New Yavneh - Chapter 1

PART ONE

THE SOURCE

Everything that exists exists because HASHEM wills it to exist. That statement is not the beginning of theology. It is the end of every other explanation.

Chapter One

HASHEM: The Source of Everything

HASHEM is the Source of all that exists, and every form of knowing, moral authority, and obligation derives its weight from that fact rather than generating weight on its own.

I. The Foundation

The Rambam opens the Mishneh Torah, the great legal codification of Torah law, not with a law but with a foundational claim. Torah law as a whole rests on this claim. The Rambam puts it first because nothing else can stand without it.

יְסוֹד הַיְסוֹדוֹת וְעַמּוּד הַחָכְמוֹת לֵידַע שֶׁיֵּשׁ שָׁם מָצוּי רִאשׁוֹן וְהוּא מַמְצִיא כָּל נִמְצָא

Yesod ha-yesodot ve-amud ha-chokhmot leidat she-yesh sham matzui rishon, ve-hu mamtzi kol nimtza.

"The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all wisdom is to know that there is a First Being who brings all existence into being."

Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 1:1 — Sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah,_Foundations_of_the_Torah.1.1

Notice the verb. Not to believe. To know. The Rambam writes leidat, which carries the force of actual knowledge, not faith in the sentimental sense. The foundation of all foundations is the recognition that reality is not self-grounding, and this recognition is knowable. From this single claim follows everything else the Rambam will say, and everything this book will say.

If HASHEM is the First Being from whom all existence proceeds, then nothing within creation can claim ultimacy. Not force. Not consensus. Not intellect. Not the accumulated authority of human institutions. Not even the most sophisticated philosophical system ever constructed. Each may be real. None crosses the ontological boundary into Source. That boundary is what this book means, throughout, when it says HASHEM is the Source of everything.

It does not mean merely that HASHEM was first in a temporal chain. It means that source, meaning, and obligation are inseparable, because the world itself is contingent upon a Source that precedes and exceeds it. Remove the Source and you do not get a simpler world. You get no world, no meaning, and no obligation. The Rambam's opening move is not piety. It is logical necessity.

The Rambam continues immediately:

וְאִם יַעְלֶה עַל הַדַּעַת שֶׁאֵין שָׁם מָצוּי אֶלָּא הוּא, לֹא יִמָּצֵא שְׁאָר הַנִּמְצָאִים

Ve-im ya'aleh al ha-da'at she-ein sham matzui ella hu, lo yimmatze she'ar ha-nimtza'im.

"Were it to enter one's mind that HASHEM does not exist, nothing else could exist."

Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 1:2 — Sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah,_Foundations_of_the_Torah.1.2

This is not a conditional threat. It is an ontological claim. The existence of anything depends on the existence of HASHEM. Not historically. Continuously. At every moment. The world does not proceed from HASHEM and then run on its own. The world is sustained, at every instant, by the will that brought it into being.

The Nefesh HaChaim (Rav Chaim of Volozhin, Sha'ar Alef, chapters 2 and 3) develops this at length. Were HASHEM to withdraw the sustaining will for even an instant, existence would cease. Creation is not an event in the past. Creation is an ongoing act.

The world is not a neutral arena in which human beings happen to live. The world is a continuously sustained gift, held in existence by the Source that created it. To live in such a world without recognizing this is not merely an intellectual error. It is a form of ingratitude so deep it borders on violation.

II. What Explanation Cannot Reach

Contemporary science has mapped more of reality than any prior civilization. The motion of galaxies. The behavior of subatomic particles. The emergence of consciousness. The evolution of species. The explanatory reach is real.

And it does not explain anything that actually matters.

Not because science is wrong. Because science is incomplete in a way that more science cannot fix. A theory, no matter how precise, remains a construct within reality. It maps the furniture. It identifies patterns. It compresses complexity into intelligible form. It cannot answer why there is anything at all. It cannot tell you why existence should bear meaning. It cannot generate obligation.

This is not a failure of science. This is the condition of science. Science operates within a created order characterized by regularity. The regularity itself is not generated by science. It is given. The Source that gives the regularity is not located inside the regularity, and so the regularity, no matter how thoroughly mapped, cannot account for its own existence.

