A Shared Heart of Love
The 8 letters that form the geometric heart of both squares spell the words “the power of love” (עֹצְמַת אַהַבָה ), making love the shared heart, or root, of both the might inherent in the Ten Commandments and the love inherent in the
Shema. The numerical value of this phrase “the power of love,”
עֹצְמַת אֲהַבָה , is 613, the total number of commandments in the Torah. This observation demands further explication.
The 613 commandments are divided into 248 positive demands and 365 prohibitive commandments. In addition, “(the feeling of) love of the Almighty is the source of all the 248 positive commandments, and the fear of the Almighty is the source of the 365 prohibitive commandments.”
15 As the commandment to fear God—”God, your God, you shall fear”
16—is in itself a positive commandment, meaning that as just stated, it must be motivated by love, we may conclude that love is ultimately the source of all the commandments: both positive and prohibitive.
A related observation is that the numerical sum of the 16 letters in the last line of each of the two matrices,
ר י ם ע ל פ נ י ו ב כ ל מ א ד ך is also 613, alluding to the fact that all 613 commandments are represented in these two seminal passages of the Torah.
Let us look at both sets of four corners, which we called the face of each square. The eight letters in the corners are:
י ר א ה ש ל ו ך , whose sum is 572 = 13 · 44, or “love” (
אֲהַבָה = 13) · 44,
17 again alluding to the fact that the root of the entire Torah is indeed love.
Our final observation is that love permeates the totality of these four verses, for the sum of all 128 letters is 5953. The midpoint of 5953 is 2977, which is equal to 13 x 229. 13 is the numerical value of “love” and 229 is sum of the numerical values of “fear” and “love.” So what we have is “love” multiplied by “fear” and “love”*:
Source
