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GIVING YOURSELF
When you love someone very deeply, the thought of parting is very difficult; but if you have to
part, how can you still be together though separated by time and space?
When you give something of yourself, something of your essence to the one you love, you are never separate; you journey with them wherever they go because part of you is with them. When two people wish to be joined together, they create an expression of that desire - a covenant. In Hebrew, this is called a brit. When the Torah speaks about a brit, it always uses the verb likrot, "to cut." Ostensibly, "cutting a brit" is a contradiction in terms. A brit is a symbol of unity. Cutting is just the opposite. When the Torah speaks of a get (bill of divorce), it calls it a sefer kritut, "a book of cutting off." Why then should cutting be an appropriate verb for the embodiment of the desire to be one? When two people want to be joined together, they give each other something of their essence. They "cut" from their very selves that part and they give it to the other. When God "cut" a pact with Avraham, He made that brit on the part of the body that expresses the essence of a person - his future, the place from which flows his life force, his progeny. Avraham took that essential part of himself expressed in his very continuation. He took the symbol of everything he would ever be through his children's children, and he gave it to God. A brit has to have two sides. What was it then that God gave to Avraham? What was the gift of His essence that was to bind Him and the Jewish people to an everlasting pact? God gave Avraham a promise that through Avraham's seed He would conduct and direct the events of the world. The entire future of the world would be orchestrated through the progeny of Avraham. That was what God "cut" from Himself and gave to Avraham. The Torah is called a brit. This is the pact that God cut with us at Sinai. God, the Torah, and the Jewish people are one. The Torah is the will of God. The will is the expression of the self. When God gave the Torah to the Jewish people at Sinai, He "cut" from Himself His essence and gave it to the Jewish people. The Ten Commandments begin, "I am Hashem..." The "I" here is an acronym for "Ana Nafshi Kesivat Yehavit" (Shabbat 105a), meaning, "I wrote Myself [into the Torah] and gave it over." And what did the Jewish people give? They gave themselves. They said, "We will do it and we will hear it." We will give ourselves exclusively to God. To be His people. To be a faithful bride. We will do even before we hear. Our acceptance is not predicated on our intellectual evaluation of the Torah; rather, our understanding of the Torah is a function of our acceptance of it. The Torah, that most precious gift in God's treasure-house, was given as an eternal gift to the Jewish people over 3,300 years ago. However far we may feel from God, there will always be a part of Him that is with us, and a part of us that is always with Him. THE UNSEEN HAND
of all the worldly things
that reveal the Unseen Hand, love must be the most beautiful More articles available at Ohr Somayach's website. |