This is what the Rambam means by yesod ha-yesodot. Not a piece of knowledge alongside other knowledge. The ground on which knowledge becomes possible at all. Without this ground, the most rigorous science is a description of furniture in a house no one built, a house no one is sustaining, and a house in which no demands can be made on anyone living inside.

III. What HASHEM Is Not

The tradition is more explicit about what cannot be said of HASHEM than about what can be. This is not evasion. It is precision.

The Rambam is unsparing:

כָּל הַמְּדַמֶּה לוֹ כְּמַדּוּמָה בְּנַפְשׁוֹ, הוּא חָשׁוּד

Kol ha-medameh lo ke-madumah be-nafsho, hu chashud.

"Whoever forms a mental image of HASHEM is suspect."

Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 1:9 — Sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah,_Foundations_of_the_Torah.1.9

Suspect. That is a strong word for the most careful legal mind in Jewish history. The Rambam uses it precisely because the stakes are that high. Any mental image of HASHEM is, by definition, an image of something finite. HASHEM is not finite. Any image, however noble, however elevated, however refined, is an idol. It replaces the actual infinite Source with a construct the human mind can manage.

This is why this book never uses gendered pronouns for HASHEM. The prohibition is not stylistic. Gendering HASHEM reduces the infinite to the biological, the unlimited to a particular form of being. This is the same error the Rambam identifies, dressed in more subtle clothing.

The reader of this book has likely come carrying inherited images. Not pantheism, which is a modern philosophical position few people hold. The actual residues are different. They are the image of a remote Authority who started the world and stepped back, which is deism. They are the image of an old man with a beard, which is anthropomorphism inherited from religious art and never examined. They are the image of a tribal warrior, which is what reading certain Torah passages without their tradition produces. They are the image of a moralist who keeps score, which is what childhood religious education sometimes leaves behind.

All of these are wrong. Not partly wrong. Wrong in the way a photograph of a city is wrong as a substitute for the city. Useful for some purposes, dangerous if mistaken for the thing itself.

What can be said of HASHEM, properly? Two things only, according to the Rambam. What HASHEM is not, arrived at through negation. And what HASHEM wills, arrived at through revelation. Torah is the second path. Torah does not describe the Divine essence. Torah conveys the Divine will. The difference between describing essence and conveying will is what the rest of this book operates inside.

HASHEM is not a force within the universe. Not a field. Not an emergent property of complexity. Not the sum of natural laws, however elegant those laws may be. Not the universe itself. All of these relocate the Source inside creation. Torah refuses that move completely. The Source precedes creation. The Source sustains creation. The Source is not identical with what is created.

This matters because it determines the direction of obligation. If HASHEM were a force within the universe, human beings might negotiate with that force, manipulate it, harness it for their own ends. The entire history of ancient paganism is the story of exactly that attempt. Torah closes that door. You do not negotiate with the Source. You respond to the Source. The difference between those two postures is the difference between magic and covenant.

IV. The Shema as Axiom

Twice each day, the Jewish people recite a declaration that is, at its core, a mathematical axiom for covenantal life.

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהֹוָה אֶחָד

Shema Yisrael, ADONAI Eloheinu, ADONAI Echad.

"Hear, O Israel: HASHEM is our HASHEM, HASHEM is One."

Devarim 6:4 — Sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.6.4

The word Echad, one, carries more weight than the English suggests. It does not simply count. It excludes. HASHEM is one means: there is no other source. There is no second origin. There is no competing jurisdiction that operates alongside HASHEM or in opposition to HASHEM.

The classical commentaries read Echad not as numerical oneness but as absolute singularity. Numerical oneness would only mean there is one of something. Singularity means there is nothing else of the kind, because nothing else can occupy that ontological category. HASHEM is one in the singularity sense. Everything that exists, exists within the domain of HASHEM. There is nowhere outside that domain. There is no zone of reality that proceeds on different terms.

This has consequences that most people have not fully worked through.

