Like the shape of it’s font implies, yud is a point, a seed. It usually, if not always, refers to chochma. Chochma is usually translated as wisdom, but in Chassidus, it is usually referring to creative thought, or openness of the mind.

An example of a manifestation of chochma is how the Rabbeim describe it. They call it, “borok hamavrik,” the flash of lightening. In the language of the prophet, “Chochma me’ayin timotze,” in English, “from where does wisdom come?” The word “me’ayin,” means, “from where,” but it also means, as explained in Chassidus, from “ayin” or “nothing,” referring to kesser. All of this fits with the Alter Rebbe’s definition of chochma in Tanya (ch. 3, top of p. 14), “ko’ach mah,” the power or potential for “what.” “What” implying the unidentifiable, the bittul, the humility, that is the ability (ko’ach) to receive revelation.

The implication is: when a person is creative, or especially when creativity is not necessarily their forte, the person realizes that it comes from beyond them. For some, to look at a canvas and for ideas to spill out onto it, comes naturally. It is almost as if their mind is attuned to a loftier signal. The same applies to one who is intelligent who when faced with a problem or a question to resolve (to which the person has little or no background), the person’s mind is flooded with ideas and possible answers until the more grounded intellectual capacities (binah, analysis) choose the most logically true. In other words, the mind receives creative information from “nowhere.”

Another definition, which originates in kabboloh, which the Alter Rebbe describes (in Likkutei Torah, Lo Sashbis Melach) is “b’chochma isberirru,” “with chochma they refine/sift.” There he explains that the way we’re able to recognize the difference between good and not good is with chochma. Chochma has the power to differentiate, identify, recognize, realize, etc.

Chochma is also called abba (father) relative to ima (mother), binah which unite to create offspring, the emotions (z”a, the sons and malchus, the daughter).