Gimel is the third letter and has the value three. Sefer HaBahir connects its name to gomel, one who performs a kindness: "why is Gimel third? Because it is third, and to make known that it performs kindnesses," gomel chassadim. Its shape has a head above and a foot that descends. Sefer Yetzirah places it in the group Gimel, Yod, Kaf, Kof, one of the five families of letters according to the place in the mouth that pronounces them.
In Sefer Yetzirah, Gimel is one of the seven doubles, with a hard or soft sound. The book gives the doubles seven foundations, each with its opposite: life and death, peace and evil, wisdom and folly, wealth and poverty, grace and ugliness, seed and desolation, dominion and servitude. For Gimel, it writes that G-d "made the letter Gimel reign and bound a crown to it," and through it formed Tzedek, the planet we call Jupiter, in the world, the second day of the week in time and the left eye in the body.
In tractate Shabbat, the children read: "Gimel Dalet, gemol dalim," do good to the poor. Then they look at the shape of the letters. "Why is the foot of Gimel stretched toward Dalet? Because it is the way of one who performs kindnesses to run after the poor." The letter does not wait for others to come to it: it already has a foot pointing toward the one that follows it.
Sefer HaBahir develops both senses of the word. Rabbi Akiva said that Gimel is third because it "weans, grows and sustains," as in the verse "the child grew and was weaned," vayigamal. The master of the Bahir answers that this is indeed his teaching: it grows and performs kindness toward its neighbor. Then he explains the shape: Gimel has a head above and a tail below, like a water pipe; just as a pipe draws from above and pours out below, Gimel draws through its head and pours out through its tail. The Alphabet of Rabbi Akiva has G-d say: "Without My kindnesses, the whole world would not endure even one hour," and counts among them breath and soul, knowledge, the light of the eyes and the hearing of the ears.
Three, kindness in motion. The Talmud and the Bahir make Gimel the letter that gives, and the Bahir describes its shape as that of a pipe that draws from above and pours out below. One may cautiously bring the two images together: Gimel does not keep what it receives, it brings it down to Dalet, the poor one, toward whom it is already running.
