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© 2015 John D. Brey.

In a Jewish spirit one might say the Torah is the law, the scroll is the law, such that alef-tav את, which represent the first-and-the-last (alpha and omega), the beginning and the end (the two letters sages tell us represent the entire Torah) thus fully, or reasonably, represent the nature of the Torah, and therefore the nature of the law.

But what of the spirit of the law?

In one of the most profound midrashim ever written (Midrash Rabbah, Numbers, Chukkath XIX, 3) God points out to the angels that they know only the outer appearance of the law of God while Adam's glance cuts deeper . . . into the very spirit of the law. As proof, God shows the angels that, knowing the very spirit of the animals, rather than their mere outer appearance, their mere nature, Adam is enabled to give the animals a name representative not of their mere outer form and appearance, but according to the spirit of the animal so named.

Upping the ante God next asks Adam to name himself. ----Adam points out that his name is "Adam" alef-dalet-mem א–דם, at which point God asks Adam to name his interlocutor, to which Adam responds "Adon" alef-dalet-nun א–דן.

The reader of the midrash who realizes what's going on, i.e., that Adam is using the naming process to reveal his ability to see into the very spirit of things, is provided an opportunity to glance into the very spirit of God, and thus the spirit of the law of God, the law being merely the scroll, the mere nature, the outer appearance, of God's inner Spirit.

For the ancient mind, a name was representative of the spirit of a thing, such that Adam's ability to name things was reflective of his insight into the spirit of the thing. Scripture is clear that this insight is unique to Adam and the "sons of Adam" (typically a term referring to circumcised Jews) such that no other creatures, to include angels, have a similar ability to see into the spirit of a thing. Moses asks God at the burning bush his name precisely to understand the spirit of the God calling Moses by name.

Understanding that naming a thing is suggestive of the ability to appreciate the spirit of the thing brings the midrash in question into the light and points out its immeasurable profundity: God has Adam name himself (i.e. reveal his deeper spirit) and then asks Adam to name God (that is, reveal to all creation something of the spirit of the God who is Adam's interlocutor).

Barring some great philosophers of language, like Wittgenstein, Derrida, and say Walter Benjamin, Buber, etc., most modern folk don't appreciate the relationship between the spirit and the word. A word is always a name, a naming, whereby, as Wittgenstein implies, the spirit of a thing is baptized into the name (or the name baptized into the spirit) thereafter creating a union that incarnates the invisible spirit of the thing with the visible name that references the invisible spirit. The writers of the midrash in question are precursors of men like Wittgenstein and Benjamin, such that they realize something of the spirit of a thing is always hiding beneath the name of a thing.

When Adam names himself before God and the angels he's providing a link to the spirit of man. When Adam names god before God and the angels, he's revealing a link to the spirit of God.

So what does Adam name himself? He names himself alef-dalet-mem א–דם. . . Why separate the alef from the dalet-mem? The alef is the first letter, and as the first letter represents the first creation of God, that thing, even letter, closest to God. Adam (אדם) is firstly related to the alef, God, such that the first letter in his name is the alef. ----- So what of the dalet-mem? ------ It spells blood דם (dam). So Adam is God's blood? ------Yes. -----According to midrashim he is:

8. OF THE GROUND (ADAMAH), R. Berekiah and R. Belbo in the name of Samuel the Elder said: He was created from the place of his atonement, as you read, An altar of earth (adamah) thou shalt make unto me (Ex. xx,21). The Holy One, blessed be He, said: `Behold I will create him from the place of his atonement, and may he endure!"

Midrash Rabbah, Bereshith XIV.8.​

God creates an altar of earth, and spills (breathes, metzitzah) his blood into and onto the altar of earth (adamah). Adam's name is related to "earth" (adamah), and the color "red" (adam) since, according to midrashim, Adam is created as an altar of earth infused with the breath of life. . . But what does the breath of life have to do with blood? . . . Immediately after suggesting that Adam is created as an earthen altar, a place of atonement (so that he might endure when the need for atonement arises, since it's produced in his very creation) the midrash speaks of the fact that the breath of life (mixed with the earthen altar) has five names:

THE BREATH OF (NISHMATH) LIFE. It has five names: nefesh, neshamah, hayyah, ruah, yehidah. Nefesh is the blood: For the blood is the nefesh --- E.V. "life" (Deut. xii, 23). Ruah: this is so called because it ascends and descends: thus it is written, Who knoweth the ruah (E.V. "spirit") of man whether it goeth upward and the ruah, of the beast whether it goeth downward to the earth (Eccl. iii, 21)? Neshamah is the breath; as people say, His breathing is good. Hayyah (lit. "living"): because all the limbs are mortal, whereas this is immortal in the body. Yehidah (unique) : because all the limbs are duplicated, whereas this is unique in the body.

