{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreig7sy3inha53tr4xjnas5ivjw3zqpggi5in3xknjwhn3gjeg6gvaa",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:gl3kczkbg2rbkbyxzofc7k32/app.bsky.feed.post/3mepui5vxqke2"
  },
  "description": "\n\n\n\nThe excerpts here are taken from the following article: Mem - The thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.\n\n\n\nAll emphasis will be mine.\n\n\n\n\nThe thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet\n\n\n\nRabbi Aaron L. Raskin\n\n\n\nMem - The thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet\n\n\n\nMem (מ) is the thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet\nNumerical value: 40\nSound: \"M\"\nMeaning: 1. Water 2. Moshiach\n\n\n\n\nStory\n\n\n\nWhen the mikveh in Brownsville, NY, wanted to close its doors because of financial difficulties, ",
  "path": "/closed-hebrew-mem-the-virgin-birth/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-13T06:20:40.000Z",
  "site": "https://answeringislam.blog",
  "tags": [
    "**Mem - The thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet**",
    "Rabbi Aaron L. Raskin",
    "_Mem - The thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet_",
    "** _mikveh_**",
    "_mem_",
    "Torah",
    "Moshiach",
    "Maimonides",
    "G‑d",
    "the Jewish people] as you have asked.” The culmination of these three forty-day periods, the tenth of [Tishrei",
    "_tefillah_",
    "_teshuvah_",
    "1.",
    "Shabbat 104a",
    "2.",
    "3.",
    "4.",
    "5.",
    "6.",
    "Deuteronomy 10:1",
    "7.",
    "Exodus 34:1",
    "8.",
    "9.",
    "10.",
    "11.",
    "12.",
    "13.",
    "_Bava Kamma_",
    "82a",
    "14.",
    "Isaiah 55:1",
    "15.",
    "Berachot 61b",
    "16.",
    "17.",
    "18.",
    "19.",
    "Genesis 1:1",
    "20.",
    "Genesis 1:2",
    "21.",
    "22.",
    "23.",
    "Isaiah 9:6",
    "24.",
    "**Virgin Birth in Isa. 9:7**"
  ],
  "textContent": "The excerpts here are taken from the following article: **Mem - The thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet**.\n\nAll emphasis will be mine.\n\n## The thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet\n\nRabbi Aaron L. Raskin\n\n_Mem - The thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet_\n\nMem (מ) is the thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet\nNumerical value: 40\nSound: \"M\"\nMeaning: 1. Water 2. Moshiach\n\n## Story\n\nWhen the  _mikveh_ in Brownsville, NY, wanted to close its doors because of financial difficulties, my mother’s paternal great-grandfather, Hersh-Meilech Hecht, volunteered to take over all the financial responsibilities and practical duties. In 1929, the Sixth Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneer­sohn, of righteous memory, traveled across the ocean to visit the Jews in America. The chassi­dim asked him to deliver a  _maamar_ , a Chassidic discourse. **He responded that he must first immerse in a**** _mikveh_****, a ritual bath**. Normally, my grandfather charged ten cents for usage of the facilities, but not when a rebbe used it. When he heard the Lubavitcher Rebbe was coming, he prepared the room in honor of the Rebbe as one would for a king.\n\nOn the way out of the  _mikveh_ , the Rebbe handed him a five-dollar bill (a lot of money in those days). Hersh-Meilech refused to take the money and asked for a blessing instead. The Rebbe blessed him and said, “Your grandchildren will become my chassidim and will learn in (my  _yeshivah_)  _Tomchei Temimim_.” And so it came to pass.\n\n## Design\n\nThe letter  _mem_ is the thirteenth letter of the  _aleph-bet_.\n\nThere are two forms of the  _mem_ : the open  _mem_ and the closed  _mem_. As the Talmud explains,1 the open  _mem_ represents the revealed Torah and the closed  _mem_ represents the Torah’s secrets.\n\n> The Arizal states:2 “It is a  _mitzvah_ to reveal the secrets of Torah.”\n\n**Being that we now find ourselves in the Messianic era** , it is not just permitted, it is an  _obligation_ to experience a fore­taste of the teachings of Moshiach, which are the secrets of the Torah. This level of Torah is represented by the closed  _mem_.\n\n> Maimonides begins his first book, the  _Mishneh Torah_ , with a section of laws entitled “The Foundations of Torah.” In this section, he discusses G‑d, the angels, and the heavens, and explains: “This that I told you up until now is called ‘the secrets of Creation and the secrets of the Chariot.’ ”3\n\nThese mystical insights are complex Kabbalistic concepts. Yet Maimonides decided to teach them as a foundation—a prerequisite for everyone who studies the Torah.4 The apprehension of G‑d’s awesomeness, of His stirring and unfathomable ways, must precede even the essential laws of the revealed Torah, such as the Shema, Shabbat and  _tefillin_.\n\n**Additionally, the _mem_ represents the womb****5****—רחם (_rechem_)—which ends with a closed  _mem_. The closed  _mem_ represents the nine months when the womb is closed. The open  _mem_ represents the period of childbirth, when the womb is open**.\n\n## Gematria\n\n**The _gematria_ of  _mem_ is forty**. Forty is the number of days it rained upon the earth during the Flood. Forty is also the num­ber of days Moses spent on Mount Sinai. Moses actually ascended the mountain three separate times. The first forty-day sojourn took place when he received the Torah. Then Moses descended with the Tablets, but shattered them when he saw the Golden Calf that the people had made in his absence. The following morning, Moses returned to the mountain for another forty days to pray on behalf of the Jewish people. When Moses returned to the encampment, G‑d called out6 for him to return to the mountain, this time, with his own tablets. So Moses dug under his tent and found two sapphire stones.7 He brought them up with him to Mount Sinai for the third and final forty days, and G‑d engraved the Ten Commandments on them.8 It was the tenth of the month of Tishrei when Moses came down from the mountain with G‑d’s law after these final forty days. G‑d declared, “I have forgiven the Jewish people] as you have asked.” The culmination of these three forty-day periods, the tenth of [Tishrei, Yom Kippur, is thus the day we as the Jewish people fast and pray to atone for our sins.\n\nThere are other significant references to forty in the Torah: Moses’ spies scouted the land for forty days. The Jews were in the desert for forty years. And a  _mikveh_ , a ritual bath, is made up of forty  _se’ah_ (about 200 gallons).\n\nWhat is the concept of forty? Forty represents a metamor­phosis,9 a transformation. After forty days, the embryo of a child begins to assume a recognizable form.10\n\nAdditionally, a  _mikveh_ (with its forty  _se’ah_) has the ability to change an individual from a state of impurity to purity. **__And if one wants to undertake a conversion,__****__11__**** __one must immerse in a mikveh, whereupon his or her Jewish soul is revealed__**.\n\nG‑d brought a flood upon this world for forty days and forty nights. The waters of the flood were not for revenge, as is commonly assumed, **__but for atonement, to purify and transform the world, in much the same way a mikveh purifies a person__**.12\n\nEach of Moses’ forty-day sojourns in heaven signified a trans­formation. The first forty days was to receive the Torah, and when an individual learns Torah, he or she develops the ability to change for the better. The second trip was for prayer,  _tefillah_. When a person prays, he or she can change an evil decree; in this case, G‑d’s intention to annihilate the Jewish people. Indeed, because of Moses’ supplications, G‑d was will­ing to bestow His mercy and once again offer them His Torah. The final ascent represented  _teshuvah_ (repentance)—also a transformation—because once a person has repented, he is no longer the same person he was when he sinned. When Moses finally returned to the Jewish people with G‑d’s law, they were at a level of atonement—and thus finally prepared to become G‑d’s nation.\n\nFurthermore, the words Torah, _tefillah_ and _teshuvah_ begin with a _tav_ , which has the numerical value of 400, or 40x10 (i.e., serving G‑d with all of one’s 10 faculties for 40 days).\n\nThe forty years that the Jews spent in the desert also consti­tuted a transformation. The nation that had rebelled against G‑d had metamorphosed into a nation that was ready to adhere to His word.\n\n## Meaning\n\n**The word _mem_ stands for _mayim_ , which means water**. Water constitutes a vital element in our lives: a human being is largely composed of water and the majority of the earth is covered with it…\n\n**The _mem_ also represents the womb. In essence, water is the womb of Creation**. The Torah begins,19 “In the beginning G‑d created the heavens and the earth.” The next verse states that before G‑d created the heavens and the earth “... the spirit of G‑d hovered over the waters.”20 What waters? Since the earth’s waters had not yet been created, the waters mentioned here are the womb from which Creation emerged, the place of gestation before the world came into existence.