In the year 1884, when the frierdiker Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn zy”a, was a young child of about four years old, he lived with his parents in a small apartment that had only two rooms. One room was a bedroom, while the other served as his father’s personal study. One evening, his father, the Rebbe Rashab, was sitting in the study together with his study partner, the Rav of Boltava. The small room also contained the bed of the young frierdiker Rebbe, who had already gone to sleep for the night. Little Yosef Yitzchak had a pleasing face, and it glowed as he slept. At a break in their learning, the Rebbe Rashab’s chavrusa noticed the shining face of the young child and commented on how beautiful Yosef Yitzchak was, adding that “the glow from his face undoubtedly indicates how pure his thoughts must be.”
The Rebbe was moved by the words of his study partner, and he stirred to give his son a kiss. Suddenly, he remembered that when the Beis Hamikdash stood in Jerusalem, one could pledge the monetary value of a loved one, dedicating their worth toward the upkeep of the Temple as a way of expressing one’s devotion to Hashem. Then and there, the Rebbe Rashab decided to exchange his kiss for a Chassidic discourse and summarily sat down to write the ma’amer known as “Mah Rabu Ma’asecha.” Eight years later, in the year 1892, when the frierdiker Rebbe reached the age of twelve, his father gave him the discourse as a gift, saying, “This is a Chassidic kiss, and I will explain everything in due time.”
When Hashem spoke to Am Yisrael at Har Sinai, He began with a single word: “Anochi – I am.” Our Sages saw in this deceptively simple expression an acrostic allusion to the supernal objective of the giving of the Torah. “Anochi,” they said, “is an acronym for the words A’na N’afshi K’esavis Y’ehavis – I, My Soul, I wrote and I gave.” With one gentle squeeze, Chazal have extracted the sweet nectar from the first word spoken by the Almighty to His people: the Torah is not an idea or even a group of ideas; it is not a philosophy or a concept; it is not a list of mere rules and regulations—it is a hug and a kiss from Hashem Himself.
The Ancient Parable
The assertion that the Torah contains the infinite “Soul” of the Almighty is by no means fanciful or poetic. On the contrary, that the Torah is truly nothing short of a
descriptive parable of Hashem’s Divine essence is explicit in the text of Tanach. “I bend my ear toward the Parable” (Tehillim 49:5), said King David in reference to the Torah. The Torah is an allegory of infinite regression—a sort of parable of a parable of a parable (ad infinitum), whose nimshal or corollary is (as if) the very Soul of the Ribbono Shel Olam Himself.
But as much as the Torah must be viewed as a para-ble, it might equally be regarded as a kind of para-dox. For how can the infinite “Soul” of the Almighty be contained within the finite text of a book? The Torah, after all, contains a mere 5,845 verses, or 304,805 letters.
It is told that when the great Chassidic Master, Rebbe Zusha of Anapoli zy”a, first laid eyes upon the magnum opus of the Alter Rebbe of Lubavitch zy”a, Sefer HaTanya, he exclaimed, “How ever did the Rabbi fit the Master of the Universe into such a small book?!” Likewise, regarding the Torah itself, we are moved to exclaim, “How (and why) did the Master of the Universe see fit to condense Himself into such a small book?!” Well, perhaps the Alter Rebbe’s “small book” can guide us toward an answer.
Rain, Water and Torah
The fourth chapter of the Sefer HaTanya is dedicated to explicating and defining the Torah’s essence. Working off of a well-known Talmudic expression that “ein mayim elah Torah – there is no water other than Torah” (Bava Kamma 17a), the Alter Rebbe submits: “The Torah has been compared to water, for just as water descends from a high place to a low place, so the Torah descended to Earth from its place of glory, which is the Will and Wisdom of Hashem Himself.”
This descent of the Torah, like water, is characteristic of Hashem’s humility. In His essence, Hashem is utterly impossible to fathom. He therefore chose to distill Himself, as it were, into the complex allegory we call the Torah. As the Rebbe explains further along in that same chapter: “The Holy One, blessed be He, has compressed His Will and Wisdom within the 613 commandments of the Torah, and in their laws, as well as within the combination of the letters of the Torah, Nevi’im, Kesuvim, and in their expositions found in the Aggados and Midrashim of our Rabbis of blessed memory.”
Like runoff water tumbling down a mountainside to the lowest point in the valley below, the Torah, which is a metaphor for Hashem’s very essence, descends into our lowly world, granting us access to these vivifying waters. But then again, what comes down must go back up.
Tefillah And The Hydrologic Cycle
As far as meteorology is concerned, rainwater’s descent from above to below represents only one stage in the hydrologic cycle. All precipitation, once reaching the ground, is collected in reservoirs, lakes, and oceans, only to ascend once again when it evaporates. If the analogy of Torah to water is to be appreciated in earnest, then we must expand it to include the Torah’s ability to ascend like water as well. Indeed, while the Alter Rebbe highlights the mechanics of the Torah’s remarkable descent, Rebbe Nachman emphasizes the nature of its return; Hashem speaks to us through His Torah, and we speak back to Him through tefillah. For Rebbe Nachman, each droplet of Torah that lies buried in the heart of the scholar longs to reunite with the Almighty, to dance upon the scholar’s lips as the water vapors of tefillah emerge and return to their Source On High. Each encounter with some new kernel of Divine Wisdom is an invitation to pray, to transform the descending water of Torah into the ascending water of tefillah. (Likkutei Moharan II, 25): “It is also good to turn Torah teachings into prayers. When you study or hear a teaching from a truly righteous person, make a prayer out of it and ask Hashem that you, too, will be able to fulfill this teaching. Tell Him how far away you are from it and beg Him to help you attain everything contained within the lesson.” Tefillah is the indispensable companion to Torah study—truly, it is the ascending waters of Torah. By turning Torah into tefillah, the student participates in animating the contents of the Torah he or she is studying. No longer passively receiving the ideas but, instead, proactively transforming each Torah thought—Divrei Elokim Chaim, living words from the living G-d—into a “kiss.”
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 42.