Ibid. XIV.9.​

Rabbi Hirsch clarifies this:

. . . the primary meaning of דם [blood] is image, symbol, representative [name] . . . The animal soul--- together with the body--- is formed from the earth. By contrast, the source of man's soul is not the source of his earthly frame; rather, God, as it were, breathed into man a spark of His Own essence. . . your blood, which belongs to your souls, is Mine, not yours. I will demand it, because it belongs to Me and is at My disposal, and I require a reckoning for every drop of your blood. . .When God says אדרש [I require] regarding the blood consigned to the human soul, He declares that our blood belongs to Him.

Hirsch Chumash, Bereshis 9:5 (brackets and emphasis mine).​

The animal body, which Rabbi Hirsch associates with our natural conception, at night, through Gen(i)tile sex, is from the earth, represents the earth, is earthen: in the case of the Jew its literally an altar prepared for sacrifice. On the other hand, the blood of the Jew, is not associated with the earth, i.e., Gen(i)tile sex. It's from God--- such that the earthen altar is prepared from the earth, as animal flesh (the Gentile), so that on the eighth day, a sacrifice takes place such that the very organ the ancients associated with god, the god of the phallic-cults, is sacrificed, and its blood spilled on the earthen altar in order to form a Jew from the sacrifice of the pagan god, its blood, and it's mixture with the earthen altar. The blood of the pagan god, the phallus, the serpent, is spilled on the altar of earth, earth conceived by the serpent, such that the mixture of this blood and this earth, creates the Jew, who is re-born on the eighth day, of a process that atones for the very nature of his first birth, through the serpent, in that the "blood" (death) of this pagan god (the serpent), when mixed with the earth, creates the essence of the Jew. He’s created (born) from the place of his atonement.

These things are implicit in the midrash in question. When Adam names himself "blood of god" alef---dalet-mem א––דם, he's setting the stage for the second revelation (the name of God) that retroactively feeds back into his own name, thereby completely justifying all the foregoing, if you will, but naturally you won't.

You find that when the Holy One, blessed be He, sought to create man, He took council with the ministering angels. He said to them: "Let us make man in our image" (Gen. i. 26). Said they to him: "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him" (Ps. viii, 5)? He answered them: "The man whom I desire to create will possess wisdom that shall exceed yours." What did He do then? Assembling all the cattle, beasts, fowl, He made them pass before them, and asked them: " What are the names of these?" They did not know. When, however, He created man and, making them pass before him, asked him what the names of these were, he replied: "This should fittingly be called an ox; that, a lion; that, a horse; that, an ass; that, a camel, and that, an eagle"; as may be inferred from the text, And the man gave names to all cattle, etc. (Gen. ii. 20).Then asks him: "And you, what shall be your name?" He answered: "Adam." "Why?" "Because I have been created from the ground (adumah)." The Holy One, blessed be He, asked him: "And I, what is My name?" Said he: "Lord." "Why?" "Because though art the Lord over all created beings."

Midrash Rabbah, Numbers, Chukkath XIX, 3, emphasis mine).​

The midrash implies that Adam names the first animal "ox" coinciding with the first letter in the alphabet and what he knew of God. The symmetry is literally divine since the midrash implies Adam names the first animal "ox" (the alef א is originally a pictogram of an ox) --- because of what he knows of God. What does he know of God: that God will be the sacrifice providing the blood to mix with the earthen altar. And what does he next name himself? Well, we know from other midrashim that he (adam) is the earthen altar. We know that blood is spilled on the altar. We know that Rabbi Hirsch teaches, from hoary midrashim, that the blood of man is God's blood, belongs to God. So what would we expect Adam to name himself? א––דם. The blood of the ox. The blood of the alef. The blood of God. . . . He doesn't disappoint.

