In this week’s tidbit we are going to look at the Hebrew letter Beit. It is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It has a number value of two, representing the concept of duality. All that was created for man’s use was created in pairs. We have the written Torah, and the Oral Torah, heaven and earth, male and female, two drives-evil and good, two worlds-this world, and the world to come, and many others. God gave the Ten commandments to Israel on “two tablets”. Each tablet contained five commandments. The Ten Commandments appear “twice” in the Torah.

The first time is in Exodus 20:8. There the fourth commandment begins with “Remember” the Sabath day. On the second pair of tablets given to Moses, quoted in Deu 5:12, the word says to “safeguard” the Sabath day. The first word (remember) is Zachor, it refers to the positive precepts of the Sabath, such as studying the Torah and resting on the Sabath. The second time God used the word Shamor, which means to safeguard that day by not doing work and other negative things on that day. Also the letter beit stands for house. If you take the numeric value of house (beit) in Hebrew it will be 412.

If you take the number value of temple it’s 444. If you then subtract the 412 from the 444, you get 32. Thirty two just happens to be the numerical value of “heart”. So what’s the difference between just a temple and a house where God dwells, your “heart”!