The two powerful whitenesses in the Torah

A MIDRASH says that the Torah is black fire on white fire. Others observe that the spaces between the letters of the Torah are as significant as the letters themselves. The Torah is a whole; its whiteness must be as important as its blackness.

This points to the steady progression of the black letter and the white space, computer-like, an unbroken series, a typographical and theological algorithm, encoding the divine secrets for humankind.

Except for two types of interruptions.

The first is “parashiyyos,” which are like paragraphs. Throughout the Torah, white spaces, wider than a single letter’s width, follow the end of a theme, whether legal or narrative.

Sometimes the white space extends across only part of a line. This is a “closed paragraph.” Sometimes the whiteness extends across the whole line, with the next black letter beginning the next line. This is an “open paragraph.”

And sometimes the white space extends for a few lines between the books of the Torah, setting each apart from the other.

Then there is an extremely rare, second type of interruption.

This appears only twice in the entire Torah, once in this week’s Torah portion, “Pinchas,” and once much earlier, in “Vayishlach” (in Genesis). In both cases, a white space appears inexplicably in the middle of a sentence.

TAKE this week’s case (Num. 26:1). In translation, it is written, “It was after the plague, the L-rd spoke to Moses and to Elazar son of Aaron the priest, saying.” That is not how this verse appears in the Torah. After the word “plague,” the Torah is blank — white — written this way: “And it was after the plague      the L-rd spoke to Moses etc.”

Why the whiteness in the middle of this verse?

Likewise, why the whiteness in Gen. 35:22? “And when Israel dwelled in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, the concubine of his father, and Israel heard; and the children of Jacob were twelve.”

This verse appears in the Torah this way: “ . . . and Israel heard      and the children of Jacob were twelve.”

This spiritual typography, the whiteness in the calligraphy, must mean something.

The late Fred Englard, who survived Auschwitz, and whose method for coping with both his suffering and his survival was to talk about the Holocaust openly, fixed me with one of his arresting gazes, and explained the whiteness in this week’s portion.

“After a plague . . . STOP!”

And he stopped.

No explanation was forthcoming from his mouth.

He continued to fix his eyes, penetrating, almost ferocious, upon me.

He said nothing — nothing with words. Yet his meaning was clear.

After a catastrophe, it is time to take stock. STOP. No business as usual. No routine explanations. No commonplaces. No platitudes. There is a plague? a Holocaust? STOP.

Think.

The common explanation for the whiteness in the verse about Reuben and Bilhah is this: However great Reuben’s sin, he was not excluded from the Jewish family. There were still 12 sons of Jacob; Reuben was one of them; the Jewish family was intact.

(Incidentally, though the verse says that Reuben lay with Bilhah, tradition reads the verse contextually. After Jacob’s wife Rachel died, tradition says that Jacob favored Bilhah, the maidservant of Rachel, presumably because of Jacob’s love for Rachel over Leah. Reuben, a son of Leah, attempted to fix this affront to his mother by moving Jacob’s bed to Leah’s tent. The Torah calls this an act of adultery to emphasize the severity of tampering with a married couple’s privacy.)

Is there any relation between the whiteness in this verse about Reuben — taken literally or not — and the verse about Pinchas?

A PLAGUE took the lives of 24,000 ancient Israelites because they commited harlotry with the daughters of Moab (Num. 25:1-9). In the process, they prostrated themselves to the idols of Moab. The plague stopped after Pinchas, son of Elazar, son of Aaron the priest, speared the two most flagrant violators of the Torah’s moral law, the Israelite man, Zimri, and the Moabite woman, Kozbi. And it was after the plague.

The moral law was interrupted, even perverted. It brought a plague. Then, upon the zealotry of Pinchas, the plague stopped.

And the Torah stopped.

It turned white.

STOP.

Think.

Reuben lived before the moral law of the Torah had been delivered, yet he, too, attempted to interrupt, or even pervert, the integrity of his father’s married life. According to tradition, Reuben’s sin was only attempted. Thus, no plague fell upon him. But he was rebuked as if it had.

The Torah stopped.

It turned white.

STOP.

Think.