Fear of the King
by tillerofthesoil
“The mother of Rav Naḥman son of Yitsḥaq was told by Chaldeans [i.e., astrologers], ‘Your son will be a thief.’ [Thus] she did not let him [go] bareheaded, saying to him, ‘Cover your head so that the fear of heaven may be upon you, and pray’—now, he did not know why she spoke that to him. One day he was sitting and studying under a palm tree, the evil impulse overcame him, he climbed up and bit off a cluster with his teeth” (BT Shabbat 156b).
“The wise has his eyes in his head, and the fool walks in darkness (Ecclesiastes 2:14). Now, where are a person’s eyes if not in his head? Perhaps in the trunk of his body or in his arms? Does this distinguish the wise one from all inhabitants of the world? Ah, but the verse surely means as follows. For we have learned: A person should not walk four cubits with his head uncovered. Why? Because Shekhinah rests upon his head. Every wise person has his eyes and his words בְּרֹאשׁוֹ (be-rosho), on his head—focused on the one who is resting and appearing on his head. When his eyes are there, he know that the light kindled on his head needs oil. For the human body is a wick, and a light is kindled above, and King Solomon exclaimed: Let oil on your head not be lacking (Ecclesiastes 9:8); for the light on one’s head needs oil, namely good deeds. Thus, the wise one has his eyes on his head—and nowhere else!” (Zohar 3:187a).
“Only בְּצֶלֶם (be-tselem), with an image, does a man goes about (Psalms 39:7) [cf. Zohar 1:218a; 3:43a-b]. Because [צֶלֶם (tselem), an image (i.e., Shekhinah)] is over a man’s head, man is prohibited to walk four cubits with his head uncovered. If She departs from over his head, his life is immediately gone” (Zohar 3:121b, Ra’aya Meheimna Naso).
“Because the Shekhinah is over his head the Masters of Mishnah taught: A scholar of the Law is forbidden to walk four cubits with his head uncovered [cf. BT Qiddushin 31a] because, the whole earth is full of His glory (Isaiah 6:3). And even more so to go with uncovered head during a blessing or the mention of the Holy Name! [And the reason for the prohibition of going with an uncovered head:] י (yod) of יהוה (YHWH) is enveloped in אוֹר (or), light, and becomes אֲוִיר (avir), atmosphere [lit., air], since י (yod), which is Ḥokhmah, is in the אֲוִיר (avir), atmosphere [cf. BT Baba Batra 158b; Tiqqunei ha-Zohar 5]. And this is the light with which He enveloped himself when He created the world, as it is written: Wrapped in light like a cloak, stretching out heavens like a tent-cloth (Psalms 104:2). Thus Let there be אוֹר (or), light (Genesis 1:1) is, Let there be אֲוִיר (avir), atmosphere. And the Masters of the Secrets of Torah taught: Before anything else was formed, הָהַוָיוֹת (ha-havayot), the existences, were formed. Thus: Let there be light, and there was light—that had existed previously” (Zohar 3:245a, Ra’aya Meheimna Pineḥas, cf. Tiqqunei ha-Zohar 37b).
יאַרמולקע (Yarmulke), is a Yiddish word which conflates two Aramaic words: יִראָ (yira) and מַלְכָּא (Malka), “fear of the King.”
“When Rabbi Zera went up [to the Land of Israel from Babylon] he [at last understood and] adopted the principle of Rabbi Elai. Rabbi Zera said: From this one may deduce that the אֲוִיר (avir), climate [lit., air] of the Land of Israel makes one wise” (BT Baba Batra 158b, cf. BT Qiddushin 49b: Ten kabs [measures] of wisdom descended to the world: nine were taken by the Land of Israel and one by the rest of the world).
“Rabbi Shim’on said, ‘When I am among those Companions of Babylonia, they gather around me and learn subjects openly, and then insert them beneath an impregnable seal of iron, shut tight on all sides. How often have I described to them the pathways of the garden of the Holy King and the supernal pathways! How often have I taught them all those rungs of the righteous in that world! They are called stammerers, like one who stammers with his mouth. But I judge them favorably because they are frightened, for holy air and holy spirit have been withdrawn from them and they suck air and spirit of an alien domain. Furthermore, a rainbow appears above them and they are unworthy; but to their benefit, I am present in the world, I am the sign of the world, for in my lifetime the world does not dwell in suffering and is not punished by judgment above. After me there will not rise a generation like this one. The world is destined to lack anyone who can protect it, and all kinds of impudent faces will haunt above and below—above, on account of sins of those below and their impudence” (Zohar 1:224b-225a, cf. BT Sotah 49b).
“Let anybody make a list of the places in which men of great intellect have been found and are still found; where wit, subtlety and malice constitute happiness; where genius is almost necessarily at home: all of them rejoice in exceptionally dry air. Paris, Provence, Florence, Jerusalem, Athens—these names prove something— namely: that genius is conditioned by dry air, by a pure sky—that is to say by rapid organic functions, by the constant and ever-present possibility of procuring for one’s self great and even enormous quantities of strength” (Nietszche, Why I am so Clever).
“Rabbi Ḥisda praised Rav Hamnuna before Rabbi Huna as a great man. Said he to him, ‘When he visits you, bring him to me. When he arrived, he saw that he wore no covering. ‘Why have you no head-dress?’ asked he. ‘Because I am not married,’ was the reply. Thereupon he [Rabbi Huna] turned his face away from him. ‘See to it that you do not appear before me [again] before you are married,’ said he. Rabbi Huna was thus in accordance with his views. For he said: He who is twenty years of age and is not married spends all his days in sin. ‘In sin’—can you really think so?—But say, spends all his days in sinful thoughts” (BT Qiddushin 29b).
Saul of Tarsus was a student of Rabban Gamaliel (Acts 22:3) before he became thoroughly Hellenized. As Paul the Apostle, he wrote “For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man” (1 Corinthians 11:7, cf. Bereshit Rabbah 17:8).
“The glory of a face is its beard” (BT Shabbat 152a).
ether |ˈēθər|
noun
1 (also aether) chiefly poetic/literary the clear sky; the upper regions of air beyond the clouds: nasty gases and smoke disperse into the ether.
2 (also aether) archaic Physics a very rarefied and highly elastic substance formerly believed to permeate all space, including the interstices between the particles of matter, and to be the medium whose vibrations constituted light and other electromagnetic radiation.
“I encourage you not to translate [אֲוִיר (avir)] using the word ‘ether’ – since it has been shown since Albert Michelson to be nonexistent. Anyway it was an old-fashioned and erroneous concept of science that no doubt the Zohar did not know about, at least in its 19th century sense. In my book, perhaps you noticed, I translate using the expression ‘primal vacuum'” (Howard A. Smith, PhD, senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Lecturer in the Harvard University Department of Astronomy, http://lettherebelightbook.com/).
The universe is filled with radiation that is literally the remnant heat left over from the Big Bang, called the “cosmic microwave background”, or CMB. This resolves the difficulty raised by the account of creation in the book of Genesis which famously says, “Let there be light” before the creation of the luminaries.
“He formed substance from chaos, and he made them its existence, and he hewed out great columns מֵאֲוִיר (me-avir), from air, that cannot be grasped” (Sefer Yetsirah 2:16).
“It has been taught: When an impulse arose in the will of the White Head to enhance His glory, He arranged, prepared, and generated from the Lamp of Adamantine Darkness a single spark. He breathed upon it and it flamed; His will arose and it scattered in 370 directions. Then the spark stood still, and pure air began to issue, whirling and expanding, and a single mighty skull emanated in four directions. Within this pure air, the spark was absorbed, grasped, and enveloped. Would you ever imagine ‘within it’? Rather, concealed within it, and so this skull expanded in its directions, while this air is secreted in the secrecies of the Ancient of Days, in the breath that is treasured away. In this skull fire spread on one side and air on the other, with pure air presiding over this side and pure fire presiding over the other. What is fire doing here? Well, it is not fire, but rather this spark enveloped in the pure air, illuminating 270 worlds, and from its side stems Judgment. Therefore this skull is called, ‘the mighty skull.’ In this skull dwell 90,000,000 worlds, moving with it, supported by it. Into this skull trickles dew from the White Head, filling it constantly, and from this dew the dead are destined to be revived [cf. Pirqei de-Rabbi Eli’ezer 34]” (Zohar 3:135a, Idra Rabba).
And their nobles have sent their little ones for water: they came to the cisterns, and found no water; they returned with their vessels empty; they were ashamed and confounded, and חָפוּ (ḥafu), uncovered, their heads (Jeremiah 14:3).
And David was going up the Slope of Olives, going up weeping, his head uncovered, and he walking barefoot, and all the people who were with him, everyone with his head uncovered, went on weeping the while (2 Samuel 15:30).
“his head חָפוּי (ḥafui), uncovered. There is a difference of philological opinion as to whether the verb here means covered or uncovered. The usual meaning of the root is ‘to cover,’ but an uncovered head is more likely as a gesture of morning—which is clearly intended—and this could be an instance of the same term denoting antonyms, like the English verb ‘cleave'” (Robert Alter).
“The General Agrippa asked Rabban Gamaliel, ‘It is written in your Torah, For YHWH your God is a consuming אֵשׁ (esh), fire, a קַנָּא (qana), jealous, God (Deuteronomy 4:24). Is a wise man jealous of any but a wise man, a warrior of any but a warrior, a rich man of any but a rich man?’ He replied, ‘I will give you a parable: To what is the matter like? To a man who marries an additional wife. If the second wife is her superior, the first will not be jealous of her, but if she is her inferior, the first wife will be jealous of her'” (BT Avodah Zara 55a, cf. BT Ketubot 111b; Zohar 1:50b; Sha’arei Orah 166).