Shavuot: Seventy Faces of the World

How can we receive the holy Torah when we are covered in desert dust? Surprisingly, the answer lies in a Torah number.

This is a repost of an essay first published in English one year ago.

The festival of Shavuot commemorates the Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. The Giving of the Torah was an exalted and awe-inspiring event, enveloped in thunder and lightning, fire and fog. In an unprecedented and never repeated divine revelation, the Holy Blessed One descended upon the mountain in His glory, sanctified us with His commandments, and gave us His Torah.

But where does this event find us? We do not come from the heavens but from the earth. We are not holy but are covered with the dust of the desert, scarred by hardships and trials from weeks of wandering and years of exile. Though we have already left Egypt, sanctified ourselves, and washed our garments for the occasion, in our hearts, we are still immersed up to our necks in mundane affairs. How can we stand before the heavenly Torah?

This question pertains especially to those of us who, as providence had it, have been raised outside of Judaism. While our ancestors arrived at Mount Sinai as a relatively cohesive group, we gather as individuals from all possible worlds. We have roamed the world, seen various cultures, and learned diverse wisdoms. We did not grow up in the sheltered innocence of a Jewish shtetl or an insulated Orthodox community, and no one can convince us that there is no great world outside. We yearn for the Torah: by immersing ourselves in the world’s cultures we had abandoned our own, and now finally wonder what gems are hidden in our attic. But can the Torah ever contain us, we who have gather from all the lands of the world?

Four Times Seventy

A clue to solving our question is provided by the Torah in the form of a number. Some of the Torah’s numbers harbor such great significance, that the very act of delving into their meaning unravels entire mysteries. So it is in our case. The number relevant to our discussion is 70. As we shall see, the various elements that the Torah associates with this number are all interconnected, and putting them together provides a profound answer to our question.

1. Seventy Nations

According to Jewish tradition humanity is comprised of seventy nations speaking seventy tongues. This assertion is based on the fact that the descendants of Noah, enumerated in the book of Genesis, number seventy.¹ In addition, a few generations after Noah, the confusion of languages occurred at Babel, and the one original language, the Holy Tongue, split into the languages of the different nations, one language per nation.

Does the idea of seventy nations still apply today? After all, the nations of antiquity have long since been reshuffled, languages have split and died, the number of nations and languages has greatly expanded, and furthermore, there are no clear boundaries between nations and languages. And yet, the concept of seventy nations can still hold today, if applied to the spectrum of worldviews, cultural languages, and political systems that cuts across nations and languages. Indeed, Kabbalah describes the nations/languages as descending from seventy spiritual “ministers”—i.e. that at root they refer to spiritually-linked soul-families, not necessarily flesh-and-blood nations.

In fact, in our generation the traditional division into states and nations is gradually giving way to a network of “virtual communities” that don’t necessarily share an ethnic origin or a geographical location, but are rather centered around fields of interest. This process can be seen as a kind of resurfacing, in a modern guise, of the original seventy nations and languages.

2. Seventy Souls of Jacob’s Descent

The second seventy in the Torah appears in the description of Jacob and his descendants going down to Egypt to join Joseph: “All the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls.”² This was the entire people of Israel at that time: seventy people, who were the children and grandchildren of Jacob. If we liken Egypt to a womb that nurtured the people of Israel from a handful of people into a whole nation, then the seventy descendants of Jacob are like the seed—the nucleus of all future souls of Israel.

So the people of Israel originate from seventy souls, precisely the number of the world’s cultures. Later, at the end of the five books of the Torah, a verse explicitly addresses this affomoty: “When the Most High divided the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel.”³ When the Holy Blessed One divided humanity into seventy nations and lands, it turns out, He did so based on the seventy future souls who are destined to descend to Egypt. The different nations of the world somehow correspond, one to one, to the souls of Israel.

Moreover, just as the nations of the world all descended from one man, Noah, and their languages from “one language,” the Holy Tongue, so too were the seventy souls all descendants of one person—Jacob. We will return to this interesting fact later.

