We read Torah in order to better understand what God wants from us as well as learn values and lessons from Jewish history. In other words, Torah unfolds the past and future. In understanding both, we apprehend our present. Understanding where we stand today is critical but the key to that door is unlocked by foresight and hindsight. Enter the world of Torah.
Put differently, if we know the expectations of our ancestors as well as their actions, i.e. how they lived their lives, we better understand ourselves.
Glancing into the holy Torah we see seemingly endless rolls of white parchment. The hide is scored so as to form a horizontal grid upon which black ink spells out a cryptic script revealing the past. The letters stand out from the parchment in shimmering black. We read the black letters on the white, indistinct background.
Yet there is another tradition which speaks of the same text, although very different. The letters are identical, the spaces between them measured. The reader, however, sees the page as white set down over a black background. They reverse what we normally see. For them, there once was a sea of black. Imposed over this great darkness was a massive field of white allowing some black shapes to take form through it. Not black on white. White on black.
It is said that when one perceives the interstices (the spaces between the letters) with meaning they are on the verge of understanding All.
While I am still wrestling with the meaning of what I have written, I know that life is comprised almost wholly of the spaces, not the “planned important events”. The stuff of life happens when we are not looking. It is the soft prayer we utter before we eat. It is not the vacation, but the long ride getting there. It is not the birthday present but the card. Not the wedding, but picking out the tuxedo and going through the pictures afterward.
“Man proposes and God disposes.” So goes the Yiddish expression. Actually the Yiddish really goes like this: “Man plans and God laughs.” The spaces.
Commercialism would have us believe that we create magic moments. “Buy this,” they tell us, “and you’ll be happy.” I can say after having conducted a personal test; it is a lie.
Torah wants us to understand that life is punctuated with spaces. Or was that spaces are punctuated by life? In any event, join us for our synagogue spaces. Daven at shul. Or just sit there and let it happen. Sing at the top of your lungs. Or shut your eyes. Do a mitzvah in the coming year you have never attempted before. Eat kosher. Put on tefillin. Build a sukkah. Serve at Lunchbox. Then, as you are doing it, sit back and let the real magic happen. It’s in the spaces.
