"UNDERSTANDING THE TORAH DEEPLY"

I've always felt a personal connection to Torah 11 where Rabbeinu shows how the tzaddik helps those on the lowest spiritual levels to reach higher and higher. The pinnacle of what one can thus attain is described as "תבונות התורה לעמקה" - "understanding the Torah deeply". When giving over this Torah, Rabbeinu stressed that these are three separate concepts: "understanding", "the Torah", and "deeply".

Yet, while I liked this idea tremendously, I still couldn't really relate to those high levels described by Rabbeinu. What do they really mean, and why should I be motivated to reach them? And I really did want to find the way to motivate myself!

So I hit upon the idea of counting the numerical value of those three concepts in Hebrew to see if this would provide some modicum of clarity. While I couldn't possibly claim that whatever I would discover this way would be the highest truth, still, it would be something. And I felt that I really, really needed that something to hold on to.

Since I discovered the Hebrew gematria calculator online, counting gematrias has become easier and more fun. In addtion to the gematrias themselves, the site also provides you with pages and pages of words and phrases sharing the same numerical value with the word or expression you put in. So it was really helpful when searching for some concepts that I could relate to.

So this is what I have found:

1. "Understanding" - "תבונות" - has the same numerical value (864) as "עבדו את יהוה בשמחה" - "serve Hashem with joy". While I can never be sure that this is even close to what Rabbeinu meant, this is indeed something to strive for, and truly reaching this level certainly requires a high level of Torah understanding.

2. "The Torah" - "התורה" - has the same numerical value (616) as "מלאך הויה צבאות" - "an angel of the G-d of Hosts". This concept appears in Torah 31 and describes someone who is both a tzaddik and a lamdan, which means that he is both righteous and knowledgeable in Torah. Again, this is something really worth attaining; I'll still have to work out how this applies to women, though.

The word "התורה" also has the same gematria as "תיקון האדם" - "the tikkun of a person". So maybe this combination of personal righteousness and deep Torah knowledge really gives a person their soul correction, although again this seems more of a male thing. So I'll probably need do spend some more time researching this second concept until I come up with something that would be tempting enough to motivate me personally.

3. "Deeply" - "לעמקה"  - has the same numerical value (245) as the phrase "הפך לדמיון" - "the opposite of imagination". This can be related to what Rabbeinu says in Torah 25: that a person has to get themselves out of the influence of their imagination (there it is called "מדמה") and rise to the level of sechel - true intellect.

So now this idea of "understanding the Torah deeply" is comprised of something that I can relate to and really want to attain. But then again, maybe in a month or two from now, I'll feel the need to look through those gematria lists again, and then something else will appeal to me. The main thing is that I think I've found the way to "personalize" those high levels so they become both motivating and attainable.