STOP

AS anyone who has ever looked into a finely written Torah scroll knows, it is a work of art. It is impressive.

A close look reveals more than even columns with justified lines. The spacing in the Torah also contributes to its dramatic appearance.

At only three points in the Torah is there is a space in the middle of a verse.

Usually, the Torah scroll has spaces between verses.

Sometimes, the space is the remaining part of a line after the last word in a paragraph. Sometimes, the space is in the middle of a line. The last word before the space ends a verse, and the word after the space begins a verses.

Why would there be a space in the middle of a verse?

This occurs only three times in the entire Torah scroll. (The three verses are the one analyzed here, Num. 26:1; plus Gen. 35:22 and Deut. 2:8.)

One of these times in at the beginning of this week’s Torah portion. The verse (Numbers 26:1) reads: “And it was after the plague, and the L-rd spoke to Moses and to Elazar son of Aaron the Priest, saying.”

The “plague” was the Divine strike against the Israelites when they settled in Shittim (in the Sinai desert) and began to commit harlotry with the daughters of Moab. Twenty-four thousand Israelites died. The plague was stopped after Phineas sons of Elazar pierced with a spear the leaders of the orgy — one Israelite man and one Moabite woman — to death.

Our topic today is not the zealous act of Phineas, and why the Torah uncharacteristically praises such an act. It’s a major topic for another time. Whatever the cause and the circumstance, there was a plague. 24,000 people died. The verse reads, “It was after the plague” and then white space follows.

Only on the next line does the verse continue, “and the L-rd spoke to Moses, etc.”

The late Fred Englard (1915-2002), a survivor of Auschwitz, who witnessed and experienced infinitely more than his share of plagues in his lifetime, looked up at me one day and declaimed, very loudly: “After a plague, STOP!”

And he stopped.

He stood there silent.

For 60 seconds.

Try 60 seconds of silence — it’s a long time. (Ever notice that a “minute of silence” invoked at a memorial usually lasts only about 20 or 30 seconds?)

WHAT Fred meant when he said, “After a plague, STOP!” — given his background in the Holocaust, a part of his life that he shared incessantly, always talking about lessons or quandaries of the Holocaust, or stories from the time, or from his life then, or articulating one-liners about the Holocaust (“they can kill Jews, but they can’t kill Judaism”) — what he meant was, quite simply, that nothing should be the same after a disaster.

STOP!

It is time to reflect.

Time to think.

Time to heal, or question, or empathize, or extend whatever aid possible, or to receive whatever aid possible.

But life should not go on after a plague, business as usual. Space. Just like that space in the Torah in the middle of the verse — the space after “It was after the plague” — there needs to be space in the life of the collective that experiences the disaster.

Initially, at the very least, that space, that reflection, that response, should be silence. STOP. The normal words that trip off one’s tongue, the usual thoughts by which a people adjusts itself to the friends or enemies around it, the customary habits of daily life, must stop.

Only following that space, that stoppage, that silence, comes “and the L-rd spoke.” Speaking is inappropriate right after a plague. The attempts to rationalize a disaster, to understand it, to become angry or grateful or whatever, require a prior period of STOP.

There is no business as usual after a plague.

Thus, said Fred Englard, the survivor of Auschwitz, about the space in the middle of the first verse of the 26th chapter of Numbers.

THE point is applicable to any overwhelmingly negative circumstance. Death. Illness. Divorce. Bankruptcy. Failure. Forest fire.  Tornado. Accident. The initial moment after the fact is often a period of STOP. Of silence. Of refraining from trying to figure it out, or to articulate it, or to complain about it, or to devise a long-range response, or to ask, “why me?” STOP.

Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News