. . . But what of the deeper cut into the midrash? Adam names the animals. No small feat. Then himself, in amazing fashion. But what about naming god? That's the real deal. That's where the rubber meets the road.

Why were they [burnt offerings] burned on the Altar and not elsewhere? Because Scripture has stated, "You shall make for Me an Altar of earth." Why from earth? For man [אדם] was created from the earth. He is called אדם because he was taken from the earth [אדמח]. We bring up burnt-offerings and sacrifices on the Altar that is made of earth, to atone for [the sins of] the body that had been taken from the earth. Where do we derive that it atones for the soul? For it is written, "For the soul of all flesh is its blood, which is ruled by the soul, so I say [to the Bnei Yisroel [etc.], [and it states], "For it is the blood that atones for the soul." When it states, "And they shall throw the blood on the Altar." it means to say, they should throw the blood, which is the soul, onto the Altar which is [made] from earth just as one's body, and it will atone for the soul.

Midrash Tanchuma, Vayikra, Tzav, 14.​

The sages are clear that God provides the solution (both meanings of the word) for sin before the advent of sin. Adam's atonement is created before, or at least simultaneous to, Adam's creation. This midrash, which is older than Midrash Rabbah, makes it clear that Adam is created simultaneous with his atonement. His physical body is created such that he is an animal like all the other animals, and then on the eighth day the animal becomes a Jew. How? When blood is spilled on the altar of flesh that is the human animal. Then it's no longer an animal, a Gentile, it's a Jew. And think what that makes a Jew: an animal, a Gentile, infused with god's blood (John 6:53).

Why the small case when speaking of God's blood? Well, we know from circumcision, the foundational sign of Judaism, and the key to every midrashim ever written, and every scripture ever written, that it's the blood of the Gentile means of procreation, rather than the natural seed of that organ, that conceives the Jew. We know that conceiving what a Jew is occurs from the blood of circumcision (even as that blood is the seed of the literal conception of a Jew). And the blood of circumcision is the blood of the pagan god, the Gentile god, the genital god. The pagans worshiped the phallus, the serpent (the Egyptian cobra) as the quintessential emblem of god.

It’s the blood of the pagan god, that's sacrificed on the eighth day to initiate what Rabbi Hirsch unequivocally implies is a new birth in opposition to the first birth: a spiritual birth rather than a physical birth. Rabbi Hirsch implies that the Gentile is born the first day, and of the genital organ, while the Jew is born-again on the eighth day in the light of day, when the pagan creator of the flesh is bled to death. Proof positive of these things is the fact that in all cases but the case of sacrificial blood, blood is unclean, and represents a corpse. How is it that sacrificial blood is clean, i.e., a cleanser, purifying from sin, a solution, if you will, to sin? Well, if circumcision is the key to every sign and symbol in the scripture, and it is, then circumcision blood, as the prototypical offering and sacrifice, makes it clear why sacrificial blood cleanses from sin and death.

Death is the result of the first sin; it's the product of the first sin, is born of the first sin. So if phallic-sex, Gentile sex (genital sex) is the original sin, the first case of sin, as the sages imply, to anyone who will lend an ear, then death is the result of genital sex (Gentile sex) phallic-sex. The original sin is phallic-sex, such that the original murderer is the original product of phallic-sex, which is Cain. Cain is the firstborn of humanity, though we have reason to expect better of the firstborn of humanity since the Jewish firstborn represents sanctification rather than condemnation ---- everlasting life rather than death?

Seguing into the latter part of the midrash the question rises as to the frequent interpolation of invisible spirit into the text of the holy scripture? Things are left unexplained, time is transposed and exposed to seemingly asymmetrical relationships, and this, according to the sages, is a forethought, a foreskene, meant to cause the Jew to cut deeper than milah, go all the way, not just periah, but metzitzah.

Adam is created from the earth such that the breath of life (soul-life, blood) appears to be given simultaneous, or nearly so, to the creation of Adam's physical body (suggesting that he's a Jew from the get-go)? But we know from circumcision that a period of time elapses between the creation of the Gentile flesh, the earthen animal, and the actual sacrifice whose blood, when infused with the Gentile flesh, creates the Jew? Eight days elapse between the birth of the Gentile, and the creation of the Jew from the combining of blood and earth known as brit milah? . . . Did an elapse of time occur between the creation of Adam as a Gentile animal and his rebirth as a Jew? . . . Does the completion of the midrash under discussion fill in some of the missing pieces about the asymmetry involved in the most foundational story in the Torah? Does Adam give us the most important piece of the puzzle by revealing the creator of his physical body?

