A word of Torah:
A while ago, I shared with you a teaching by the Hasidic master, the Sefat Emet about the nature of Torah. For him Torah is first and foremost about freedom. Torah is not, as commonly believed, about six hundred and thirteen commandments. Rather it is six hundred and thirteen counsels that teach us how to escape to freedom. Our biggest challenge is to take the precious gift of life and do as much as we can with it.
The Sefat Emet returns elsewhere in his commentary to this theme of freedom through Torah when he expresses that Torah allows us to rise about nature. I think he means that the most basic fact of our life is that we are mortal. We cannot escape our death. Yet, Torah suggests that our mortality doesn’t have to define our existence. We also have the ability and the freedom to create, to think and to feel. Those abilities can shape our lives.
In still another teaching, the Sefat Emet says that some people look to the creation of the world presumably to be in wonder of the vastness and variety of this planet. Instead, he suggests that Sinai is the moment that we should always place before our consciousness. Why? When the world was created sparks of holiness were scattered throughout the world. Every human being has a spark of holiness within them. It is our task to seek out and free all these sparks of the divine. This is the reason that the Israelites had to go down to Egypt--in order to discover the sparks that were there. This is an important point. Life is about engaging with the brokenness of the world. This act of redemption enabled the Israelites to leave the slavery of Egypt and journey into freedom.
The Sefat Emet deeply believed in the possibility of renewal/hithadshut. He taught that every day the world and each of us are/can be created anew. In the face of all the negative voices that we constantly hear, some real and some only in our head, Judaism believes we are free to make choices not just between good and bad but whether to live a life that is conscious of our power and freedom. Will we escape from freedom and return to Egypt, no matter how cleverly disguised as anything other than a pyramid? That is our question. For after all no matter how magnificent the pyramids are, they are only a tomb—monuments to death. We are not here to spend our lives building pyramids so we are remembered after we are gone. Instead, we are here to devote our time to living. The purpose of Torah is to encourage us and remind us to strive to live a life of compassion, loving relationships, and devotion to our ideals.
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