The Resh

The Hebrew letter Resh (ר) is the head. Its ancient pictograph is exactly what its name says — rosh, head — the highest part of the body, the seat of the eyes and the mouth, the place from which leadership flows. The themes that ride with it are head, chief, first, and highest. The Resh is what comes first. The Resh is what sits at the top. The Resh is the crown of a thing — its origin, its leader, its summit.

That same character shows up in the words the Resh lives inside. Many Hebrew words that begin with Resh carry the sense of headship, beginning, height, or the lifted-up place — what stands first, what leads, what rises above the rest.

A handful of familiar examples make the pattern easy to see:

• Rosh — “head, chief, beginning.” The most direct word — the letter named for the very thing it pictures. The rosh of a body, of a household, of a nation, of a story.
• Reshit — “beginning, first part.” B’reshit, “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1) — the very first word of the Bible carries the headship of the Resh.
• Ru’ach — “spirit, wind, breath.” The breath that flows from the head — the Ru’ach Elohim that moved over the face of the waters in the beginning (Genesis 1:2).
• Roeh — “shepherd.” The head of the flock, the leader who walks first and the sheep follow. Yahuah ro’i, “Yahuah is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1).
• Romem — “to lift up, to exalt.” To raise something to the head — to put it at the top, to set it on high where the eye must look up to find it.

Notice the consistent shape. Where the Resh appears at the front of a word, something is at the top. Something is leading. Something is lifted up to the place of the head, the place where eyes find it first and the rest follows.

So as you read the Hebrew Scriptures, when you find a word with a Resh at its front, ask the simple question: What is being lifted to the head here? Most of the time, the Resh is doing what the letter has always done — putting the highest thing at the front, where it leads everything that follows.