3. Seventy Elders

The next significant seventy in the Torah is the “seventy men of the elders of Israel” appointed by Moses to share the burden of leading the people with him.⁴ At a certain point during the wanderings in the wilderness, Moses complains to God that he can no longer bear the burden of the people alone. In response, God commands him to gather seventy elders to help him, and He bestows some of Moses’ spirit upon them. The seventy elders become the judges of the people, and, as the opening of Pirkei Avot (the Ethics of the Fathers) teaches us, they are the ones who receive the Torah from Joshua and transmit it to the prophets.⁵

In fact, the seventy elders are the first Sanhedrin (Jewish supreme court). All subsequent Sanhedrins, always comprised of seventy judges, were a sort of later editions of the seventy elders of the wilderness. Moses himself is the prototype of the “distinguished member of the court” (ha-mufla she-ba-sanhedrin)⁶—tthe head of the Sanhedrin who constitutes its 71^st member. The fact that his spirit was bestowed upon the elders parallels the idea that the seventy nations and the seventy descendants of Jacob each also descended from one source.

4. Seventy Faces to the Torah

The final significant seventy is the most well-known of all: the seventy faces of the Torah. Interestingly, this seventy is not explicitly mentioned in the Torah (maybe because the Torah is modest and doesn’t want to brag about itself). Rather, we are told of it in a midrash.⁷ The midrash states that since the Torah is likened to wine, and since the Hebrew word for “wine,” yayin (יין), has the numerical value of 70, the Torah also has seventy faces. This midrash is joined by another midrash⁸ that connects the word yayin to sod (סוד), “secret,” which also has the numerical value of 70 (hence the verse “When wine enters, secrets emerge,” נכנס יין יצא סוד).⁹ Put together, the idea emerges that the seventy faces of the Torah are its secret, esoteric level, revealed only to those who come to it in a state of openness to the mystical, such as that possessed by those who are slightly inebriated.

Here, too, the seventy faces split from one source—none other than God Himself, “the One God” who gave the Torah.¹⁰

Correspondences

If the four elements we have reviewed—the nations of the world, the descendants of Jacob who came to Egypt, the elders of Israel, and the faces of the Torah—all number seventy, they are undoubtedly interconnected. But how?¹¹

Let’s start at the end. It can be easily seen that the last two “seventies” are an obvious pair: the seventy elders are responsible for studying the Torah, and thus we can assume that each of them specializes in one of the seventy faces. The Torah study of each elder reveals and expands one facet of the Torah.¹²

The third element, “the descendants of Jacob” who represent the foundational soul-roots of Israel, also fits well with this pair: each Jewish soul has a special connection to one of the facets of the Torah, that which speaks to them more than others, and therefore also with the elder associated with that facet.

The greatest enigma is the seventy we began with, the seventy nations and their languages. How do they fit in with the other three elements? Particularly puzzling is the equivalence that we mentioned earlier between them and the children of Israel: “He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel.” This verse essentially says that the children of Israel and the nations of the world are also a pair. But what does that mean?

Simply put, this correspondence suggests that each Jew has a special affinity with one of these cultures. Even though its language is not his language, and its people are not his people, some invisible bond exists between them, linking them from afar. If, heaven forbid, an urge for idolatry were to arise within this Jew, it would be particularly for worship of that nation’s idol, not others. Conversely, if he is destined to make converts from the nations of the world, it would be a soul from that nation that he would be able to influence. If, for some reason, he distances themselves from Judaism, or happened to be born outside of it, it would be to that specific culture that his soul would be unconsciously drawn. And when he finally comes back to Judaism, it would be specifically against that cultural background that he does so.

Of course, if the seventy archetypal non-Jewish cultures correspond to the seventy roots of our souls, they must also correspond to the seventy elders and the seventy faces of the Torah. Indeed, that is exactly what we find:

One of the things said about the judges of the Sanhedrin was that “They do not appoint to the Sanhedrin except men of stature, of wisdom, of appearance, of age, of sorcery, and who know seventy languages, so that the Sanhedrin does not hear through an interpreter.”¹³ The sages of the Sanhedrin had to be versed in the languages of the nations, and since both number seventy, we can presume that each of them was an expert in a different language.

