Review Details
Understanding the Alef Beis
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Product Review (submitted on February 27, 2011):
For many of us - in the early, formative years - it may have been our first encounter with any formalized learning. And looking back, those lessons may be among the most valuable we will ever experience in our lives.
What lessons am I talking about? Learning the alef-beis. Mastering the Hebrew alphabet.
After all, once you've learned the alef-beis, all sorts of doors begin to open: letters combine to form words, words turn into p'sukim, p'sukim join together to become texts, and before you know it - Chumash, Mishnah, Halachah, Siddur, Meforshim - the accumulated treasury, insights, and knowledge of generations of Sages are there at your fingertips, and all because - at a very tender age - you mastered the 22 building blocks of the Hebrew alphabet.
Any alphabet, really, is an amazing learning tool. The ability to record, articulate, and communicate simple or complex thought through an organized system of symbols - is an awesome accomplishment.
But as great as the accomplishment is, this is where Hebrew, and every other alphabet in the world, simply part ways. The Jewish nation is an Am Kodosh and the Hebrew language is loshon hakodesh - the sacred tongue. All languages are of human origin. Loshon hakodesh - the Hebrew language - is of Divine origin, as the Zohar states: "Hashem looked into the letters of the Torah and created the universe." Having been created by the Al-mighty, the letters of the alef-beis are inherently holy; they are the spiritual building blocks of creation and contain infinite depth and wisdom.
To treat, understand, or merely employ the letters of the Hebrew alphabet - in the same manner we would any other language - would be an error of immense proportion. So, it's time to learn the alef-beis all over again.
