What is Aleph?  That was the question in my mind after listening to Brendan Burchard interviewing Paulo Coelho whose latest book is entitled "Aleph".

The definition and full meaning of Aleph is a more involved and complicated than I had imagined.  Given how it is used in the book, perhaps that is quite apropos.

Paulo Coelho himself quotes Jorge Luis Borges (who wrote "The Aleph" in 1945) and that is probably the closest explanation of what Coelho himself means in his new book.

Aleph or Alef, א is the first letter of the Hebrew, Arabic, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Syriac alphabets.  Aleph is also the number 1 in Hebrew.  Aleph relates to the origin of the universe in esoteric Judaic Kabbalah.

This is just a very simplistic explanation of the Aleph.  It has links in mathematics as well as the origin/foundation in many languages.  A More detailed explanation can be found in Aleph from Wikipedia

There are many symbols, from mathematics to Hebrew, to Greek, to Arabic, and even Egyptian hieroglyphics which I found very interesting.  I thought they would certainly look good on t-shirts and the like.  Hence there is now a nice growing selection of iphone cases, ipad cases, t-shirts, and many other products in my Zazzle store.