The faces of Torah also have a profound connection with the seventy nations. The Torah states that upon entering the land of Israel, the Israelites were commanded to write all the Torah on great stones in a “well elucidated” manner (בַּאֵר הֵיטֵב).¹⁴ The Sages asked what this meant, and answered: “in seventy tongues.”¹⁵ Only when the Torah is translated into all languages is it considered “well elucidated.” Each of the world’s languages seems to unlock and reveal a face of the Torah that corresponds to it.¹⁶

We can now put the four “seventies” together using the following metaphor:

Imagine the Torah as a kind of city surrounded by a wall. The wall has seventy gates through which one can enter the city (the seventy faces of the Torah); at each gate stands a gatekeeper who holds the key to that gate (the seventy elders); seventy paths spread out from the gates of the city like the spokes of a wheel (the seventy languages); each path leads to a different faraway city somewhere in the world (the seventy nations); and on these paths there tread travelers (the seventy soul-roots of Israel). Some of these travelers walk toward the city while some walk away from it. Some are native to it while others spend their entire lives in the distant cities. But each one is connected primarily to one path—the gate it leads to is his opening, the gatekeeper in charge of it is his personal emissary, and the exile which looms before him when he turns his back on the city (or which breathes down his neck when he faces it) is his personal exile.¹⁷

Contraction and Expansion

The course of ideas we have pursued leads us back to the question with which we began: how do the worlds from which we hail connect with the Torah towards which we strive?

What do we experience when we approach Judaism? From afar, the city of the Torah appears like just another one of the cities surrounding it, and not even necessarily the most magnificent of them. But as we get closer and begin to speak with the gatekeeper who welcomes us this feeling is replaced by an understanding that this city is utterly different from all the others, and requires us to undergo a mental revolution concerning everything we thought we knew. We must set aside the seventy worlds and languages from which we come and devote ourselves to this new world and its foreign language. This is a painful renunciation, but a still whisper emanating from the gate reassures us that it will be worthwhile, that our losses will turn into gains.

Once we enter the city, a second surprise awaits us: inside it is a special room that has waited just for us—a topic, a verse, or a word that belongs to us. Although this room is completely new to us, we immediately feel at home in it, as if in another and forgotten life it had been our dwelling room. It is both novel and familiar, home-like and alien. Then we understand why: it is an upgraded and refined version of our old home.

Unintentional Translators

In fact, not only do we need this room in the Torah, but it also needs us—to be revealed. As mentioned, the Torah is adequately explained only in seventy languages, because each of its inner facets needs an external language to extract its hidden meaning. While we take in the contents of our room with our gaze, our hearts suddenly turn within us. We realize that our wandering in the seventy worlds was not in vain: it was so that in the end we would come to the Torah and restore to it its missing languages—the imagery, metaphors, means of expression and even technology that it needs to be revealed. Each of us who makes a pilgrimage to the Torah is an unconscious translator, carrying within him a language that only he speaks and which can unlock a facet in the Torah. The word “Torah,” it would seem, not only derives from hora’ah, “instruction,” as per the usual explanation, but also from tiyur, “touring”: the Torah needs people to tour the world and collect all the words that will express it.

This idea is supported by the surprising saying by the Sages,¹⁸ that the word that opens the Ten Commandments, Anochi (“I am”),¹⁹ is not in Hebrew but in Egyptian, the language of the land from which we fled. They provide an allegory about a king whose son was kidnapped by people from a foreign nation and stayed with them until he forgot his own mother tongue. Therefore, when his father came to rescue him, then out of sensitivity the first word he said to him was in the language of his captors.

The use of the Egyptian language in the Ten Commandments teaches us that we cannot and should not flee from our past. The place from which we come is part of us, and wherever we flee, we carry it with us. When God presents Himself to us in the language of the diaspora from which we came, He is trying to tell us that even the decree of the exile came from Him. He wanted us to be there, and for it to be within us, and that from it we would come back to Him. It is part of the plan, and more than that—part of the Torah He is giving us.

May we all merit to arrive at the Torah, “each from their place,”²⁰ and receive it with joy and inwardness.

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This essay was translated through the kind help of my Patreon supporters:

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1. Genesis 10.

