Reish is the twentieth letter and its value is two hundred. It has no final form. Its name is close to the word rosh, head, and that is how Rabbi Akiva reads it.
In Sefer Yetzirah, reish is one of the seven double letters, bet, gimel, dalet, kaf, peh, reish, tav. The book counts it among those pronounced in two ways, soft and hard, and writes two sounds for it as well. The foundations of the doubles are life, peace, wisdom, wealth, grace, seed and dominion, each with its opposite: death, evil, folly, poverty, ugliness, desolation, servitude. For reish the book writes: "He made the letter reish king, He bound a crown to it," and formed through it Kokhav, Mercury, in the world, the sixth day in the year and the left nostril in the soul. In the classification of sounds, reish belongs to the letters of the teeth, zayin, samekh, shin, reish, tzadi.
The Talmud reports the reading of the alphabet that children once gave in the study hall, which the Sages came to relate to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. "Kuf: kadosh, holy; reish: rasha, wicked." The face of the kuf turns away from the reish, for the Holy One cannot look at the wicked; but the crown of the kuf is turned toward the reish: if he returns, I bind for him a crown like Mine. And the leg of the kuf is suspended, so that the wicked one who returns may enter through that opening. Reish Lakish concludes: one who comes to purify himself is helped.
The Alphabet of Rabbi Akiva gives two texts. In the account of the letters presenting themselves before the Holy One, blessed be He, before creation, reish pleads: through me it is said "the beginning, rosh, of Your word is truth," and the beginning of Your names, Rachum, the Merciful, is in me, and also healing, refuah. The answer is no: through you Israel will wish "to appoint a head and return to Egypt," and the idol in Daniel is called a head; and reish is ra, evil, and the beginning of rasha. In the other version, Rabbi Akiva reads: "reish is rosh," the Holy One, blessed be He, head of the whole world and its end, "who calls the generations from the beginning"; and further: reish is His word, called rosh, by which He created the seven heavens.
The sources show a divided letter. Reish is the head, the beginning, the true word and the name of the Merciful One; it is also evil and the wicked. The Talmud does not leave the reish in its fall: it is toward it that the crown of the kuf remains turned, and it is for it that the opening stays free.
