CLASSIC Christian polemic against Judaism says that Judaism is just Law.
Action without spirit. Detail without substance. Behavior without a relationship to G-d.
In a roundabout way, some Jews agree. Moses Mendelssohn wrote that Judaism is legislation. Other Jewish thinkers see Shabbos as dos and donts; prayer as recitation; Torah study as intellectual.
It comes down to the same arid clime of routine behavioralism that classic Christianity saw as Judaism.
Yes, Judaism is behavior; Shabbos is dos and donts, prayer is recitation and Torah study is mental. Words of the Torah say this. But just as we listen not only to peoples words, but also to their body language, so too when we read the words of Torah, we must also listen to their body language their silence.
To hear the words of the Torah, and to be deaf to their silence, is to be as clueless as we are when we listen to others but ignore their body language.
The Torah scroll is black letters, but also white spaces. The Torah is instruction, but also a sea of white surrounding the instruction.
Midrash puts it this way: The Torah is black fire on white fire.
The Torah speaks through its words; but says even more through its silent white fire, its unstated expectations, its soul; its demands on the soul, not just the mind (in Torah study) or the body (in observance).
Rabbi Shustal, a dean of the Lakewood yeshiva, visited Denver, and put it this way:
The fire of Torah . . . the Torah is our being . . . the power of Torah . . . toil in Torah [struggle to plumb its deepest teachings] . . . love of Torah . . . the holy light of Torah study for its own sake . . . nisromem, to be exalted by Torah . . . Torah is the source of simchas ha-chaim (joie de vivre) . . . radiance . . . What do we breathe? The Torah . . .
Rabbi Shustal limited himself to phrases, I think, because words could not contain his passion. This is the silence of Torah, the words that do not really capture the spiritual reality, but only hint at it. Relying as he had to on speech, Rabbi Shustal attempted to reduce the ineffable feeling of the Torah observing it, studying it to its black letters, its medium of words; knowing all along that the white spaces surrounding the words are so much more vast.
The words are inadequate to the living Jewish experience, the experience missed by classic Christianity.
The words are but hints.
Symbols of the white fire.
Of the silence.
People who say that Judaism is dry, that Shabbos is dos and donts, that the Torah is legislation, are deaf to the silence.
To the meaning.
The transformative power.
The elevation.
Of the Torah.
OF, for example, Shabbos. Its dos and donts induce serenity. As the late Rabbi Samuel Adelman summed it up, on Shabbos ones very sleep is different. Utterly peaceful. Shabbos rest is not merely refraining from.
On Shabbos, tranquility acquires an entirely new meaning. It is not accessible other than through the dos and donts of the Torah.
Thirty years ago, when I mentioned to gentiles that on Shabbos I could not drive, watch television or use the phone, I received quizzical looks (and often more than looks) saying, Why would you deprive yourself like that?
Now, when I tell gentiles that on Shabbos I do not look at email or any other electronic device, I receive enthusiastic responses like, Wow! What a release! And, half-facetiously: Can I become Jewish?
It is a paradox.
Judaism is behavior, prescribed in detail. The more detail, the more spirituality. The L-rd desired, for the sake of [increasing Israels] righteousness, to increase the Torah . . . (Isaiah 42:21).
But the primary increase is internal. Prescribed behavior nurtures a relationship with the Divine. Action increases spirit. The dos and donts create the frameworks that let the spirituality in. The most rigorous intellectual effort toil in Torah yields the most intense closeness to G-d.
Words of Torah nurture the relationship with the Author of the Torah.
Speech nurtures silence.
Heaven forfend that we become deaf to the silence.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
