"And these are the laws that you shall place (sam) before them…"
Bothered by the choice of the word "place" instead of "teach," Rashi quotes the Midrash and explains the deeper meaning that the verse is trying to impart. Rashi says that G-d is warning Moshe that it shouldn't occur to him to merely teach the Jewish People the Torah and the laws until they are ingrained within them and memorized in their raw and tasteless forms, that he shouldn't say 'I will not trouble myself to give over the Taam (reason, taste) of each thing and its explanation'. This is why it says "place before them," the Torah and the laws should be placed and laid out like a set table in which everything is prepared and ready to be eaten.
This Rashi raises concern among many of the finest educators of religious Judaism. First off, this parallel of a set table in which many kinds of foods are laid out, seems to imply that the laws are optional, and that one has a choice as to which ones to make use of and which to ignore. Furthermore, if the commandments are based on reason, whether it is intellectual, philosophical or scientific, it will have varying relevance to different people depending on their educational level, age, and intelligence. It can also cease to be relevant to an individual when they come to a new understanding of life, or a new scientific theory is discovered which proves the original one wrong. Because of all this, the Rabbis worry that if we go by this approach, seeking out the taamei ha-mitzvot (reasons for the mitzvoth), the Torah and Mitzvot are then under the danger of being abandoned.
This difficulty is commonly resolved by many contemporary Rabbis by saying that the laws should be laid out like the Shulchan Aruch (The Set Table), the major law book studied by religious Jews across the globe, in which each law is written down in precise and meticulous detail, telling us precisely what must be done in each situation we come across. Our rabbis say what Rashi must mean when he talks about "giving reasons," is that one should search for the mesora (tradition), the way it was handed down throughout the generations from the Mishna and Gemara though earlier and later Rabbis, and down to the present generation. But, G-d forbid, that one should base the mitzvot on one's own personal understanding.
This seems to be a difficult reading of Rashi, and it is hard to say that that is what he meant. And, as one of our Rashei Yeshiva says, this approach to the Shulchan Aruch is most likely not how Rabbi Yosef Karo, the author of the Shulchan Aruch, intended his book to be studied.
The questions raised above, however, still stand. How can we be sure that the Torah and mitzvot will retain their legitimacy if they are based on reason? I do not intend to answer this, because history has proven that any accepted ideology that is based solely on intellectual, philosophical or scientific truth, can be expected to lose its value over time when a new truth is discovered or new ideal is popularized. The confusion surrounding this question may be cleared up by simply reading Rashi in the literal sense, analyzing the choice of analogy and keeping in mind the dual meanings of many Hebrew words.
The analogy Rashi brought for the way the Laws are meant to be transmitted was that of readily edible and tasty food laid out in front of a person. Rashi is pointing out a parallel between food and laws that already exists in the Holy Language (Lashon Ha-Kodesh). The word used for "reason" (ta'am), as in the phrase "ta'amei ha-mitzvot", also means "taste" and is used with regards to food. Now, to "taste" something is to "experience" it; when I taste my food, I am experiencing its delight. This taste that I experience is not based on my reading the ingredients and chemical content nor is it based on my understanding of the production process and manufacturing sequence through which the food came to me. I know it tastes good, not because I was told it tastes good and not because it logically should taste good, but rather solely because I am experiencing its goodness. If someone tries to prove to me that I do not taste anything good right now, I will laugh at them. How can my experience be false when I'm experiencing it?
This is how our relationship with Hashem is meant to be; in the words of David Ha-Melech, "Taste and see that Hashem is good" (Tehillim/Psalms 34).