Circumcision is not simply an incision of the male sex organ; it is an inscription, a notation, a marking. . .The physical opening, therefore, is the seal that, in its symbolic valence, corresponds to an ontological opening within God. . . The opening of circumcision, in the final analysis, is transformed in the Zohar into a symbol for the task of exegesis. . . The uncovering of the phallus is conceptually and structurally parallel to the disclosure of the text.

Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, The Circle in the Square, p, 30​

The text is the element of God that's subject to dissection, circumcision, examination. . . So we're not surprised when Adam, after revealing that he's made from the blood of God, names his interlocutor Adon א––דן. In other words, after naming himself the blood of God, adam א–דם, Adam names his interlocutor adon א––דן. . . Whereas dam דם is "blood," din דן is "judgment," the manufacturer of blood. Before Adam can be made from earth and God's blood, he needs to have a means of acquiring God's blood?

In Judaism there are only two kinds of blood, unclean, directly associated with a corpse, and clean, directly, and singularly, associated with sacrifice. Adam's blood, the blood from which he's made, is directly associated with a sacrifice:

The Zohar understands the Altar of earth as the Altar of the elements of the earth, an allusion to the sacrifice of flesh and blood offered through circumcision, for as the Zohar explains, the human body is the product of the dust of the earth. Every father who offers his son as a sacrifice through the mitzvah of circumcision is considered as though he had offered to God all the [animal] sacrifices in the world, and has built Him the most perfect Altar. This Altar is dearer to Hashem than all the others. And the promised blessing which refers to every place where God causes His name [image, symbol, representation] to be mentioned is first of all intended for the place of circumcision, for it is the Divine seal engraved into our flesh. The man who bears this seal on his body receives, as it were, Divine consecration, and he himself becomes an Altar to Hashem.

Rabbi Elie Munk, The Call of the Torah, Shemos, p. 288, 289 (bracket mine).​

Rabbi Elie Munk notes, as does Midrash Rabbah, and other midrashim (based directly on scripture) that wherever there's an altar and sacrificial blood, Hashem will allow his name to be mentioned. Naturally this segues perfectly with the midrash in question. God's name is mentioned, wherever an altar is built. And the prototype altar, the true altar, for which all others are only representative, is the altar of the human body, where the prototype sacrifice takes place. . . Here (the bloody human body on the eighth day), Hashem makes his name to be mentioned. And if the foregoing is correct, so to say, as it always is, if you just will, then God's "name" is found in the place where his spirit (blood, image) and human flesh combine in the tangible, knowable, see-able, Jew:

Circumcision is not simply one good deed amongst many in consequence of which the person merits seeing God. It is precisely and exclusively by means of circumcision that one can see God, for this act removes that potential barrier---- symbolized by the cutting of the foreskin---- separating human and divine. Circumcision is the vestibule or portal through which one must pass if one is to have a visionary experience of God. The opening of circumcision results in an opening up to God, a receptivity, that enables one to stand in God's presence and to behold the glory.

Ibid, p. 34.​

It's this standing in the Presence, this beholding the glory, that Midrash Rabbah toys with in the midrash that's here under the dissector's knife (or the mohel's . . . depending on your point of view). Adam is the altar and Adon is the dissector, the writer/manufacturer, interpreter, and executor of the written law, the Torah scoll: "That angel served in three capacities: as scribe, executioner, and High Priest" (Midrash Rabbah, Lamentations, II, 3.) The name Adon א–דן comes from alef-tav את. The tav ת is a ligature of two individual letters, the dalet ד and the nun נ. Squeeze a nun נ under the left side of a dalet ד and you have a tav (דנ made into a ligature is ת). In this sense Adon אדן is simply alef-tav את put under a sharper exegetical knife. In other words, alef-tav את and alef-dalet-nun אדן mean, represent, are, the same thing.

