The further away we drew from the Torah throughout our history, the closer it got to us.
How Did the Torah Become a Book?
“And when He desired and thought of creating the world and it was revealed in a desire before Him, He would look at the Torah and create the world.” (The Book of Zohar, “Toledot“)
Just think about it, the world did not even exist but the Torah already did. He did not look at a book when he created the world. It wasn’t the book that was given to the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai.
The Torah is a comprehensive development program, a complete guide to creation. This is the matrix we are all part of. It is impossible to overcome it or to run from it. But once, at a certain moment of growing up that was predetermined by it, we will know about it. We will not simply receive information, but we will be conscious of where we are and what is happening to us.
It is the same with a small child who after the first “unconscious” years begins to understand that he is living in a vast world and this world requires his participation. In the evolution of man, there comes a time when the matrix awakens him from his infantile oblivion. He says goodbye to his crib and the nursery, opens the door, and leaves his home.
At that moment, everything changes: the world acquires volume, sound, colors, and meaning. It turns out that life is a path that has an eternal goal, and we can advance toward consciously, through our free choice, together. Then it isn’t only the matrix that impacts us, but we too impact the matrix.
Thus, we become acquainted with the general plan and with the force that operates us. A couple of thousand years ago humanity reached this level. People who called themselves Kabbalists discovered the only system of reality and began to study its laws, to connect to it, and to describe it.
Thus, they attained the Torah, wrote books that reflected its attributes and laws and most importantly—the direction it shows us. They saw the general picture and understood the general process, just as we understand the general phases of the development of a baby.
“Before the world was created, the Torah had preceded the world by two-thousand years.” (The Book of Zohar, “Truma“)
At the peak of the attainment of the plan, a whole nation lived by being conscious of its laws in a reality that was much broader than ours. But one day everything disappeared. It fell from its height, and with it the hopes for the whole world collapsed. Then the Torah became merely a book, which tells us how we should live on Earth, a special holy book. But we have already forgotten the structure of creation, the method of ascending above ourselves, the tool for attaining unity in the world.
The door was closed and we returned to the nursery where we have been living until this very day.
The Disruption of High Frequencies
There are 54 Parashot (sections) in the Torah, 613 commandments, 79,976 words, 304,805 letters. It is read in synagogues during the year according to the weekly Parasha. It includes the history of the Jewish nation, of its leaders, starting from the forefathers until Moses, the Tower of Babel, the land that the Creator had shown Abraham, the wandering in the desert, the slavery in Egypt, Mt. Sinai that shook in flames and smoke…
If we read the Torah this way, if we understand it this way, the main part is missing and it is a wrapping without a filling. Read this way, it is detached from the roots, projected in print on our ordinary consciousness, and is fixed under the title “Holy Scriptures.”
This is how it is transmitted through the egoistic perception of the world and ceases to be the plan of our development. It is not moving; it isn’t attractive; it doesn’t develop us; it doesn’t reveal new worlds, and does not give us the power to reveal them, but actually calms us and puts us to sleep. For some, it may be a tradition; for others, it is a collection of absolute laws of our corporeal existence. In the past it united the nation, but now it divides it, breaks us apart, and puts people on two sides of the fence.
No, this isn’t the Torah, it isn’t the force that changes a person that pulls us out of our primitive ego that is limited to our corporeal life. In the past it called us upward, and now it has become a means of pressure on people, compelling, demanding, and limiting them. People study it by heart, verify it by different historical findings, and undermine its ideological basis. Religions grow around it, mysticism and cynics gather around it, philosophers quote it, and scientists study it trying to decipher its code.
It has turned into the best seller of all times and of all nations long ago. Those whom the Torah calls “homeowners” wave it because they don’t want to step over the threshold and leave their “home” for something greater.
“Small, limited people come along indifferently filling us with different drugs and mainly keep the drug of life out of our sight…in order to suffocate the Creator’s voice calling us from the depths of the soul and filling all the worlds: demand Me and live.” (Rav Kook).
When the great holiday of the giving of the Torah arrives, we once again reject it, which leaves us with the book again. Even if it is special, even if it is holy, it is a book and not the great tissue of the creation into which we are woven, whether we like it or not, a book, not a huge world, and not a majestic system that surrounds us because for us it was created.
We reject it. Why? Because it lives in bestowal and teaches us the same thing.
Poison at the Tip of the Blade
“The major principle of attaining the Torah is unity, as one man in one heart.” (“Maor Va’Shemesh“)
At Mt. Sinai we were given a common approach to the general system and we were allowed to consciously come in contact with it, to study it, to explore it, and to be incorporated in it in our mind and feelings. The access code is love of others, the software interface is a relationship with others that is based on bestowal. The Torah is meant to reveal the conglomerate of the forces that operate on us, impact us, and enable us to be mutually and effectively connected with them. Thus, we use the Torah—we leave the nursery, grow up, and mature.
The transformation does not take place in our fantasies, not in the next world, but here and now, in ascending above the ego, and this is the reason that it is so easy for a person to check himself and whether he receives the Torah as a pain killer or as an excuse. The criterion is simple: we use the Torah just as we treat each other, either as a medicine or a poison.
Judging by the current situation, we find ourselves at an impasse, divided, crushed, quarreling, and accepting all that as inevitable. It isn’t the positive force of the Torah that accompanies us on the way to our goal, but the negativity of our own essence, which we are used to, but which is just as destructive,
In the meantime, the world is growing in its diapers and reaches situations in which it will not be able to manage without a wise teacher. It is only in theory that a person is able to soberly assess the situation and come to the right conclusion. In practice, our desires are much stronger than us, and even on the verge of an abyss, we will continue to carry on with our childish acts. This is our nature.
The sages use the clear and bitter metaphor of seeing the angel of death with a drop of poison at the tip of the blade of his sword and the “obedient” man opens up his mouth and swallows it. It is because we cannot do things otherwise. Even our wise nation has fallen into this trap of the ego, and it seems that once again it is ready to head toward the “slaughter” judging by the conflicts in Israel and among the Jews abroad. For them, Israel is becoming a useless liability from which they will be happy to cut themselves off once and for all.
This outcome is inevitable unless we accept the Torah, unless we become responsible for each other despite the mountain of doubts and hatred that is looming over us. This is where our free choice is, since the Torah, unlike the angel of death, works only if we want it, if we need it, not only in words, but in deeds, if we regard it as a medicine for our divisiveness, as the wisdom of bestowal and of the right mutual cooperation with the general system.
Hurry Up to Love
We are all different and we see the world differently. This is quite normal. The Torah doesn’t require anyone to give up his principles and beliefs. It does not need artificial socialist compromises. It raises us to the level in which only the hearts and the connection between them remain. Then everything merges together.
“Hurry to love, for the hour has come.” (Rabbi Elazar Azikri)
No one is right or to blame. We all find ourselves before our mountain of hatred, at some point, facing the need to make a common decision. Its essence is the birth of man, the birth of a new society, of a new attitude to life and to each other. When we yearn for that, the system will help us, guide us, and answer our questions. But if we don’t, it will make us face the facts that are presented to us at the tip of the blade of a sword.
Therefore, if the question is whether to receive the Torah or not, we will receive it. The next question is whether we hasten love.
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Related Material:
Shavuot: About Giving And Receiving
Invitation To Reveal The Torah
Giving Of The Torah or The Right To Be Human
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