If there is no competing jurisdiction, then the secular and sacred divide is an illusion. Not a useful illusion. An illusion. There is no secular space, properly understood. There is only holy ground that has been treated as though it were ordinary. The person who handles money is handling HASHEM's resources. The person who speaks is using a capacity HASHEM created for covenantal purpose. The person who eats, sleeps, conducts business, or writes software is doing all of it within the only jurisdiction that exists.

The Shema is not a prayer in the ordinary sense. The Shema is a re-orientation performed twice daily to prevent the most common human error: forgetting who owns the room you are standing in.

The Sforno (Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, on Shemot 20:2), commenting on the moment of Sinai when HASHEM says Anokhi, I am, notes that the declaration begins not with a law but with a relational address. Anokhi ADONAI Elohekha. I am HASHEM your HASHEM. Before legislation. Before commandment. Before prohibition. An address. You are being spoken to. The question is whether you are listening.

V. Ahavat HASHEM: Love as Labor

The Shema does not stop at the declaration. The next verse commands love.

וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכָל לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכָל מְאֹדֶךָ

Ve-ahavta et ADONAI Elohekha be-khol levavkha u-ve-khol nafshekha u-ve-khol me'odekha.

"And you shall love HASHEM your HASHEM with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might."

Devarim 6:5 — Sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.6.5

Love is commanded. That should stop every reader. In ordinary human experience, love is the one thing that cannot be commanded. You can require behavior. You can demand presence. You cannot require feeling. And the Torah commands love.

The Rambam, in Hilkhot Teshuvah 10:3, describes the condition of a person who has actually fulfilled this command:

שֶׁיֹּאהַב אֶת ה' אַהֲבָה גְּדוֹלָה יְתֵרָה עַזָּה מְאֹד עַד שֶׁתְּהֵא נַפְשׁוֹ קְשׁוּרָה בְּאַהֲבַת ה' וְנִמְצָא שׁוֹגֶה בָּהּ תָּמִיד כְּאִלּוּ חוֹלֶה חֳלִי הָאַהֲבָה

She-yohav et ADONAI ahavah gedolah yeterah azzah me'od ad she-tehei nafsho keshurah be-ahavat ADONAI ve-nimtza shogeh bah tamid ke-ilu choleh choli ha-ahavah.

"That a person should love HASHEM with a very great and exceeding and strong love, until the soul is bound up in the love of HASHEM, constantly absorbed in it, as one who is lovesick."

Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah 10:3 — Sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah,_Repentance.10.3

Lovesick. The Rambam, the most rigorous legal mind in Jewish history, uses that word. The soul that has grasped what it means that HASHEM is the Source of everything cannot rest. It is perpetually drawn back toward the Source. Not as a matter of discipline alone. As a matter of constitution.

This is not mystical poetry. It is halakhic anthropology. The Rambam is describing the normative interior state of a person who has understood correctly. If that description seems remote from most religious experience, including religious experience that involves regular observance and genuine commitment, then something in the understanding remains incomplete. Not the practice. The understanding of what the practice is anchored to. Chapter Three will develop what this love does when it moves outward.

VI. Yosher: Character Before Law

The Netziv, Rabbi Naphtali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, opens his commentary on the Torah with a claim that runs against the common assumption about what Torah is for.

In the Petach Ha-Sha'ar (the introductory essay to Ha'amek Davar, his commentary on the Torah), the Netziv argues that the Torah's first demand is not observance of specific commandments. It is the formation of a person who is yashar, upright. Honest. Aligned with reality. Before specific law, there must be a character capable of receiving law properly. Before character, there must be recognition: HASHEM is the Source, the human being stands before that Source as a recipient, not an origin.

The Netziv anchors this in the patriarchs. The Avot were yashar first and scholars of Torah in the formal sense second. Not because Torah was less important. Because you cannot carry Torah properly without the foundational character that Yosher represents. A person who lacks that foundational uprightness will find a way to use Torah for their own purposes, even while appearing to serve it. The Torah then becomes a tool of self-assertion rather than a command to be obeyed.

