Emet: The Root of Us

An utterance, an entire world.

A syllable, an infinite vastness.

Torah language is robust and complex, and endlessly layered. A word is more than

simply a means of communication, it is a world unto itself, a vast pool of depth

and ideas. To understand a single word is to internalize a concept, an essence, a

potential.

A word’s root, shoresh, defines its essence. It gives insight into the makeup and

purpose of the word. It tells stories, elicits emotion and intellectual pursuit. It

begs us to pay attention, to delve further. It’s a nuanced understanding, difficult to put into simple English words, ironically often something we have to grasp without the benefit of eloquent articulation. But it is real and substantive and unlocks many levels of understanding.

The letters before and after the root help to conceptualize the word’s use in that

particular place, in that particular time, in that particular sentence. Male, female,

singular, plural, past, present… The prefixes and suffixes add to the understanding

as well. They give shape to and support the root’s existence.

Within the three letter root is a deeper two letter root, another layer of insight,

another layer to intuit. The Hebrew word emet exemplifies this concept. The

three letters aleph, mem, tet, together mean truth, an indisputable essence, an

absolute certainty. Truth in this sense is not personal, subject to our whims, nor is

it changing. It is something that simply is and will always be. It is our G-d above, all

that He is and all that He does.

The word emet can be further divided into two; two roots, two worlds unto

themselves coming together to add dimension to and express our original word,

truth. The first, em, means mother. A mother, by definition, is one who gives forth

life, who births another into reality. A mother is a necessary component to our

existence, the beginning of all life. We bring to fruition, nurturing to life. We are

the vessel which enables the transition from pre-life to life.

The second, met, means death. Death is the ending of physical life, the cessation

of our earthly existence. And yet, what is death if not a spiritual birth? When our time here ends, our souls are released from our bodies and rebirthed for their

eternal life. Death is the bridge between our physical and spiritual lives and the

facilitator of our eternity. As with a mother, death enables life.

We believe in life, we are here, we exist. We believe in the existence of an

afterworld, of spiritual life after physical death. We know these things to be true.

One of the basic tenets of Jewish philosophy, this truth is clearly expressed in our

word, emet. Em and met together span the entirety of our lives, here and

thereafter. They are the bookends to our physical life and the conception of our

eternal life.

When we praise G-d by the name of Truth when one passes, these ideas are

unified. Perhaps it is a reminder that G-d is all, a reminder to revisit the

fundamentals of our beliefs, to shift from living in time to living in eternity. A

reminder to peer beneath the surface of our words, and explore the worlds within.