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Torah
The Torah scroll was passed around the circle lovingly,
and when it reached me I hesitated, then accepted it into my arms. As
I pressed my cheek against it, feeling the force of its words, every
letter, from b to I-and I back to b--burning in me. It is said that
the letters of Torah are black fire written on white fire, and at that
moment I understood.
What is Torah, that I feel this way? "Zot ha Torah", we say,
but what is this this? Words, ancient words, a collection of history,
family stories, and laws--written down by the greatest prophet, or by
many scribes?
Given directly by Hashem, word by Iword-or Divinely inspired?
I believe Torah is mi-Sinai. That all of Torah was given
to Moshe on Sinai, and that all of its words are eternal and unchangeable.
And at the same time I believe it is entirely possible that the Torah
was written down
by many different scribes, and that there is new Torah in every generation.
I know these are seemingly contradictory beliefs, though they exist
in harmony in my own self. I don't believe there is any contradiction
in believing all of Torah was given to Moshe Rabbeinu by Hashem on Sinai
and believing it may have well been written down (again?) much later.
Perhaps those (theoretical) scribes were merely recovering what had
been given before, but lost.
Torah is eternal and unchangeable-and yet evolving and ever¬changing. The Teaching is forever, and none of it can be removed or ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. The Zohar (I believe) teaches us that the entire Torah, every word, every letter, every story and every law, is part of one Name of G-d, and this is an idea that resonates very strongly with me. If this is so, then how could we change even one letter-we would be trying to change the Name of G-dl And if it all is G-d, then it all is valuable, even if some of it is difficult or painful or seems irrelevant to us today--then we have to turn it and turn it until we can see what it was intended to mean to us-which may not be what it meant to us a hundred years ago, or athousand years ago.
I believe that the Teaching is new for every generation. The words are always the same, the laws are always the same, but what they need to teach every generation is different. It says in the Talmud when there is a seemingly irreconcilable conflict that someday Eliyahu will come to resolve it. Eliyahu, the prophet who never died, and not Moshe Rabbeinu, who gave us Torah in the first place and would therefore be the most logical candidate to come and resolve Torah conflicts for us? It has been said that this is because Eliyahu never died--he is alive in every generation, and therefore knows-and can teach-the Torah of every generation. But Moshe died. He knew and could teach only the Torah of his own generation. This tells me that that the understanding of Torah as being renewed in every generation is not a new one.Torah is eternal-and evolving. The meaning of words and laws is different in every generation. The meaning of the laws of korbanot had one meaning in the days when the Temple still stood, but they took on new meanings afterward. They had to! If we kept reading them with what was probably their 'original meaning'--that this was the way of drawing close to G-d, where would we have been when the Temple was lost and we no longer had a place to bring these physical offerings of our animals and grains? Instead, we looked into the words, and found new meaning in them, and saw that we had more ways of coming close to G-d. We did not remove these laws of korbanot from Torah, nor did we decide they had no meaning for us anymore-we learned to take new meaning from them when the old meaning could no longer exist for us.
I have tried to take this approach in all my study of Torah. I think
it's important to understand what the traditional meanings and interpretations
have been, and also to know what some of the modem interpretations arefrom
a historical or sociall anthropological perspective. But for me it's
also very important to find what each law or verse means to me, in my
life. And sometimes that's not easy. I look at the involved and technical
details of the building of the mishkan, for example, and I wonder, how
can this apply to my life? Isn't this just a long, boring, repetitive
section-impressive in its description of the hard work and generosity,
and in the beauty of all that went into it-important to know, perhaps,
but not especially relevant in my own fife? I can't accept that. I have
learned to see the description of the building of the mishkan as teaching
me the importance of sacred space-of making a place for G!d in our lives.
And by that I do not mean just physical space, but space in time. It
teaches me that that space is incredibly special, and so I must give
the best of what I have to it, give it generously, and construct it
carefully. I must make the time when I dawen good time, / trying always
to dawen with kawanah, and not simply mumble through the words by rote,
trying to hurry through it and move on to other things. This is what
I have learned to take from this section.
I have learned other things from other places--different things than other people take from them, probably, but I feel that what I am taking is what Torah has to teach me, which may be different or the same as what she has to teach another person.I am someone who is very new to the study, the idea, of Torah. Sometimes I am surprised still at how deeply I feel her sacredness, how much I need her in my life. I want to live a life in Torah, by mitzvot¬ although I know my understanding of what this means is quite different than the traditional definition of a life lived according to halachah. IEtz chaim hi -she is a tree of life, and I will hold her fast. I will live in Torah, so Torah can live in me.