What did the Baal Shem Tov teach about the letters of creation?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau teaches that, according to the Baal Shem Tov, “all reality is rooted in the otiyos,” the divine letters Hashem created the world with. The letters are the same, “but the results can be opposite.”
His example is two Hebrew words: tzarah, a problem, and tzohar, a window. “They are the same letters.” What changes is only how they are arranged.
From this he draws a practical lesson. Hashem gives the letters, raw energy, and a person is the chemist who arranges them. “The letters never changed. You changed the formula.” In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that “the difference between something good and its opposite is not in the raw material. It is in the combination.”
Related concepts: Spirituality · Mindset
In A Soul at Peace: A Tight Place or a Window of Light
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
All of reality is built from Hashem’s letters, and the same letters can make opposite things.
Deepest human truth
A person cannot change the letters, but he can change how they are combined.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Wisdom, Perception, and the Inner Life · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz