10 to 10 and the Movement from Receiver to Partner
At the end of the Pesach Seder just two weeks ago, we sang the famous Echad Mi Yodea where we recall all of the famous numbers from 1-13 in our tradition.For the number ten, we answer, asarah dibraya, the ten commandments. The aseret hadibrot are the famous “tens” we sing about, However, there is another famous ten that also has to do with words, that is less known but so important. With ten phrases, the entire world was created. The term for God’s spoken words in this Mishna is not dibur, it is, rather, amira. (Avot 5:21) While verbal statements from the Divine characterized each of these two critical moments of God’s chesed, God’s kindness, the Pachad Yitzhak, R. Hutner, picks up on this difference between the choice of phrases that characterize these two events. The gift of the world’s creation through amira was done through the element of chesed, of a type of gifted kindness, known as chesed vitur. This is the type of kindness done without strings attached, one done out of