משל ודמיוןThe Body as Parable

mashal ve-dimyonIn Gamatria ↗

The limbs are names for what the powers do.

Shaltiel finds worse the Zohar's talk of a divine skull, forehead, eyes and ears, when Israel at Sinai 'saw no image'. Yehoyada answers that the complaint is against the Torah itself, which speaks of God's hand, eyes and finger. All such terms are parables for powers emanated from Ein Sof, the ten sefirot, named for what they do: the power that oversees is an eye, the one that weighs a voice is an ear. They resemble our limbs in neither substance nor shape. The Ari warns that above there is nothing physical, not even color. Male and female mean giver and receiver. Union is the sweetening of the receiver's judgments by the giver's kindness. Pregnancy is how what is subtle in Chokhmah takes form in Binah. A person is a small world, so the body supplies the parables.

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