This insight sits beneath everything else in this book. The architecture of covenant, the disciplines of Arevut and Anavah, the demands of Ahavat Ha-Briyot, and the structures of daily practice all require, as their precondition, a person who is fundamentally honest about what they are and where they stand. A person who has not yet achieved that honesty will build impressive-looking structures on the wrong foundation. They will call it Torah. It will not be.

Netziv, Ha'amek Davar, Petach Ha-Sha'ar (Mossad HaRav Kook edition, Volume 1)

VII. Wisdom Begins with Orientation

Mishlei states it plainly:

רֵאשִׁית חָכְמָה יִרְאַת יְהֹוָה

Reishit chokhmah yirat ADONAI.

"The beginning of wisdom is awe of HASHEM."

Mishlei 9:10 — Sefaria.org/Proverbs.9.10

Not knowledge. Wisdom. The distinction matters. A person can accumulate enormous knowledge without wisdom. The Rambam, in the Guide for the Perplexed III:51, addresses this exact failure mode. A scholar of Torah who masters legal categories without ever orienting toward HASHEM has, in the Rambam's account, mastered the structure but missed the substance. The opposite of wisdom is not ignorance. The opposite of wisdom is orientation toward something other than the Source.

The Malbim explains that yirah here does not mean trembling fear. It means alert attentiveness. Yirat HASHEM is the ongoing awareness of where you stand in relation to the Source. It is the discipline of not forgetting. A person in a state of genuine yirat HASHEM cannot make the error of treating their own conclusions as ultimate, because they are continuously aware that their conclusions are held within a frame they did not construct and cannot revise.

This is the beginning of wisdom. Not the end. Not the whole. The beginning. Without it, every subsequent intellectual achievement floats free of its anchor. With it, every achievement, however modest, has a direction.

The same Mishlei continues:

דַּעַת קְדֹשִׁים בִּינָה

Da'at kedoshim binah.

"Knowledge of the holy ones is understanding."

Mishlei 9:10 — Sefaria.org/Proverbs.9.10

Da'at, the kind of knowing that Torah prizes, is not information processing. It is intimate orientation toward the object of knowledge. To know HASHEM, in the Torah's sense, is to be drawn toward the Source. To study Torah in the Torah's sense is to allow the command to reshape the one who studies. The person who studies Torah for intellectual satisfaction and stops there has not yet begun to know it.

VIII. Ein Od Milvado: There Is Nothing Beside HASHEM

The most radical claim in the Torah, repeated in the tradition with absolute consistency, is this:

אַתָּה הׇרְאֵתָ לָדַעַת כִּי יְהֹוָה הוּא הָאֱלֹהִים אֵין עוֹד מִלְּבַדּוֹ

Atah hor'eita lada'at ki ADONAI hu ha-ELOHIM, ein od milvado.

"You have been shown, in order to know, that HASHEM is the HASHEM; there is nothing beside HASHEM."

Devarim 4:35 — Sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.4.35

Ein od milvado. There is nothing beside HASHEM.

Not: there is nothing as powerful as HASHEM. Not: there is nothing that should be worshipped alongside HASHEM. There is nothing beside HASHEM. This is the claim of absolute singularity. Every force, every law, every structure that appears to operate independently is, in reality, a disclosed face of Divine will. Nature is not a separate system that HASHEM created and then stepped back from. Nature is the continuous expression of the will that created it.

The Ba'al HaTanya develops this understanding at length in Sha'ar HaYichud v'HaEmunah, especially chapters 1 through 7. Creation is described as a form of perception that transforms how the physical world is seen. Not as a collection of autonomous objects governed by independent forces, but as a unified expression of the One Source, in which every particular thing is nothing other than the Divine will taking a particular form.

Ba'al HaTanya, Sha'ar HaYichud v'HaEmunah, chapters 1-7 — Sefaria.org/Tanya,_Shaar_HaYichud_VehaEmunah

This is philosophically demanding. It is also, once grasped, practically transformative. The person who genuinely lives with ein od milvado cannot treat any sphere of life as exempt from covenantal responsibility. Business is not a neutral arena. Politics is not a neutral arena. Technology is not a neutral arena. There is no neutral arena. Everything is within the jurisdiction of the One, and therefore everything is subject to Torah.

