The Hidden Power of Yud

I don’t have much to share that I haven’t already said in either of my last two blog posts where I both announced the upcoming changes to my blog—to be released later this month—and some changes at my day job, which proved to help amend the distress and attacks I endured earlier last year. (Still feels weird to think it, officially, was last year now.)

In fact, I’m not sure I have much to share or say in this new year at all. Not yet, at least.

There have been a lot—and I mean, a lot—of changes for me personally within the last month at least, if not since Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year (but with ram’s horns instead of kazoos). Some of them I touch base on in the two aforementioned blog posts, but there are some changes I have not shared, but why are these changes important?

As I was explaining to some friends and my sister recently, I have noticed the patterns of my life, how I have “cycles of ten” for whatever reason. I was ten when my mother had her car accident. It’s been ten years since I found my new synagogue where I met and married my husband. It’s also been ten years since I entered the work force after being forced to drop out of theology school, and now, which here’s some exciting news—I have a new job! One I think I’m going to love and enjoy despite the lack of fictional writing in the job description. This comes after working in public service for over seven years; I’ll officially be in the private sector come next week. I’ll even be working with my husband, though indirectly, which is something I have often wanted since I grew up with my parents usually having a family business they managed together.

And—most importantly for this blog and website—it’s been over ten years since I started pursuing writing as a career. A little less time when I did so in earnest, but 2013 is when I started to query my first manuscript. We might be in 2024 now, but this still counts for me since ten years ago was not even a week ago.

But why ten? I think to know why we have to delve into a little bit of Jewish mysticism (which we all know is my favourite) to maybe find not the answers, but the true questions behind what it could mean.

You see, the number ten in Judaism is significant, jampacked with mystical possibilities as we can see in Kabbalah. Hashem gave us Ten Commandments. He revealed Himself through ten sefirot. He rescued the Jewish people from slavery through Ten Plagues. When we pray, there must be a minyan of ten men. Yom Kippur is on the tenth day of the month of Tishrei. I could keep going…

More importantly, though, than the numerical value of ten is what ten represents, or its “symbol” if you will. In Hebrew, is is the letters which represent each numerical value. This is known as Gematria, or Jewish numerology, and it is yod, or yud, which signifies ten.

It’s the smallest letter in the entire aleph-bet and looks like an apostrophe. It is also the first letter in the name of Hashem, the Tetragrammaton. Kabbalah also teaches us, “The essential power of the yud is the ‘little that holds much.'”

There’s a concept with Creation in Kabbalah, specifically Lurianic doctrine, of tzimtzum, the contraction of the Ein Sof to create a conceptual space where the finite could exist; i.e. Hashem contracted Himself and made “room” for Creation to coexist with His infiniteness. This is the basis for the many kabbalistic folktales of the shattering of the ten jars, in which Hashem put the ten sefirot, and the scattering of divine sparks throughout the world, throughout Creation itself, one which I’ve shared here many times before.

So why ten? Why has my life seemingly undergone significant changes within ten year periods?

For whatever reason, maybe there is something within me, a point, which holds much of the Infinite, a divine spark, through which revelation of Hashem can come.

If you know me, if you’ve read this blog as consistently as I’ve tried to write it, then you’ll know how a lot of my musings are exploring this concept, of sharing this spark within me. This blog is my tikkun olam, my attempt to repair the world.

The Pirkei Avot says,

It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.

Rabbi Tarfon, 2:16

I’m no one special. I’m just like anyone else. We all have sparks of the Divine, sparks of the essence of Hashem, within us, for I believe that is how we were created when He formed us, knitting us together in our mother’s wombs as the Psalms say. This is just my spark, if it can be individualized at all, but that is still something I’m searching, learning.

While this might answer my initial question of, “Why ten years?” I think instead it raises the bigger, more potent, question, “Am I honoring the Spark of Hashem within me? Am I sharing Its light?”

I guess we’ll have to wait and see what comes in the next ten years.