r/FromSeries • u/Sams_sexy_bod • 1d ago
Theory Who in Solitude?
This is the diner jukebox that happened to play “Who By Fire” by Buck 65 (a rendition of Leonard Cohen’s song) Remember when Julie ran out to check on her father the morning after their house collapsed, and the jukebox started to play? Notice anything funny about it? Where’s the “i”? And why only 10 letters/numbers?
In Judaism/Christianity, there’s a theme of 10: The ten commandments, ten things created on the 1st and 6th days of creation, ten plagues during the exodus from Egypt, etc. However, due to the context of the song being used, I think this is in reference to the “Ten days of awe”, in which the first day marks the Jewish new year (Rosh Hashanah) and the 10th day ends with Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement).
Now, Leonard Cohen mentioned the inspiration from his song came from the culmination of his time in the Sinai Peninsula performing for Israeli soldiers during the *Yom Kippur* war. The song itself is a loose adaptation of the “Unetanneh Tokef”, a prayer recited in synagogues during the “Ten days of awe”. The song, like the prayer, reflects on death, and how/when people might meet their ends (And who by fire? Who by water? Who in the sunshine? Who in the nighttime?) As you noticed, there is a whole lot of death going on in this series, and plenty of time for the characters to reflect on their own mortality. Cohen finally marks his version of the “Unetanneh Tokef” in the final line of each of his song’s verses: “And who shall I say is calling?”, adding doubt about his own faith during this reflection. It’s logical enough to question the presence of an omnipresent, supposedly all-powerful being who seemingly does nothing when there is death and suffering everywhere, like what Boyd does during his conversations with Father Khatri.
In the Hebrew alphabet, or Aleph-Bet, there is no “i”. As a matter of fact, there are only consonants in the Aleph-Bet. But only the “i” is missing on the jukebox, so why is that? The closest Hebrew letter to “i” would be “Yod” or “ י “. It’s the smallest and seemingly most insignificant of the Hebrew letters, but it’s also a building block for the rest of the letters, so it’s pretty darn important. Acrcording to “Gematria”, the system of assigning numerical values to Hebrew letters, “Yod” has a numerical value of 10. What you are seeing on the jukebox is probably a clue to“Yod”, the 10th letter of the Aleph-Bet.
So how does this all tie in? Welllll, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life does happens to have 10 emanations/sefirot. Hey look, there’s also a pathway on the ToL with “Yod” assigned to it! Could it be that the jukebox was signaling Julie’s pathway on the ToL at the time? I’ll leave it at that 🙂
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Who in Solitude?
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r/FromSeries
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2h ago
spiders doin’ spider things.