The objection has to specify where the neutral arena actually is. No one has done so.

IX. The Asymmetry of Covenant

Torah does not present human beings as passive recipients of Divine action. Nor does Torah elevate human beings to co-authors of reality. The posture Torah demands is something more specific and more demanding than either.

Partnership in Torah is asymmetrical by design. HASHEM commands. Human beings respond. Creativity, interpretation, and initiative are welcomed, even required. Always within a framework that is not of human making and cannot be revised by human authority.

The Bava Metzia 59b passage about the Oven of Akhnai makes this precise. When Rabbi Eliezer appeals to a heavenly voice to validate his halakhic position, the sages reject it. Lo va-shamayim hi. The Torah is not in heaven. The Torah has been given. Interpretation belongs to the human community now. The framework, however, was not generated by the human community. It was received.

Talmud Bavli, Bava Metzia 59b — Sefaria.org/Bava_Metzia.59b

This asymmetry is what distinguishes covenant from contract. A contract is negotiated between parties of comparable standing. A covenant is offered by one party and accepted by another. The Torah uses contractual language at points, but the underlying structure is covenantal. The terms are not negotiable. Acceptance is the only response that produces a covenantal relationship at all. Rejection or modification produces something else, sometimes called religion, sometimes called spirituality, sometimes called ethics. None of these is covenant.

Chapter Two will return to this asymmetry at the specific historical moment when it became event.

X. The Lovesick Soul: What This Changes

Everything in Sections I through IX is theology. Theology that does not change a life has not been understood. So the question becomes: what changes?

It changes how you work. You are not building your career. You are deploying capacities that HASHEM placed in your hands into a world that HASHEM created for purposes HASHEM defined. The pressure of ego does not disappear. The character of the pressure changes. It becomes easier to subordinate personal preference to covenantal requirement when you genuinely understand that personal preference is a small thing inside a very large frame.

It changes how you fail. A person who understands that HASHEM is the Source knows that failure does not end the relationship. The covenant does not depend on your success rate. The covenant depends on your fidelity. Teshuvah, return, is always available. The path back is never closed. This is not permission to fail carelessly. It is a structural reality that makes sustained effort possible without the crushing weight of perfectionism. Chapter Six will treat the discipline of return at full weight.

It changes how you see other people. Every human being is made in the image of HASHEM.

וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹהִים אֶת הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים בָּרָא אֹתוֹ

Va-yivra ELOHIM et ha-adam be-tzalmo, be-tzelem ELOHIM bara oto.

"And HASHEM created the human in the Divine image, in the image of HASHEM was the human created."

Bereishit 1:27 — Sefaria.org/Genesis.1.27

Tzelem Elohim, the image of HASHEM. Every person you encounter carries that image. Not some people. Every person. The neighbor you find annoying. The stranger whose choices you do not understand. The person whose community and yours have never managed to speak a common language. Each is a bearer of the image of the Source of everything.

That recognition is the foundation of Ahavat Ha-Briyot. Not as sentiment. As consequence of what you already know about the Source. If HASHEM is the Source of everything, and every human being carries HASHEM's image, then contempt for any human being is contempt for the image of the Source. It is a theological error with practical consequences. Chapter Three will treat the circuit between Ahavat HASHEM and Ahavat Ha-Briyot. Chapter Four will show how Arevut, shared covenantal liability, builds the structural framework that prevents this error from remaining merely individual.

XI. The Foundation Holds Everything

Every chapter that follows in this book rests on what this chapter has established.

Arevut cannot be understood without first understanding that HASHEM created every person in the Divine image, which means every person's welfare is a covenantal concern. Anavah cannot be understood without first understanding that HASHEM is the Source and human beings are respondents, not originators. Ahavat HASHEM without the Rambam's lovesick soul reduces to sentiment. Ahavat Ha-Briyot without the theological grounding in Tzelem Elohim reduces to philanthropy.

Later volumes will treat the labor of Geulah directly. That labor only makes sense if the Source that intends repair is real. Chapter One establishes that Source.

