Finding the Foundational Pattern of Chinese Thought in Our Tradition

It’s well known that Yin and Yang are the foundational building blocks of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Their dynamic polarity undergirds all things—Heaven and Earth, fire and water, male and female, motion and stillness. Everything is either Yin or Yang, or in the process of shifting from one to the other.

But if Judaism is navigating the same world, how come Torah doesn’t speak in the same binary language?

The answer is—it does. Only, it wraps its insights in a different idiom. To see this more clearly, we can turn to the work of Rabbi Akiva Tatz, whose book Living Inspired outlines a three-part spiritual pattern intrinsic to Torah (and life) that maps perfectly onto the Yin-Yang worldview. And in fact, the Yin-Yang model also includes a third—the integration of both opposites. The graphic image of the two teardrop shapes entwined represents not just polarity, but resolution and unity. The Torah model is therefore a direct match: a trinity composed of yang, yin, and the transcendent third.

The Three-Step Pattern of Creation

According to Rabbi Tatz, every process in reality unfolds in a threefold structure. These are not arbitrary stages, but essential expressions of the world, itself, and how it operates.

The first principle is the pure flash of origin—creative, indivisible, infinite. This is the yang dimension: active, initiating, seed-like. In Torah terms, it’s symbolized by the patriarch Abraham and his role as a catalyst; in the human body, it is represented by the right hand; in the world of numbers, it associates with the number One.........

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