Ayin

Ayin means "eye" and represents the faculty of perception, insight, and spiritual vision. In Jewish thought, there are two kinds of seeing: the physical eye that observes the surface of things, and the inner eye (the "ayin ha-tov," the good eye) that perceives the deeper reality beneath appearances. Ayin challenges us to develop this deeper vision -- to see the divine spark in every person and every situation, even those that appear difficult or mundane. The gematria of 70 carries tremendous weight in Jewish tradition: 70 faces of Torah (shiv'im panim la-Torah), 70 elders who received the spirit of prophecy, 70 nations of the world, 70 members of Jacob's family who descended to Egypt, 70 years of the Babylonian exile. Seventy represents the totality of perspectives, the fullness of interpretation. Ayin teaches that truth is not monolithic but multifaceted, and that genuine understanding requires looking from many angles. Kabbalistically, Ayin is connected to the concept of "ayin" (nothingness) -- the mystical void from which creation emerges. This is not nihilistic emptiness but rather the pregnant nothingness that contains infinite potential. The letter Ayin thus embodies one of the deepest paradoxes of Jewish mysticism: that the source of all existence is beyond existence itself, and that true seeing eventually leads to the recognition that the deepest reality is beyond sight.

In modern Israeli Hebrew, Ayin is essentially silent, functioning much like Alef as a placeholder for vowel sounds. However, in traditional Mizrachi (Middle Eastern and North African) pronunciation and in the original Semitic sound, Ayin is a deep, guttural consonant produced by constricting the pharynx -- a sound that has no equivalent in English. Some communities, particularly Yemenite Jews, still preserve this pronunciation. When writing Ayin, it has a distinctive Y-like or wishbone shape -- two strokes meeting at a point at the bottom. It somewhat resembles the Tsadi (צ) but without the extra extension on the left. In different scripts and fonts, its shape varies considerably, but the forked or branching structure is consistent.