Kiddush HaShem. We associate it with giving your life for God but it literally means the “Sanctification of the Lord.”
We do Kiddush HaShem every time we learn a word, even a single letter of the holy Torah. I remember an old man who carried the Torah through the throngs of shul. Each person reached out with his tallit or her siddur to touch the sacred Word as it passed. It was taking a long time to pass through the crowd. The congregation began to worry about the old man carry the rolled parchment. One eager young person ran up and said, “Here, let me take that from you, old man. Let me carry it for a while”
“Young man,” he replied, “you think I am carrying the Torah? You could not be more wrong. The Torah is carrying me.”
So has it been through the ages. The Torah has carried the Jewish people wherever we traveled or were sent. Wrapped in garments of fine cloth it travelled in the backs of wagons, in the arms of the young, and sometimes hidden away in a trunk far from eyes that would want to destroy it. I know of one such Torah that was hidden away in a toy chest in Berlin 1939, disguised as a child’s plaything to escape the scrutiny of the Nazis. This tiny Torah sits in an Ark today, testimony to our faith in God.
The Zohar, the mystic tradition, tells that Torah, God and Israel are one. They are indivisible. And eternal. There are times when adversity feels like is going to overwhelm us; and when the great prophets speak of moments when the Divine Face is hidden; and Israel is threatened. Yet, then comes regeneration when we renew our commitment to God, Torah and Israel. Blessing follows.
The renewing of our Torahs is such a time of blessing.
Today we carry the Torah by repairing it letter by letter, word by word.
Tomorrow the Torah will carry us, and future generations, into a limitless future.
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