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This Night Is All Torah: Thoughts on Shavuot | Israel Hayom

2023-05-24T20:40:14.826Z

Highlights: Over the generations, Torah study has become a supreme value in itself in our nation. This is the secret to the emotional and intellectual connection with the book and with the tremendous spiritual treasures. The Quran calls us "the People of the Book" (Ahl al-Kitab), but I used to tell Italians that we are "the people of the Books" In our thousands of years we have built a tremendous textual and intellectual skyscraper that no nation in history has ever given its descendants the like.


Over the generations, Torah study has become a supreme value in itself in our nation • This is the secret to the emotional and intellectual connection with the book and with the tremendous spiritual treasures, the likes of which no other nation has offered its descendants


1. We will talk about Torah study. Shavuot has an agricultural dimension, the festival of wheat harvesting, in which the first fruits of the crop were brought to Jerusalem, but it has a spiritual dimension: the holiday of giving the Torah. You are not going to leave these mighty eternal treasures only to others. The Quran calls us "the People of the Book" (Ahl al-Kitab), but I used to tell Italians that we are "the People of the Books," because in our thousands of years we have managed to build a tremendous textual and intellectual skyscraper that no nation in history has ever given its descendants the like. And all of us, Hebrew speakers, have the privilege and privilege to visit any floor we want in this building and draw from it treasures of knowledge, wisdom and morality.

Drawing knowledge is a utilitarian matter. "You are not producers," is often hurled at Torah learners. Indeed, the study of Torah in our nation has evolved over the years from dealing with our ancient code of laws, halacha, to focusing on the very act of study. A Jew sits in front of a book as previous generations sat before him. He delves into it, connects to its ideas, to its philosophical and halachic discussions, to the formative stories that shaped us. He toiled in his study. Learning itself is a value in itself, even before thinking about the benefits that will come from studying, even before understanding. This is how we build an ethos that raises learning to the forefront of the nation's joy. And everywhere we went, we were concerned, first and foremost, about teaching babies who would pass on the ancient wisdom to the next generation.

The value of Torah study did not end with the establishment of the state. We still need it today in order to exist. From it stems, among other things, the unprecedented phenomenon of how we have become the "start-up nation."

2. At a time when in Europe about 90 percent of the population was illiterate and their knowledge depended on the mediation of priests, about 90 percent of the Jewish people were literate. This is how we have created an ethos of excellence. Still, this is not the secret but the mental connection to the books, the intellectual and emotional connection to the faded pages and small black print, which repeated generation after generation on the first floors of the same intellectual building and added their own floors for future generations.

Talmud study, photo: Tzachi Miriam/Archive

And lo and behold, every time someone thought of summarizing the Torah in one book, in order to make it easier for the learners and the masses who did not find their hands and feet in the vast tangle of halachic literature, a tremendous philosophical and textual explosion occurred in the generations that followed. Towards the end of the 2nd century in the Galilee, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi gathered the various traditions and schools of Tannai and sorted them into six Mishnah orders, so that the Torah would not be forgotten.

The result in the following centuries was the two Talmuds, the Babylonian and the Eretz Israel (Jerusalem), huge treasures of halacha and philosophy, theology and morality, history and custom, legend and folklore. In the 12th century, Maimonides wrote his Mishneh Torah, in which he summarized in 14 books all Jewish law and thought up to his time, while deciding the various controversies. In the centuries that followed, the result was an extensive literature surrounding his work, including thinkers and poskim who disagreed with his assertions and presented equally elaborate thought structures.

In the 16th century in Safed, Rabbi Yosef Caro, who was 4 years old at the time of the expulsion from Spain, did something similar – grouping all Jewish law up to his days in four sections in his monumental book Shulchan Aruch. He hoped that the book would arrange the laws and ideas in an accessible and clear way, like a person sitting at a table that was already set and had no choice but to start his meal. The result in the centuries that followed was an even greater literary, intellectual, and halachic explosion, including poskim who disagreed with his assertions or disagreed with the understanding of his words. And so the chain continues to this day, and from our generation to future generations.

Codex Sasson, one of the oldest in the world,

3. In this huge textual skyscraper there are different and varied floors, and each of us can find in it the floor where he will feel at home, the place where his heart desires to study: whether it is the Torah, or the books of the prophets, the literature of wisdom, poetry and the return to Zion. After the Bible appear the external books that did not enter the biblical canon, but are present to all and are part of the spirit of the creative nation, especially the books of the Maccabees, which tell about the Hasmonean revolt and what happened after it. Midrash literature in its various forms, the Mishna and Talmud, biblical exegesis in the Middle Ages and modern times, Jewish philosophy, secret literature (The Book of Zohar, etc.), Hebrew poetry in the Middle Ages, Hasidic literature and morality, and so on. And so, up to the floors added by recent generations, in which reference is made to the social and spiritual revolutions in the world and in our people, including the revolution of secularization, Zionism, the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, it comes to contemporary literature.

A person who enters any beit midrash, even if he does not understand the subject of study, will hear that the verbs used by students in each period are not past verbs, but present verbs: King David "says", Rabbi Akiva "sober", Rashi "interprets", Maimonides "posek", the Zohar "reads" the verse in an original way, the Shulchan Aruch "determines", Ramchal "speaks" in his book Mesilat Yasharim to us today, and so on. This is because our texts do not remain on a shelf in a past museum, but surround us today and conduct a regular dialogue with us. This is one of the meanings of the phrase "theory of life".

Sefer Torah. Our legacy is a textual skyscraper, Photo: GettyImages

4. This treasure kept us alive as a people, even when we had no territory and the national body was scattered in the four corners of the world. The Torah was the land in which we lived, and through it we also preserved the dormant national nucleus, which was waiting for the right moment. The Zionist revolution of the return of our people to Zion and the establishment of the State of Israel would not have taken place without the ethos of constant study and Torah reflection during the most difficult times.

But the value of Torah study does not end there. We still need it today in order to exist. We are a people bound by a glorious shared historical destiny. True, we argue with each other about our destiny, but this is nothing new. We have done so throughout the ages, ever since the founder of our nation's first debate with God about the fate of Sodom. "Jacob will no longer say your name, but Israel, for you have served with God and with people, and you will be able to," our third father was told when our name was first given. Here, within our name, is engraved the eternal debate with God, that is, with our identity.

5. Debate is connected to the ethos of learning and the love of wisdom, and is the secret of our existence. Thanks to him, we have become the "start-up nation" that concentrates inventions and innovations in such a small region more than anywhere else on the planet. The constant debate with God and people, with our identity, over every logical and philosophical claim ever made, over every halacha, moral, and theological assertion, there have been mountains of arguments to the contrary against them. This Talmudic dialectic did not remain in the ancient pages but was copied into modern fields of study and research, which challenged every assumption or reality, and sought solutions and innovations to the problems of the time.

On Shavuot, we will go to the ancient beit midrash, choose a book after our hearts, connect to the succession of generations and read from the beginning. Because they are our lives and the length of our days.

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Source: israelhayom

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