This is why the Rambam put this chapter first. Not because it seemed like a good introduction. Because without it, nothing that follows can bear weight.

מְלֹא כׇל־הָאָרֶץ כְּבוֹדוֹ

Melo khol ha-aretz kevodo.

"The whole earth is full of HASHEM's glory."

Yeshayahu 6:3 — Sefaria.org/Isaiah.6.3

Full. Not partially. Not in holy places only. The whole earth. The seraphim who cry this out are not announcing a future hope. They are describing an existing reality that most human perception, dulled by habit and distraction, fails to register. The labor of the Torah life is, in part, the labor of learning to see what is already there.

HASHEM is the Source of everything. Not as a slogan. Not as a preamble to the actual theology. As the actual theology. The one from which every other claim in this book proceeds.

If this is true, everything changes. Not gradually. From the root.

◆ ◆ ◆

The question this chapter leaves you with is not whether HASHEM exists. The question is whether you live as though HASHEM is the Source of everything, including the life you are living right now.

Chapter One: Source Notes and Citations

All citations verified through Sefaria.org where Sefaria carries the text. Where Sefaria does not carry a text (notably the Ha'amek Davar), the canonical print edition is cited. Hebrew text follows standard Masoretic vocalization. Transliterations follow Sephardic pronunciation as used in daily tefillah.

Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 1:1, 1:2, 1:9 — The opening of the Mishneh Torah; the foundation of all foundations; the prohibition on mental images.

Sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah,_Foundations_of_the_Torah.1

Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah 10:3 — The lovesick soul: the normative interior state of a person who has understood the Source correctly.

Sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah,_Repentance.10.3

Rambam, Guide for the Perplexed III:51 — The failure mode of mastering the structure of Torah without orientation toward HASHEM.

Sefaria.org/Guide_for_the_Perplexed,_Part_3.51

Devarim 6:4 (Shema Yisrael) — The axiom of singularity. HASHEM is one in the sense of absolute singularity, not numerical oneness.

Sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.6.4

Devarim 6:5 (Ve-ahavta) — The command to love. Love as labor of total reorientation, not feeling.

Sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.6.5

Devarim 4:35 (Ein od milvado) — There is nothing beside HASHEM. The claim of absolute singularity that closes the door on every alternative jurisdiction.

Sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.4.35

Bereishit 1:27 (Tzelem Elohim) — Every human being is created in the Divine image. The theological foundation of Ahavat Ha-Briyot.

Sefaria.org/Genesis.1.27

Mishlei 9:10 (Reishit chokhmah) — The beginning of wisdom is awe of HASHEM. Yirah as alert attentiveness, not trembling fear.

Sefaria.org/Proverbs.9.10

Yeshayahu 6:3 (Melo khol ha-aretz) — The whole earth is full of HASHEM's glory. The seraphic vision of an already-present reality.

Sefaria.org/Isaiah.6.3

Talmud Bavli, Bava Metzia 59b (Lo va-shamayim hi) — The Oven of Akhnai. Interpretation belongs to the human community after Torah was given.

Sefaria.org/Bava_Metzia.59b

Sforno on Shemot 20:2 — The Anokhi declaration as relational address before legislation.

Sefaria.org/Sforno_on_Exodus.20.2

Nefesh HaChaim, Sha'ar Alef, chapters 2 and 3 — Creation as continuously sustained will, not a past event.

Sefaria.org/Nefesh_HaChaim,_Gate_One.2

Ba'al HaTanya, Sha'ar HaYichud v'HaEmunah, chapters 1-7 — The Hasidic development of ein od milvado as transformative perception.

Sefaria.org/Tanya,_Shaar_HaYichud_VehaEmunah

Netziv (Rabbi Naphtali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin), Ha'amek Davar, Petach Ha-Sha'ar — Yosher as the foundational character that precedes specific Torah observance. Mossad HaRav Kook edition, Volume 1.

Print edition. Sefaria does not currently carry the full Ha'amek Davar.

All citations verified through Sefaria.org where Sefaria carries the text.

Transliteration follows Sephardic pronunciation throughout.