Parshah Mnemonics: Ki Tavo & Elul 18: Decoding the hidden messages
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Rabbi Aaron L. Raskin is the official Chabad emissary to downtown Brooklyn, rabbi of Congregation B’nai Avraham in Brooklyn Heights, New York and Dean of Brooklyn Heights Jewish Academy. He is the author of the books, “Thank You God for Making Me a Woman", "Letters of Light", "By Divine Design", and "Guardian of Israel", and the co-author of "The Rabbi & The CEO".
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"Assyria" is spelled with an alef, "riches" is spelled with an 'ayin. So how can you say that the 10 Tribes went to Assyria because of wealth?
There is a Gematria that equates phonetic similarities as interchangeable. This letter substitution is performed with many other letters like for example Vav and Vet etc,
You understand that wow & veth are NOT similar, but have been distorted because when certain Jews left the Middle East they settled amongst nations that lacked the ability to pronounce Middle Eastern letters. Rav Sa'adiya Gaon said that Hebrew has all the same letters as ARABIC (except one). That is where, for example, the word "Yid" came from. "Yid" is really "Yehudi," but "h" is nonexistent in Polish & Russian. The same is true of the family name "Caan" (Cohen) or "Kogan" (Cohen because Russians replace "h" with "g" OR delete the "h"). Nor are quf & kaf pronounced similarly, except through distortions from immigrations to the Ashkenazi lands. Same is true for khaf & cheith.