Healing Well of Miriam

ב״ה

21 Tishrei 5771

In Hebrew there is a significant connection between numbers.  Seven and seventy are thus connected in similarity.  There are seven days in Sukkot—the only holiday that the seventy nations will be commanded to observe.

It shall be that all who are left over from all the nations who had invaded Jerusalem will come up every year to worship the King Hashem, Master of Legions, and to celebrate the festival of Sukkot.—Zechariah 14:16

During Temple times, the priests made sacrifices on behalf of the Nations every year during Sukkot.  Even today during each Sukkot the kohenim, descendants of the Temple priests, gather at the Kotel (Western Wall) and ceremonially bless the Nations. 

 The nations of the world are rooted in the seventy descendants of Noah.  These root nations are each represented by angelic ministers in the Court of Heaven, which is also thus seventy.  When Jacob’s family went down to Egypt, we are told they were “seventy souls” (Exodus 1:5), and these are representatively connected to the seventy root nations.  So there are seventy angels in the Court; there were seventy souls descended from Jacob, beginning the priestly nation of Israel on earth; and all form a flow-down system into the seventy root nations that connect to all the nations that have ever existed in the world. 

 The nations of the world are obligated to the Seven Universal Laws, which for them, constitute the crux of Torah.  Torah, we are told, has seventy faces.  Could this, too, be connected to the seventy nations?  Each nation has its own wisdom to bring to the world.  When Abraham sent his sons (born to Keturah) east with gifts, these were wisdoms that became the foundational philosophies of the Eastern religions.  However, they were corrupted with idolatry and “lost.”  When I was traveling in India, I met a young man who told me about a Hindu belief in a chosen person who would come to restore the lost knowledge of the ancients.  I thought of our rabbis’ teaching about the sons of Keturah and wisdom of Abraham.  (Interestingly, Abraham is very similar in sound to Brahman.)  Just as there is a connection between the seven days of Sukkot and the seventy nations to be blessed during that time, there is also a connection between the Seven Universal Laws and the seventy faces of Torah.

 For the seventy faces of Torah to be seen and actualized in the world, Hashem had to first prepare the priestly nation of Israel with the seventy souls descended from Jacob.  The responsibility of Israel, as the priest in the world, is to bring the people of the nations to a Torah consciousness through the Seven Universal Laws.  As this process develops, we should expect this to evolve into helping the seventy nations see their unique wisdoms, their unique role in the world and in the Redemption process, through the lens of Torah.  When this happens doesn’t it seem reasonable to expect that we will then more clearly see the unfolding of Torah’s seventy faces?  Could this be the ultimate result Heaven expects from Israel’s Sukkot blessings on the Nations?

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Miriam Ben-Yaacov © September 2010