Source : the age
By Sidra Kranz Moshinsky
At the centre of the shul (synagogue) is the holy ark. Over the front of the ark is a curtain. Open the curtains and there stands the Torah scroll, not nakedly revealing its flesh, its text, for all the world to see.
No, the scroll is draped in a richly embroidered fabric and adorned with silver ornamentals. The text is revealed gradually and ritually as the Torah is lifted out of the ark, carried around for worshippers to touch or kiss respectfully, before being carefully undressed and laid out on the bimah (reading desk).
Should the scroll be dropped, worshippers would have to fast. The text must not be touched directly – a miniature silver hand is used to assist readers keep their place. The words are to be recited with exactitude, while any rip or imperfection in the scroll renders it unfit for ritual use.
One of the rules of an acceptable Torah relates to the blank space that must be left between the letters, between the paragraphs and between the columns. Without this space, the Torah is not kosher.Credit: Wikimedia
Within the scroll of the Torah are the words Jews are commanded to live by. In a religion that has no established leader or institution to determine authority, the words themselves are the arbiters. They take the forms of sweeping myths, grand narratives and legends of human fortitude and folly. They articulate the positive and negative commandments, or precepts, which regulate ethical living.
They are understood to be the embodiment of God’s message to humanity, translated into a communicable form by Moses. Once communicated into human language and gifted at Sinai, the text now belongs within the earthly realm. Indeed, the Torah is explicit and self-referential about this: “It is not in the heavens … Neither is it beyond the sea … No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.” (Leviticus)
How then to live by these words? How to translate holy, ancient and immutable words into an ever-evolving and increasingly complex world? This is the task.
In Judaism, authenticity is maintained, and responsiveness – as well as division – achieved through interpretation and commentary. Like a beautiful gem capable of shedding light at every angle, Ben Bag-Bag says in Ethics of the Fathers: “Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it.”
The concept of Shivim Panim (or Seventy Faces) suggests that every word of the Torah (there are 79,980 of them) is capable of 70 meanings; thus diversity of opinion is encouraged, while fixed meaning frowned upon. The Kabbalists (Jewish mystics) developed four levels of interpretation : pshat (literal or simple); remez (hinted, allegorical); drash (comparative) and sod (secretive or esoteric). Holy texts can be analysed and understood at these four levels distinctly and concurrently. Together, the first letter of each word forms the acronym, “Pardes”, itself a Hebrew word meaning orchard or garden. It is linked to the Persian word that has also made its way into English: paradise. To enter into this textual garden is to live as people of the book, the enduring and core foundation of Judaism.
Sidra Kranz Moshinsky is an educator and freelance writer.