\n\n_Mikveh_ embodies this concept as well. When one immerses in a _mikveh_ , it is similar to entering the womb of Creation, a state of the world yet unborn. At the moment when the person emerges, he or she is reborn. On a more practical level, the individual submerged in a _mikveh_ is in a medium where he or she can’t survive and will ultimately die. When the individual emerges from the water, he or she is renewed.21 The word _mikveh_ also begins with the letter _mem_.22\n\n> It states in Isaiah:23 “ _L’marbei hamisra u’leshalom_ ,” which means, “His rule (i.e., the kingship of Moshiach) will increase and be blessed with peace without end.”\n\nThroughout the entire Torah, the final form of the _mem_ appears in the middle of a word only once—here, in the word םרבה, _l’marbei_. **What is the significance of this?** **That _Moshiach_ will bring closure to the exile**. We discussed earlier that the three lines of the letter _bet_ —two horizontal and one vertical—represent three directions (or corners) of the earth. The north side, that which is open to evil, remains unresolved. With the arrival of Moshiach, the fourth side of the _bet_ of _Bereishit_ —Creation—is completed and the letter _bet_ is transformed into a _mem_.24 And the emer­gence of this form of the _mem_ in turn facilitates the consummation of its very own design, whereby the closed _mem_ —the hidden or secret aspects of Torah—takes the place of the open _mem_ , the revealed aspects of the Torah. For along with the everlasting peace of Moshiach will come the explanation of the reasons for the exile, and the pain and suffering of the Jewish people that accompanied it.\n\n## Footnotes\n\n1. Shabbat 104a.\n\n2. Introduction to _Eitz Chayim_ ; _Shaar HaGilgulim_ , end of _Shaar HaHakdamot_ 16; _Hilchot Talmud Torah_ , 1:4; _Tanya, Iggeret HaKodesh,_ Epistle 26; _et al_.\n\n3. In Hebrew, _Maaseh HaMerkavah_. The mystical interpretations of G‑d’s heavenly chariot as expressed in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel.\n\n> 4. In his Introduction to the _Mishneh Torah_ , Maimonides writes: “After one learns the Five Books of Moses … look immediately into my book. For I am writing it for the young and for the old.” Since the _Mishneh Torah_ discusses the secrets of Torah, and a ten-year-old child begins to learn it right after he learns Chumash, he is learning mysticism from the very beginning of his studies.\n\n5. _Sefer HaArachim Chabad_ , _Otiot_ , letter _mem_ , p. 176, Kehot Publication Society, Brooklyn, NY.\n\n6. Deuteronomy 10:1.\n\n7. Exodus 34:1. See Rashi.\n\n8. There is another opinion that states that Moses carved the Second Tablets himself.\n\n9. _Biurim Le’iggeret Hateshuvah_ , ch.2.\n\n10. Medically, it takes approximately forty days to detect a heartbeat in a human embryo.\n\n11. _Maimonides, Laws of Prohibited Relations_ , 13:1.\n\n12. _Torah Or_ , _Noach_ , p. 8d; _Likkutei Sichot_ , vol. 1, p. 4.\n\n13. _Bava Kamma_ 82a.\n\n14. Isaiah 55:1.\n\n15. Berachot 61b.\n\n16. Berachot 1:1.\n\n17. The last _mishnah_ in _Uksin_.\n\n18. _Yein Malchut_ , Epistle 1.\n\n19. Genesis 1:1.\n\n20. Genesis 1:2.\n\n21. See Aryeh Kaplan _, Waters of Eden: The Mystery of Mikvah_ , NCSY/Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, NY, 1982, pp. 72-73.\n\n22. _HaYom Yom,_ entry for 10 Nissan, “On the subject of the campaign to popularize the observance of family purity in your community, ponder this deeply: Let us imagine that G‑d were to give you the opportunity to save a Jewish community from extinction (G‑d forbid), you would certainly be willing to risk your life for this and you would thank and praise Him for His great kindness in offering you an opportunity of such enormous merit. The same then holds true to an even greater degree with regard to the campaign for _taharat hamishpacha (family purity);_ it is an endeavor which literally saves lives.”\n\n23. Isaiah 9:6.\n\n24. _Sefer Hasichot 5751_ , vol. 2, p. 546.\n\n## Further Reading\n\n**Virgin Birth in Isa. 9:7**",
  "title": "Closed Hebrew Mem & the Virgin Birth",
  "updatedAt": "2026-02-13T06:20:41.441Z"
}