Saturday, June 15, 2013
Rabbi Akiva on Man, Woman and Fire
It was he who taught: “If husband and wife are deserving, God’s Presence dwells in their midst. If they are not deserving, fire devours them.” “For,” said Rabbi Akiba, “the Hebrew word for man is ish, spelled aleph, yod, shin. Remove the yod and you have aleph, shin or esh, meaning fire. The Hebrew word for woman is ishah, spelled aleph, shin heh. Remove the heh and, once again, you have esh, meaning fire."
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dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."