Every time we usher in Shabbat, right after the six psalms, we say the same seven lines, Ana BeKoach. To say these words without knowing what they carry is to open a door with no lock on it at all.

Seven lines. Six words each. Forty-two, the product of six and seven, and that product itself is no accident. The first letters of these forty-two words, read in sequence, spell out God’s forty-two-letter name, one of the most hidden names tradition carries. Each line’s own six letters also yield a name of their own, six letters apiece, seven names for seven lines, one for each of the seven lower sefirot, from Chesed to Malchut.

Here are the seven lines themselves, the first letter of each word, the letter carrying that hidden name, marked in bold. אנא בכח גדלת ימינך תתיר צרורה קבל רנת עמך שגבנו טהרנו נורא נא גבור דורשי יחודך כבבת שמרם ברכם טהרם רחמי צדקתך תמיד גמלם חסין קדוש ברוב טובך נהל עדתך יחיד גאה לעמך פנה זוכרי קדשתך שועתנו קבל ושמע צעקתנו יודע תעלמות

Behind the letters, there’s also something actually being said, and it’s spoken of far less. The first line pleads, “please, with the power of the greatness of Your right hand, release the bound.” A classical prayer commentary, Iyun Tefillah, explains this, our accumulated sins bind together into a knot, and that knot keeps our prayers from rising to the Throne of Glory. So the opening line of the forty-two-letter name has nothing to do with the name itself, it’s about a knot that needs to be untied. The second line opens with kabel, receive, from the very same root as the word Kabbalah itself, and that root returns again in the seventh line. As though the whole tradition circles around this one root, receiving.

These same seven lines also correspond to the seven days of the week, the first line to Sunday, the second to Monday, and so on.........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)