Now you understand why I had to teach Miri the letter chaf before I could get to the letter tet. It's also going to help me with the letters lamed and mem, which are also constructed out of a chaf, a vav and a yud. And then there's the letter peh, which has the chaf and yud, but no vav. The scribe—called a sofer—when he makes his strokes, has all this in mind.

That's much of the beauty of a Torah scroll; just as any beautiful art, it relies on a small set of motifs of which everything is built: a yud-point, a vav-line and a space-curve-chaf. But the trademark feature is that ever-present yud.

That's because the world emerges out of nothing. At every moment.

Hold on.

Nothing? Isn't G_d there first? Is G_d a nothing? Isn't He the real Something? So, when He creates the world, He creates it out of His somethingness. Only that, compared to Him, it's all nothing. So really we should say that He creates nothing out of something. And what's the big deal of doing that?

Nope, all wrong. G_d is neither a something or a nothing. He is the grand Isifier of all isness and ideaness, including the idea of is and is not. Just that, in order to create a world with that "I'm for real" feeling to it, He has to start with nothing, and then get to something.

Here's how He does it: First, He emanates the Infinite Light—which is a total nothingness, because, hey, it's just His light, announcing His unknowable presence. So if it can't be known, there's nothing there, right?

Then He totally removes that light, leaving an absolute void. That's the second form of nothingness—where something can happen.

Now He draws a connecting line between these two opposite forms of nothingness, bringing infinite light into a finite void. That's when a something comes into being—namely us and our world. The yud is the nothing from where that line of light is coming, the vav is how it enters, and the chaf is the all-encompassing somethingness that results. That's one way of understanding it, among many. But the paradigm is basically the same.

Okay, I'm confusicating you with my Kabbalistic abstractions. So let's take this down into practical application:

Are you a something or a nothing? If you are thinking you are really something, you're losing out on life. Life is about being open to everything that's greater and bigger than you. Once you've decided, "I am something, and this is what I am"—you've shut off growth, new experience and, well, just life.

But if you are a nothing, then what's the point of living? Who wants to help out a nothing?

Or, in the classic words of Hillel the Elder, "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if am for myself, then what am I?"

It's not just you, this is the how each thing in the universe exists—it has to both be and not be, at every moment. That's why each thing breathes, pumps, oscillates, vibrates, sings, swings and flutters—everything continually traverses back and forth between positive and negative, matter and energy, form and chaos, being and not-being. Nothing stands still, nothing just is (except when they have to draw a diagram for a science textbook, I mean, what can you do?).

That's because G_d never meant the world to just be for the sake of being. He meant it as the ultimate form of art, to express something. And what does it express? It tells of His impossible, totally paradoxical oneness, which neither is or is not and yet generates both at once.

That's beautiful. And that, as well, is the beauty of the letters of the alefbet.