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Four [sages] entered the pardes: Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Aher [Elisha Ben Avuyah] and Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva said to them: When you come to the place of pure marble stones, do not say, 'Water! Water!' For it is said, 'He who speaks untruths shall not stand before my eyes' [Talmud, Hagiga 14:2]
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This is a text that describes an ascent according to the Jewish secret mysticism. the pardes is an acronym of pshat drash remez and sod which are the exegetical modes of the scriptures according to Judaism.
In the talkback to the article "Lizkor kdey sheihiye efshar lishkoach" (To remember so that it could be forgotten) by Dov Elboim[1], suggests Zeev Barkan that the Hebrew words "water" and "marble" are a secret code to the deciphering of this esoteric text.
They are palindromes, that is words that are read the same way from the beginning to the end (right to left) and from the end to the beginning (left to right). For water is written: mem-yod-mem (maim) and marble is written: shin-yod-shin (shaish).
It could be further developed to include the writer of the text Rabbi Akiva quotes: 'He who speaks untruths shall not stand before my eyes' [Bible, Psalms, ], who is king David. His name is also a palindrome as it is written in Hebrew in this psalm: dalet-vav-dalet.
The palindrome could suggest the Biblical-Babylonian cosmology which Rabbi Akiva rejects. This suggests parallelism between the upper waters and the lower waters.
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[1] In Haaretz of 2-Apr-2007 (http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtSR.jhtml?itemNo=844205), in Talkback no. 18,
[2] See my philosophical dialogue explaining this issue in the book The Dialogues, USA (2007)
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Jacques Derrida's interpretation of Plato's Phaedrus
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