befriended a Sephardic Rabbi named Yosef Ya’abets, who convinced him to write a commentary to the famous mystic (and cryptic) book “ma’arakhot Eloqim”. Rabbi Hayyat, far for complaining to God for his terrible fate, called his book “Minhat Yehuda” (The offering of Judah). That is: this book was an offering that Rabbi Yehuda Hayyat, offered to HaShem for saving his life

This book is considered a seminal work because it explains the most complex principles of Kabbala, and contributed to the spread of Hokhmat haQabbala, a phenomena which reached its peak in the 16th century. Rabbi Hayyat mentions in his book some of his teachers in Spain. Among them, Rabbi Shemuel Ibn Shraga and Rabbi Yosef Alcastilia (also, “Alcastiel”), meaning, from Castille

There is another book, which was never published yet, which consist of 18 questions and answers between rabbi Yehuda Hayyat and Rabbi Yosef Alcastiel. From these 18 questions and answers, 17 are on mysticism and only one on a Talmudic subject. 

Although precise details are unknown, it is estimated that Rabbi Yehuda Hayyat died in Mantova, Italy, circa 1510



13 PRINCIPLES: Why do we Jews believe in God?

אתם עדי, נאום ה’
In his Pirush haMishnayot, Maimonides (1135-1204) formulated the 13 principles of the Jewish faith.
 
“The first principle is to believe in the existence of God.” 
 
In his book Mishne Tora Maimonides describes belief in God, first, as “knowing God” (ידיעת ה).
What is knowledge of God?
We, the Jewish people, collectively experienced the revelation of God on Mount Sinai, when we were given the Tora and celebrated the covenant (berit) with HaShem. In a technical sense, our knowledge of God, knowing of His existence, is based on this historic event. At this very basic level, our faith in God is intimately related, and dependent, on the faith we have in our ancestors. That is: I trust my parents, who believed in their parents, who believed in their parents, etc. who believed 120 generations ago in their parents when they asserted having experienced “personally” the revelation of God on Mount Sinai. That generation that left Egypt, “heard” the word of God revealing the 10 commandments (see Shemot-Exodus- cap 19, 20 and 24).
 
Some thoughts on this point: As Rabbi Yehuda Halevi says in his book “The Cuzari”, no other nation lived this collective experience of the Divine revelation. Other religions, in their own words, are based on “individual revelations.” Islam is based on the testimony of a single individual, Muhammad, who privately received the Koran from the angel Gabriel. The only person who witnessed the resurrection of Yeshu was Mary Magdalene. The subsequent Christian historiography is based on her exclusive testimony. The same happened to Joseph Smith (1805-1844), the founder of the Mormon religion, who had private religious visions and revelations. The people of Israel, however, witnessed God’s revelation collectively, as a people. 600,000 men between 20 and 60 years of age, in addition to women, elderly and children. A total of no less than 3 million people. The Cuzari explains that no people could “fabricate” to have had a collective experience–and in fact no religion ever claimed so, because, although this argument would give more credibility to their belief that would be an unsustainable claim: it would be enough for one individual of that generation to openly voice his version of the events, for this “collective” testimony to lose all of its historical value. The Jews are the only people who claim to have experienced this “national revelation,” which, by the way, it is a fact accepted by all other Biblical religions: Christianity, Islam, etc.
This historic event, which we call MA’AMAD HAR SINAI, is only the basis of our faith. It is the first element of our faith, that according to Maimonides, we should convey to our children. It is the foundation upon which all other spiritual and philosophical aspects of our faith rest and relay upon. The prophet Yesha’ayahu defined the Jewish people (43:10) with the following words: atem ‘eday, “You are My witnesses”; you, the Jewish people are the only witness who ever witnessed My existence.
The knowledge of God begins with this historical foundation but obviously does not end there. The search for God is a long path, and walking that path is the existential mission of a Jewish individual. It is not an easy path, especially for those who were not raised in it. And more especially in our days, when the belief in God’s existence is challenged from the field of biology (evolution), psychology, cosmology, theodicy, biblical criticism etc, etc.
 
In the coming weeks, BH, we will address these issues in more depth.