Torah is the drug through which we have this experience. As the Gemara in Maseket Yoma says on the verse, "This is the Torah that Moshe placed (sam) before the Children of Israel," "sam" also means "drug." "If one merits", says Rabbi Yehoshua son of Levi, "it will be for him a drug of life; if he doesn't merit it will be for him a drug of death." How does one make it a drug of life? Rava says, Torah is a drug of life if one is uman to it. "Uman" can be understood to mean being "faithful" to Torah or making it one's "craft". Faith begins where logic ends and experience is beyond logic. I cannot describe to someone who never tasted fruit how an apple tastes, all I can say is 'try it for yourself'. Were one to insist on first understanding it before taking a bite, one would never get to experience its sweetness. To be a craftsman is to be completely involved in what you are doing. We cannot experience the delight of good tasting food when we are eating in a rush or our minds are preoccupied. So too in the realm of Kedusha (roughly, "holiness"). We cannot experience the full delight of Torah and mitzvot if we don't jump with our whole bodies, letting go of all intellectual baggage, and truly trying to experience it.
The Mishnah Berurah says that the practicing of mitzvot and speaking words of Torah and tefillah through habit, without feeling in the heart, is a primary cause of our suffering and the darkness in the world. As the prophet Yeshayah, speaking for Hashem, said, "[the curses] are because this nation approaches me, with their mouth and lips they honor me, but their heart is far from me". This is what the Gemara means when it says the Torah can be a drug of death.
Today many of us who keep the mitzvot consider ourselves either "Observant Jews" or "Practicing Jews". These two expressions reveal a deep truth in the way we approach our tradition. Too often we are observers standing and analyzing our tradition from the outside though never getting fully involved, or we are merely practicing though never trying to do it for real. This inability to experience the true light and joy of Torah and mitzvot is what it means to say the Shekhinah is in exile.
At the endpoint and darkest part of this bitter exile, we have lost the true mesorah and we cling instead to the words of our teachers as they are written with dry ink on bland paper. We fail to grasp the burning passion that lies behind their words since we can no longer see their face and experience cannot be passed down through words. It is no wonder that there are so many Jews today who are far away from the Torah. And it is no wonder that the Kiruv seminars and those who try to prove religion by mathematical equations and scientific theories only reach a small percentage, and many of those end up leaving Judaism when the theory is proven wrong. What we don't take into account is that anything that can be intellectually proven, can also be proven wrong, but an experience can never be taken away.
We witness the heavy addictions that cheap drugs give to people, addictions in which people literally give up their lives trying to intensify their experience. Let us be not afraid and let us have faith that a true experience of one act or word of Torah, the ultimate drug of life, will keep our children coming back no matter how far they fall. They will keep trying to connect closer and closer to their Creator. This passion has kept Torah alive for thousands of years, and this passion is what we are missing today. It is not through the bible codes or philosophies that the Torah has lasted for thousands of years, nor is it the fear of godly punishment nor through respect for tradition that kept our religion alive while other religions and world philosophies rose and fell. This kind of mathematical Torah learning will not wake us up in the future. Many teenagers, having been raised in highly respectable, Orthodox homes, are rebelling blatantly against all that their parents, community, and religion represent and everything that their surroundings were trying to ingrain in them. Many of these teenagers understandably turn to drugs. All they want is to experience something high, something they've been terribly deprived of. The sole focus on Gemara learning as intellectual stimulation that is the prize of our yeshiva system is no longer working for many of us. And the fear of exposure to the outside world has all but vanished from our children.
As Rav Kook foretold, more and more souls are coming into the world from a higher place and they seek a higher light. We need to give it to them - sorry - we need to stop trying to give it to them, and instead place it before them like a beautifully arranged table. They need to see the pleasure radiating from our faces so they cannot resist tasting the goodness for themselves. The only way to turn people onto Judaism in a real way and the only way to sustain the tradition for the coming generations is for us to enjoy it so completely that just seeing our face is enough to get people interested, the light of our face will express more than a million words.
The Gemara in Maseket Eruvin asks, "how do we know that in order to teach, one must show his students his face?" and answers, "because it says 'And these are the laws that you shall place before them'." Reb Shlomo explains the daily prayer, "Bless us our father, all as one, with the light of your face": we are asking for our true faces back, our G-d-faces, and if one of us has a G-d-face then it reflects unto others and we then all have G-d-faces. So I bless us may we merit experiencing the true joy of Torah, receiving our G-d-face again and the ability to radiate onto others.