Shakai

In Kabbalah, the Name Shakai (lit. "the Almighty") is generally associated with the sefirot of yesod, the "foundation" of all existence.

Our sages interpret the Name Shakai as follows: "By which He said to His world: Enough." Thus the Name Shakai represents God's power to limit Creation's "natural" tendency to expand endlessly.

While God's essential Name, Havayah, is often associated with "revealed miracles" which defy nature and its laws, the Name Shakai is associated with "concealed miracles" which change the course of nature while remaining enclothed within it. The above power to limit the inertia of endless expanse is the classic example of such a concealed miracle.

An additional reading of Shakai by our sages is: "By which His Divinity is sufficient for each and every creature." This refers to God's power to make His Divinity conscious and "accessible" to each of His creatures, regardless of their spiritual state or their place in the hierarchy of Creation.

As the sefirah of yesod is always personified by the figure of the tzadik (in each generation), he himself is the ideal model of Divinity entering into a visibly finite realm (his own body and consciousness), thus enabling him to serve as a "lighthouse," revealing to the world the continuum of God's concealed miracles and thereby rectifying world consciousness by constructively bounding nature's tendency toward entropy.

The Name Shakai often appears together with the Name Kel as Kel Shakai. This is the Name by which God revealed Himself and His providence to the patriarchs, as He said to Moses before visiting upon Egypt the revealed miracles of the ten plagues: "And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob by Kel Shakai; but by My Name Havayah, I was not known to them" (Exodus6:3).

Shakai = 314. Together with Kel (= 31), 31 plus 314 = 345, the value of Moses (the numerical "inverse" of 543, "Ekyeh asher Ekyeh" ). Thus, in a certain sense, God revealed Himself to the Patriarchs "enclothed" in the spiritual soul root of Moses, he who was destined to redeem their children from exile and bestow upon them God's ultimate gift, the Torah.

In Kabbalah (see the beginning of the Gra's commentary on Sefer Yetzirah), the secret of the continuum of concealed miracles enclothed within nature relates to the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter (commonly referred to as pi). Our sages, in general, approximate pi as 3. The juxtaposition of (the numerical values of) God's two Names Kel Shakai (seen to follow the number 3) alludes to the only true way to represent the "transcendent number" pi (a "concealed miracle" of number theory), namely as an infinite progression whose limit is pi: 3, 3.1 (Kel ), 3.14 (Shakai)... (we here see that the power to "limit," inherent in the Name Shakai, also implies the ability to reach the finite limit of a process which can only be represented as an infinite progression of finite terms).

In at-bash , the Name Shakai transforms to beit, kuf, mem. These three letters are in fact the three final letters of the names of the Patriarchs, Abraham (whose name ends with the letter mem), Isaac (whose name ends with the letter kuf), and Jacob (whose name ends with the letter beit). This supports what was explained above, that God revealed Himself to the Patriarchs by the Name Shakai.

God embodied the power of His Name (Almighty) in the "seal" (the final letters) of the Patriarchs. The "seal" represents the sefirah of yesod (referred to in Kabbalah as God's "seal of truth"). The "common" seal of the three Patriarchs is the soul of Joseph the tzadik (son of Jacob, and his spiritual power to give birth to all of his sons, the tribes of Israel and all their progeny forever, as explained in Kabbalah and Chassidut), the archetypal soul of yesod (the tzadik yesod olam).

The at-bash of Shakai reads beit, kuf, mem, whereas the final letters of the Patriarchs reads, backwards, mem, kuf, beit. This alludes to the verse where the Patriarchs are listed backwards in time: "And I shall remember for you My covenant with Jacob, and even My covenant with Isaac, and even My covenant with Abraham I shall remember, and I shall remember the land" (Leviticus 26:42). This verse appears at the conclusion of the "curses" in the book of Leviticus. Not only is it a promise of the ultimate good and blessing destined to Israel (in the merit of the Patriarchs and God's covenant with them), but it comes to "sweeten" all of the proceeding "curses," to reveal that in truth they are all "concealed" blessings.

This is the power of the true tzadik, the power of yesod and the Name Shakai, the power to transform apparent curse to revealed blessing. This is God's saying to the created realm (which appears to be far removed from Him), the apparent curse of this "world of deceit"--"enough!" This is the revelation of the continuum of the concealed miracles within nature and the manifestation of God's Divinity being sufficient for each and every of His creatures.

The "full spelling" of Shakai = 814, which = 314 (Shakai) plus 500 (its "pregnant" part). 500 = pru urevu, "be fruitful and multiply," the first "great" commandment of the Torah, the commandment of yesod, given to Adam on the day of his creation, the sixth day, which corresponds to the sefirah of yesod.

814 = 22 times 37. The sefirah of yesod is referred to as the ot, "sign" or "letter" (the sign of the Divine covenant in the flesh of man is called the ot brit kodesh, "the holy sign of the covenant"). It contains the potential of all the 22 powers inherent in the 22 letters of the alef-beit (just as the 22 independent chromosomes in the seed of man [the 23rd uniting with that of the opposite sex to determine the sex of the offspring]), all of which derive from the amorphous "vapor" (hevel = 37) of creation, as explained in Kabbalah.

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