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What
is Torah? In the 1st century, Rabbi Ben Bag Bag captured the truth when he told his students, “Turn the Torah, turn it again and again, for everything you want to know is found within it.” (Pirke Avot 2:25) Sometimes it’s not easy and often we don’t take the time. But as the seasons turn and Torah, too, now is the time to turn the scrolls and turn over a new leaf and find a few minutes for Torah Study. Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha’olam, asher k’dshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu la’asok b’divrei Torah. Blessed in the Eternal, our God, Ruler of the Universe, who hallows us with mitzvot and commands us to engage in the study of Torah. What is Torah? It
is what God has revealed to us, and what we have come to understand about
God. It is the experience of Abraham, the legislation of Moses, the vision
of the prophets, the commentary of the Rabbis, the insight of the Mystics.
It is the questions we ask, the answers we receive, when we seek to understand
God, the world and ourselves. It is the way of life, the path to self-fulfillment;
the design for a better world. How many people run to communal & organization board meetings, civic activities, tennis, golf or the club—all worthwhile, but never run to a Jewish book, Torah Study or a Shabbat Service? Someone once said, American Jews become Hamlet on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, soliloquizing, “To go or not to go?” When we perform rituals not knowing why, when we read Hebrew, but don’t understand it…or can’t read it at all, when we know only the names of Abraham or Sarah, but little about them, when we go to Shabbat Services, but only for yahrzeit, ignoring or abusing our rich inheritance, we are short changing our hearts, our minds, and our souls. Unless we begin by our own personal and communal acts of engagement in the essentials, through basic Jewish learning and living, strangely for the first time in all of Jewish history will Jewish existence really be threatened. Much worse than any physical or existential threat via anti-Semitism or terrorism, is the threat of passivity, ignorance, and assimilation. How do we begin to “Be Torah?” It is by engaging in Torah Study and allowing the Torah to speak to us and give us a foundation and direction for our life’s journey in this New Year. As Hillel taught, “…the more Torah, the more life.” Speaking yet to us from across the centuries, Rabbi Ben Bag Bag told his students, “Study the Torah…see with it, grow old and worn with it, and swerve not away from it, for you do not have a better pursuit.” -Pirke Avot 5:25 Rabbi David J. Gelfand is the rabbi at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, in East Hampton, NY.
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