A Midrash reads, “In the beginning” means that “God looked into the Torah and created with world.” Torah preceded the Creation. The ancient sages believed that just as any good building must have an architectural plan so too the universe required an outline so that Hi idea would resemble the end product. The Torah came first! It was the “blueprint of the universe.” Does this sound far-fetched?
Think of the thousands of years of human existence and look with amazement at how our lives, the entire world - has been shaped by Torah. We base our jurisprudential system of justice of Torah. We learn how to be merciful to the needy through Torah (it is not just giving but how to fairly distribute). We gauge our relationship to God, our relationship to others, our connection to Israel, even our language is determined by the holy Writ. The mitzvot run the gamut from the Ten Commandments to burying our dead. There is not an aspect of civilization that has not been informed by Torah.
And we are its guardians.
“…I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations…”. Written by John Adams in 1809, Adams misses the most critical aspect of our contribution to the world; it was not us that deserve the credit for changing the world’s landscape; it was God’s Torah.
Without Torah we would be as any other people. There would be no Christianity or Islam and the world would probably have remained much more savage.
We often celebrate ourselves, particularly in this post-Holocaust generation. Perhaps this is misplaced. While the victims of the Shoah demand that we remember them (and the world often seems insistent on forgetting its murderous assault) the most gratuitous victory we can claim after Auschwitz is our heritage, the sacred Torah. This is the real secret power and invincibility of the Jew. As pointed out in the new book Black Earth the real danger perceived by Nazis, nihilists and despots is what makes us unique, Torah.
“All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?” asked Mark Twain.
The secret is lying out in the open for everyone to see. It is not our charitable gifts; it is where we learn what tzedakah means. It is not our insistence of evenhandedness or whether we are active Democrats or Republicans; it is the source that sustains our belief in the primacy of mishpat, righteous justice. It is not that we have excelled in professions but our insistence on lifelong learning, which comes directly from Torah.
Left to our own discernments we would likely choose the path that hurts us the least or benefits us the most. Torah lengthens our reach beyond self-interest. That is the real secret to our immortality.
Celebrate the lifeline of the ages, the blueprint of the universe, the reason why we are still here after millennia, and the reason why the Jew will still be informing the world two thousand years from today. Torah.
