Forward reader Nochum Elek inquires: “I would like to know
whether the Yiddish expression in zibnten himl [in seventh
heaven] is a translation from the English, or whether it is the
other way around and the English ‘seventh heaven’ comes from the
one mentioned in the tractate of Hagigah in the Talmud, where it
says: ‘There are seven heavens: Vilon, Rakia, Shehakim, Zevul,
Ma’on, Makhon, [and] Aravot.’ And if so, what is so special
about the seventh heaven?” The idea that the heavens are
multiple and stacked one above another was widespread among the
ancient cultures of the world. Perhaps this came from a natural
tendency to ask what lay above the dome of the sky and to
imagine a hierarchy of additional skies in which the gods
dwelled. But the number of heavens one finds in the world’s
ancient mythologies was not necessarily seven. Lesser and
greater numbers were imagined, too. The number of seven, or
sometimes eight, first took hold in the Near East and eastern
Mediterranean world as a blend of Babylonian ast