THE DIVINE NAME
When the Ruzhiner Rebbe was a child, his Hebrew teacher taught him that two yud dots next to each other are pronounced as G-d’s name.

Reviewing his lessons at home, little Yisrael uttered G-d’s name at the end of every sentence, marked by a colon, two dots, one on top of the other.

His father reprimanded him: “You’re saying G-d’s name in vain!”

The boy responded, “My teacher said that it is G-d’s name whenever two dots are together!”

Yisrael’s father explained: “The dot, called yud, represents a Jew. When two Jews stand together on the same level, respecting each other, G-d dwells there. Their alliance is G-dly. But when one Yud positions himself atop of the other, thinking that he’s better or smarter than his fellow, that represents the end.”

Design
The tenth, and smallest, letter of the alef-beis is the letter yud.

Basically, the yud is only a point that reflects G-d’s indivisible essence.

The yud looks like a flame perched on a Shabbos or Chanukah candle, soaring ever higher, as the soul yearns for G-d, ‘for the flame of G-d is the soul of man’ (Proverbs).

The yud also demonstrates the method by which Divine blessings descend. Spelled out, the letter yud is s - u - h . The yud represents G-d’s seminal power. The chute-like vav is the vessel through which His blessings flow downward. The dalet’s height and width represents our physical world, where G-d is manifest in every aspect of nature.

G-d doesn’t reside only in heaven. His blessings flow down to this world and endow us with physical health, sustenance and success.

Every letter of the alef-beis begins with the yud, a single point, illustrating the inherent Divine spirituality in every letter, and its special relationship with the Jew, known in Yiddish as “dos pintele yid.”

GEMATRIA
yud = 10

Until now the alef-beis had single integers, but the Yud introduces us to two-digit numbers. After the yud, each letter’s gematria increases by ten instead of one. Yud is ten, kaf is twenty, lamed is thirty, mem forty, and so on.

The number ten is a significant building block in the Talmud, Kabbalah and Chassidus.

With Ten Utterances G-d created the world. There were ten generations from Adam to Noah, and the ten generations from Noah to Abraham. And G-d gave us the Ten Commandments.

When ten Jews assemble we have a minyan quorum. Nine people need the long awaited tenth man to begin the services and recite the kaddish.

Meaning
In our prayer book, G-d’s name is composed of two consecutive yuds which combine the vital forces of two of G-d’s names. The first name of G-d, the Tetra-grammaton, is spelled—Yud-Hei-Vav-Hei. The Tetragrammaton represents G-d as He is beyond nature. G-d’s second name is Alef-Dalet-Nun-Yud as the Master who manifests Himself in nature.

The Yud at the beginning of the Tetragrammaton and the Yud at the end of A-donai come together—a Yud followed by another Yud. This fusion affirms that while we live in a physical “natural” order, G-d is truly the creator of nature.

From where does the word “Jew” (Yehudi in Hebrew) derive? In Megillas Esther, Mordechai refused to bow down to the wicked Haman. It says: “A man, a Jew (ish Yehudi), was in Shushan the capital, and his name was Mordechai.”

The Talmud notes that Mordechai didn’t come from the tribe of Judah (Yehudah) but from the tribe of Benjamin. Shouldn’t he be called “Mordechai the Benjaminite (Yemini)?” The Talmud states that anyone who rejects idolatry is called a Yehudi—Yehudah, or the Jew.

Indeed, in our darkest and most harrowing times, the Nazis identified us as “Jude.”

The yud is also the first letter in the two names for a Jew. The first name is k-trah (Yisrael). Jews are called b’nei Yisrael—the children of Israel. Yisrael means both atr hk —“I am the head,” and k-t ra Minister of G-d, our higher spiritual aspects when we pray, study Torah and perform mitzvos.

Our second name is b’nei Yaakov—children of Jacob. Yaakov is a phonetic fusion of the letter yud and the word akeiv. Yud represents G-d. Akeiv means “heel,” the lowest part of man. Our mission is to infuse the materialistic world with the G-dly Yud. This isn’t true only in the Holy Land of Israel or the synagogue. It refers to every place we set foot on. We journey from the serenity of Shabbos into the wild weekday and from prayer into business with the intention and passion to fulfill and elevate G-d’s creation.