So what do they mean. Sharpen the exegetical knife using God's testemonial stones (which allows one to cut so deep into the scroll that the half-way Jew's beloved scar will disappear in a cutting that will sever him from his ethnic pride and cause him to fall headways into a whole different spirit) and we can see precisely what spirit of God the Jew will be forced to swallow if he performs the circumcision all the way to metzitzah. This is to say, if we realize that the tav ת is a ligature of a dalet-nun (din) "judgment" the prototype being capital punishment, then what more would be added if we acknowledge the ligature situated in front of the tav, the alef א , which is constructed of thorns יי (yod) surrounding a man ו (vav)? In other words, if the tav is a ligature of “judgment” din דן,, then what about the ligature that makes up the alef א in front of the ligature that makes up the tav ת?

The sages tell us the vav ו represents "man" in that it's the sixth letter, and man was created on the sixth day (and various scriptures relate man to "six" and the vav). The yod י on the other hand represents many things, to include the fact that it's a pictogram of a thorn. The alef, is a ligature constructed when three letters are squeezed together to form the one letter alef. The alef is composed of a vav (man) surrounded by (crowned with ) thorns. Some wise acre Hebrew lexicographer will protest by asking what word would be composed of two yod with a vav in the middle such that they might become a ligature (when the yod and the vav are confused or made one letter)? He'll protest that there’s no Hebrew word yod-vav-yod. . . And of course he's correct but for the fact that here the veils on the lambskin foreskene are being removed in the hope of standing in the very Presence of the Name יהוה.

A wise sage will perhaps note that the Name יהוה is itself crowned with the thorn of the yod. The yod crowns the Name leaving a vav surrounded by two heh הוה. As the lexicographer yawns the sage points out that no less a biblical expositor than Rabbi Hirsch has remarked on the remarkable fact that if you circumcise the letter heh ה, that is deconstruct the ligature made of a dalet-yod (a heh ה is a dalet situated over a yod), you get the word dalet-yod די, which, according to Rabbi Hirsch, with others, is said to be cut into the flesh at a ritual circumcision. The word dalet-yod, די means "enough," or "finished," or perhaps "It is finished," as though circumcision is the first, alef, and the last tav, all wrapped up in one glorious image representing the very Presence of Hashem exclaiming “It is finished” די!

If deconstructing the heh ה ---such that it becomes dalet-yod "It is Finished" די --- is tantamount to circumcision, and if this whole charade is about God being circumcised to provide the blood from which Adam is reborn as a Jew, then all it would take to show who is crowned with two crowns, i.e., the crown of thorns, and the crown of divinity, is to remove the two veils (dalet) found in the Name. In other words, if the two dalet, doors or veils (and two must be removed before metzitzah) are removed in the Name, from Hashem, יהוה, then the crown of divinity that crowns the Name, Hashem, finds itself on the alef formed of a ligature of the two yod now left to wrap around the vav in the middle of the Name (see Tetragrammaton in the Flesh for a clearer deconstruction of the Name whose ligature is a man crowned with thorns being crowned with divinity, "The yod is the smallest of letters. Its shape is a `formed point,' consisting of a `pathway' below (corresponding to Worlds), a `body' or `trunk' (souls) and a `crown' or `thorn' above (Divinity)" The Alef Beit, R. Ginsburgh.

By circumcising the Name, Hashem, the Tetragrammaton, that is, removing the two veils, dalet, covering the two yod, a ligature is produced that's a pictogram of a man (vav) surrounded by thorns (yod) crowned with divinity (the yod that crowns the circumspect alef). . . . Once the alef is seen to be a man crowned with thorns having that thorny crown become the emblem of divinity, above, it becomes apparent that originally the very ligature that is the tav, i.e., the dalet-nun, din (judgment, death, blood), only became such a ligature in the Ktav Ashuri text (a Gentile text adopted when the sons of Israel were in captivity in Babylon), while in the true sacred text the tav (representative of din, דן) was a pictogram that’s been historically (kerygmatically) associated with a man (vav) surrounded by thorns (the alef) being judged din, capital punishment, death, bleeding in front of Jew and Gentile alike, in a manner such that that image has become recognized as a most glorious revelation of God's Presence, His Name, his fleshly manifestation, the second Adam, Abraham's spiritual son, born of a circumcised pregnancy, virgin birth, hanging on the pictogramatic tav, the tav that in the sacred script was a cross, the source of every cross-referencing of Jewish midrash taking place here: a man surrounded by thorns hanging on a cross of judgment, as the complete and miraculous manifestation of God's Presence and Name on earth.