We are standing today within the time before creation, the days on which the Creator broke numerous vessels or worlds trying to fit the pure light into this worldly confine. Eventually Hashem was resigned to store those lights just above the physical here and now in the sefirah of Yesod, the foundation and penultimate level in the creation of our physicality from the pure unbroken infinite ONE. The hidden light is just out of sight, literally in the beyond, to where the Tzadikim gain access and whence our redemption springs. The 18th of Elul, in the midst of these days of broken attempts, is a source of that redemptive energy- it's the spiritual root of Bat Ayin Yeshiva via the physical birthdays of the Ba'al Shem Tov and the Alter Rebbe (R. Shneur Zalman, founder of Chabad Chassidus) and the Chassidic new wave sweeping through our installments of Jewish life. That infusion of this healing energy is our springboard- borne out of the pain and yearning of knowing deeply of our salvation ahead and the darkness here and now. The "so-much-more" wrapped up in our human condition. The potential for plenty that the scientific revolution promises yet the cost it could extract in its drive. Before the take-off of the creative explosion of human handiwork, the Ba'al Shem Tov launched a guiding vision of how to maintain our soul and its connection to the Divine.
Sometimes, during prayer, as we sing of the miracles God gave us in the Exodus, the lights of our redemption that shone so brightly into our own eyes back then, I have a hard moment. I look at my Judaism now and I see black jackets, closed communities and restrictions on how I can act…where's our fireworks?? Perhaps this is what Am Yisrael faced, as described in this weeks parshah, upon leaving the mystical experience of the desert and heading towards a very grounded, action/reaction relationship with God, one of blessing or curse. I feel powerfully connected to this perspective of living both the end of Galut, and the beginning of Geula; having to relate to both of them as separate can be very confusing, frustrating and… real, like life is supposed to be. I feel a pull to the Meah Shearim side of things, total spiritual cleaving with God through learning and devotion while turning a blind eye to the pains and hatred the outside world has spawned and heapen upon the Jews throughout our travels. But then I can feel a pull for the outright return to the land, to reclaim the song of our connection in prophecy, the crazy redemption-set hilltop side of things. Or the activists' dedication to fixing the world outside of classic torah boundaries that was the socialist Jewish project in earlier generations. But in all these visions, I can sense a lack of balance for my own path.
My gemara rebbe explained that the Ba'al Shem Tov was trying to project the fixing for these times, for these unsatisfied yearnings. The phrase that was repeated during that amazing hour in Bat Ayin was Torat Chayim - The L:iving Torah. The living torah that we ask for three times a day. That Torah consciousness is far away from parts of me. But its critique, its power and relevance, its intensity was there pouring into my senses by a live wire of Moshe Rabbeinu, the sages and Chasidim in the lower caravan.
I think there is a very strong mask pulled over what learning truly is and the consciousness it can lead to. It does indeed seem like it's up in the sky or across the ocean. Torat Chayim is not what we have been clinging on to…Live Torah involves a transformation of my eyes from late-20th century glasses to a shining like Moshe Rabbeinu. The fire one can feel in that revelation of Torah at Bay Ayin is a transforming fire. But it's a treasure that is constantly emasculated by modern day values. I felt this while in America…no knocks intended, it's all of our struggles. But I was reduced because of a language/ cultural gap to explaining what yeshiva is as "rabbinical school." Albeit Talmud Torah is a hard thing to describe, but my ending up at the phrase of "learning to be a rabbi" is such a denigration of what the process of Torah is. The sages insist that it's forbidden to be learning for the sake of being a Rav. Yet that is the only sound bite that would catch in the ends-oriented professional upward-climbing world that pervades life in even my anti-establishment American roots. Within the secret that I couldn't share lies Torah's revolution, and the healing that the Ba'al Shem is seeking to offer. I wish I could just hear my father tell of my ancestor's exodus from slavery and know how true the love of Hashem for His people is… but I grew up a little more sophisticated and a little more insensitive to God's presence in this world. Hey, rationality isn't all bad. But how can I come to love and know Hashem when the light show is closed down?
It's through the Living of Torah that can grow from faith in learning. It may be rationality that blinds my eyes… for the better I won't deny.. but the Chassidic gaze on life is the healing that started before the sickness. It's to reveal a presence of Hashem in all my interactions, and demands that I invest myself into our Torah, so that I can introduce Rabbi Akiva to Ronald McDonald…the fixing of the world through our living minds. Imagine the presence of Torah could have in the world if our whole generation was picking it up as the guide to fixing the world. All these paths that our generation treads can be illuminated and deeply enlightened by a torah gaze. It allows a unification of Creator and creation that is perhaps the purpose of humanity. The Oral Torah offers thousands of detailed applications of God's will- a chance to turn the most mundane into the profound. The question is my will to get up and go with it.
I really feel that possibility as I stand hear amongst the new faces of our bocherim, listening to the words of my Moshe Rabbeinu tell me a drop of what Torah is… This is Parshat Nitzavim. If we want to go (Va'yelech ) to that new place, that is up to me and whether. I look around our Beit Midrash at the beautiful new faces and bless us all that we can invest our deepest hopes, inspirations and understandings through the invigoration of Torah.
So when I got back to Israel my bags got lost in the transit. A week went by and one showed up…The big one was supposed to arrive, but after two weeks there was only fading promises from the return service. Then, on Motzei Shabbat, I get a phone call from a woman in a Jerusalem suburb. "Erev shabbat, my son was playing outside our house and this car goes ripping through the neigborhood, 130 kilometers, and a bag flies off the back… It had this phone number posted…"
A coincidence, or friendly helper in one sense, or a fulfillment of God's will (returning the lost possession) in the other. Because the yearning for fixing is translated as a yearning for that hidden light from the first paragraph, stored in a vault from which the tzadikim recharge.
But the Torah and our full contact engagement with it is the tool that makes true the phrase in this week's parshah that we don't have to go to the heavens or across the sea. We put love, into torah and Hashem in our mouths and heart, in a consuming way.
Shaul David Judelman
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Shaul David Judelman currently resides in Jerusalem. After growing up amongst the Douglas Firs of Seattle, Washington, he came to Israel on a quest for Judaism alive in its land. He spent six years in the Bat Ayin Yeshiva Rabbinical program and now teaches at Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo while working on several different environmental initiatives in Jerusalem. He is the founder and coordinator of Simchat Shlomo’s Eco-Activist Beit Midrash, a program offering holistic in-depth Torah study around issues of ecology. |