2. Exodus 1:5.

3. Deuteronomy 32:8.

4. Numbers 11:16-17.

5. Mishnah Avot 1:1.

6. Babylonian Talmud, Horayot 4b; Sanhedrin 86b-87a.

7. Midrash Rabbah, Numbers 13:15.

8. Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 65a.

9. The acronym for “When wine enters, secrets emerge” (נכנס יין יצא סוד) is סיני, Sinai, the place where the Torah was received.

10. If we add up the numerical value of the four root sources of the “seventies”—נח, Noach (father of the seventy nations), יעקב, Yaakov (father of the seventy souls), משה, Moshe (head of the seventy elders), and י־הוה, Havayah (the Lord who connects the seventy faces of the Torah)—their combined gematria equals exactly תורה, Torah, implying that all of them together are included in the Torah.

The recurring ratio between the 70 individual items and the 1 general entity at their head is reflected in the relationship between the two letters whose values are 70 and 1—the letters Ayin (ע) and Aleph (א), respectively. Just as the 70 always constitute an expansion and differentiation of the 1, so the sound of the letter Ayin deepens and thickens the simple sound of the letter Aleph. This relationship between the two letters is evident in the wide variety of word pairs in which one is written with Aleph and the other with Ayin, and where the first always expresses the inner aspect of the second. Notable examples are: אושר (happiness) and עושר (wealth); אור (light) and עור (skin) or עור (blind); אימות (verification) and עימות (confrontation).

11. The four seventies correspond to the Kabbalistic structure of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, as follows:

    - Yud (י): The seventy faces of the Torah

    - Hei (ה): The seventy elders

    - Vav (ו): The seventy descendants of Jacob

    - Hei (ה): The seventy nations

(The seventy languages correspond to the sefirah of Yesod, standing between Vav and the lower Hei.)

12. This pair corresponds to the pair of letters Yud-Hei in the name of the Lord. These letters are characterized in Kabbalah as "father" and "mother" in relation to the two following letters. In our case, the written Torah and its scholars are like the father and mother of the people of Israel, respectively: the written Torah descends from the heavens from above to below (male influence), and the oral Torah develops by the elders from below to above (female growth).

13. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 17a.

14. Deuteronomy 27:8.

15. Mishnah Sotah 7:5. And behold, if we write the word for “well,” היטב, in this way—ה הי היט היטב, i.e. well elucidated, letter by letter)—then the sum of all the letters is exactly 70.

16. Of Noah, father of the seventy nations and languages, it is said, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord” (Genesis 6:8). And behold, the word for “favor,” chen (חן), appears in the Bible exactly seventy times, a hint to the seventy faces of the Torah. Thus, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord” means that the descendants of Noah and their languages have the power to find the seventy “points of favor” hidden in the Torah. Moreover, the expression that symbolizes the seventy faces of the Torah more than any other, “When wine enters, secrets emerge” (נכנס יין יצא סוד) has a gematria equal to “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord”  (ונח מצא חן בעיני י־הוה)!

Additionally, the concept of chen in the Torah is identified with the concept of lowliness, shiflut: it is said in one place “A woman of valor (chen) supports honor" (Proverbs 11:16), and in another place “A humble spirit supports honor” (Proverbs 29:23; these are the only two occurrences of the expression “to support honor”). And behold, the root of the word “lowliness,” שפל (shafal), is the initials of שבעים פנים לתורה, “the Torah has seventy faces”: attaining the seventy faces of the Torah depends on adopting the trait of lowliness.

17. The foundation of this metaphor can be found in the verse from the passage on the Woman of Valor, “Her husband is known in the gates, when he sits among the elders of the land” (Proverbs 31:23). In the fundamental parable in the Midrashim, the relationship between God and Israel is like that of a husband and wife, and if so, the husband here is the Lord who is known to us in His gates through the elders. In the Zohar (Part 1, 103b) it is written that “He is known in the gates [she’arim]” means “Each one according to what he estimates [mesha’er] in his heart,” and in Chassidut (Tanya, Part 1, Chapter 44) it is explained: “Each one according to his measure [shiur]”—that is, the gate through which the Lord is known is related to each person’s personality and understanding.

18. Yalkut Shimoni 20, 286.

19. Exodus 20:2.

20. Rashi on Deuteronomy 30:3.