What shall we make of these days? What are the lessons that
we shall learn? To realize that we have the opportunity to make something of
our experience and to learn from what we are going through is empowering. In
the midst of a reality over which we have so little control, there are choices
that are ours to make. The way that we choose to respond to the situation in
which we find ourselves becomes its own way of giving personal shape to a
collective experience that at times threatens to overwhelm. Are these days of
isolation and separation simply an interruption in the flow of our lives? Or
can this time be a bridge that joins our days, the days as they were before and
the days that shall come after? In the silent space of solitary experience, and
yet of common pause, how shall we each search out the lessons and insights that
are ours to scribe on the parchment of our lives?

It is a teaching that comes not with words of Torah, but in
the silence that lies between words, a silence lovingly held in the portion
called
Sh’mini (Lev. 9:1-11:47). So
in love with Torah down to its smallest details, the ancient scribes counted
every letter and every word of Torah. So it is that in the portion of
Sh’mini we know that we have come to
the very middle of the Torah as marked by both letters and words. Of the middle
in letters, the very middle of Torah is the letter
vav in Vayikra 11:42, the letter
vav, a letter of joining one to another, the conjunction
and, here writ large, standing out from
the midst of a word. And soon before that, marking the middle of the Torah in
words, two words taken together. Moses is searching. It is a painful search,
angry, disjointed, space opening in which to calm.

Moses has been searching, even frantically, for the goat of
a sin offering, the goat meant to be ceremonially eaten by Aaron and his
priestly sons as part of the rite of atonement on behalf of the people.
Grieving for two of his sons, Nadav and Avihu, struck down on a day of glory,
killed before the altar for bringing “strange fire,” the very words suggesting
mystery, the incomprehensibility of human tragedy, Aaron is not in a state of
mind and heart to consider eating a sacred meal. Dispensing with ritual in the
absence of intention, he consigns the entire offering to the fire instead. To
his brother’s effort to explain the unexplainable, to give greater context as
though to justify the unjustifiable, Aaron remains silent,
va’yidom aharon/and Aaron was silent (Lev. 10:3). Aaron’s silence
points the way to a greater silence, the silence of the heart, the silence that
is at the heart, that is the heart, silence that speaks louder than words.
As the scribes count the Torah’s words, we come to the very
middle, to the heart of Torah. The middle is formed of two words that tell of
Moses’ searching,
darosh || darash/searching || he searched. Clearly, two words cannot form
the middle of the Torah in words. The rabbis teach that
darosh marks the end of the first half of the Torah, while
darash marks the beginning of the second
half of the Torah. The very middle of the Torah, therefore, is the silent space
between the two words of searching. From that silent space, the very heart of
Torah, we look back to search out all that has been, seeking to make sense, to
distill wisdom; and we look ahead, searching out glimmers of the future as it
disappears into the unknown, sparks of faith dancing on the edge of
uncertainty.

From the silent space that lies between, whether experienced
as a pause in the journey or as a part of the journey, how to be in that place
is a matter of choice. It is unsettling, if not frightening, to be in a place
of pause, a place in which there are no words to guide, only words to encourage
us to search, to really search,
darosh || darash. It is
the place from which faith emerges if we tend its seed, watching over it,
delighting in the gentle, joyful strength it gives. Rabbi Shmuel Bornsztain,
1855-1926, Rebbe of Sochatchov, known as the Shem Mi’sh’muel, teaches on the
silence of this parsha, the silence of the silent spaces of Torah and life,
d’mimah sh’murah al chizuk ha’emunah/silence
protected is the strength of faith. In silence, faith is nurtured if we
allow it to be. From generations earlier in the Chassidic line, the Degel
Machaneh Ephraim, Rebbe Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sadilikov, grandson of the holy
Baal Shem Tov, taught of the creative possibilities that might emerge from
silence, teaching that from that silent place of seeking emerges great insights
of
torah she’b’al peh/Oral Torah, the
teachings of human struggle and engagement with Torah and life. Similarly did
his nephew teach, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, opening us up to the depths of
Torah to be found in the
challal
ha’panu’i/the hollowed out space of time set apart, when we can either sink
into the depths, or make music as from a hollowed reed that becomes a
challil/recorder.
That is where we are in these days, choices offered as
gifts, choices become a living line to grasp as we journey into the music of
silence. Of silence framed by words of searching, these days can be of meaning
if we allow them to be. For all of the pain and worry, the loss and fear,
endeavoring to do all that we can to help each other, it is yet for each of us
to bravely enter the silence of our own hearts, as the Torah beckons us to
enter its own innermost heart and there to be with the silence. This is not a
time apart, but rather it is part of the journey of life, a time that bridges
what came before and what shall come after. As words of Torah, each one
lovingly counted, the days that came before are precious, and so shall be the
days yet to come, even more so when touched by faith freshly nurtured in
silence.
Rabbi Victor Reinstein
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