Shabbat shalom everyone,
This is the fifth Sabbath since the waving of the Omer, so as with our tradition, we are looking at another part of the Covenant. This week, we are examining the covenant sworn by God with the people of Israel at Horev, the holy mountain in the Sinai wilderness. The gift of this covenant is the Torah, and what it means for the people of Israel. Torah is what changed the religion of the Patriarchs into the religion of the Israelites. Torah is for both Israelites and Godfearers.
Before Torah, Israelites had an unwritten ‘Customary Law’ (mishpat ha-minhagi). Before Sinai, it wasn’t that Israelites had absolutely no law at all; after all, Mosheh was already giving out rulings and judgments previous to the Sinai revelation (see MT Ex 18:13-16) in accordance with Hebrew customary law. The significance of written Torah, was that it introduced definitive new rulings and legal principles, to enable us to govern ourselves as a people. Torah transforms Yahwism from being a personal code, to enable it to become the national law of a people.
Previous to the giving of the Sinai Torah, the Hebrews were governed by the unwritten, personal set of ethics, principles and customs of all the previous covenants that God had given us – the Universal Covenant, the Adamic Covenant, the Noachic Covenant and the Abrahamic Covenant. While the ethics contained in these covenants are useful for individuals and small groups of people, they are insufficient for the governance of an entire nation. Israel had now become a nation and a people, and something larger, more robust and more definitive was needed; hence the necessity for the giving of the Torah.
Outsiders often see Torah as a burden, an imposition and an unwelcome yoke on our shoulders. People who have lived Torah see it as a liberation, an upholding of the rights of the weak and the poor, an exhortation for society itself to be just and fair, a way of keeping the cold and ruthless religious person in check, and a way of ensuring the egalitarian nature of Jewish society, and of giving rulers a set of ethical standards by which to rule.
Torah also brings you intimately closer to the very heart of what Yahveh is, by giving us a deeper insight into the nature of who and what Yahveh is. Torah raises the stature of your soul and invigorates it, even while you are still on earth. Torah shows us how to become a holy people, how to live a holy life, so that we can approach the purifying and transformational holiness of Yahveh, so that we are not consumed in the fire of God’s Glory.
What the word ‘Torah’ actually means (and it doesn’t mean ‘Law’)
Most western people think that ‘Torah’ means ‘Law’ – and indeed, that is how it is translated in many English bibles. This is because of how ancient Hellenised Jews chose to translate the word into Greek – nomos, which does indeed mean ‘law’ (from a Greek word which means ‘to divide something in order to place it into a structured order’). All languages mould how you think, and if your first language is Greek, then that will inform how you understand what ‘Torah’ is – ‘a set of laws intended to create an ordered society’.
However, that is not the primary meaning that an ancient, native Hebrew-speaker would have assigned to the word. The most immediate meaning that can be gleaned by a Hebrew-speaker is ‘Instruction’ or ‘Teaching’. So where does the word ‘Torah’ itself come from?
‘Torah’ comes from the verb horah, which means ‘to instruct’ or ‘to teach’. There are six Hebrew words that English Bibles choose to translate simply as ‘to teach’, and they all have a slightly different nuance in meaning – nuances which are sadly lost in English.
Horah itself comes from the verb yarah. This verb has several meanings, all depending on context, and the one that is relevant to us is: ‘to point’ – that is, ‘to point out the direction in which one should go’.
The very first proto-Semite who ever invented the word torah was conscious in how they made up the word. Moses was then very conscious of the already existing word he chose to apply to ‘the Teaching of God’.
If you want the full, etymological meaning of Torah, it is: ‘a Teaching or Instruction which points us in the direction we should go’ – that is, both as individuals, and as a nation.
I think that the reason why Moses thought this was the ideal word to describe what God was giving him, was that God’s Teaching was a carefully directed journey, and that journey led to God – to the very heart of who and what Yahveh is and does.
How my translation of Torah has helped me to appreciate Torah more
I have spent the last 20 years translating Torah, and the entire process has had an incredibly powerful effect on me. It has made me realise that very few people actually realise the true power of what they are holding in their hands.
In order to translate any written work – religious or secular – you can’t just simply translate the words from one language to another, and hope that the job has been well done. If you are translating a work of literature, then if you ever hope to convey the greatness of that work into another language, you have to know what the underlying themes and messages are. You have to know what the original author was trying to convey through the imagery of their work, and what the background motives of their storylines were, before you can ever hope to render their work into your target language. I have therefore had to study Torah – I mean, really study it – in order to gain an understanding of its underlying message and purpose, in order then to be able to render the Message of Torah into such words, that people can discern that message.
Biblical Hebrew was incredibly sparse as a language. If you are translating from it into any modern language, you have to expand it to fit modern ways of expressing language. For example, the Hebrew word davar can mean different things according to context: word, message, sermon, thing, case, edict, proclamation, plea, matter – and many, many other things too numerous to mention. In order to render biblical Hebrew into modern English, you have to try to get into the mindset of the authors and editors, to get to grips with what they thought they were writing about.
The books of the Torah had already passed through many mouths (at least, the parts of it that had existed only in oral form), and through many hands (that is, all the parts that existed in written form), before it was finally put together by its final editor in the 6th century BCE. That editor had come out the other side of the Babylonian Exile, and unfortunately, he had already lost some of the beliefs and spiritual insights of the original Israelite religion, when he was compiling Torah. If he had been fully conversant with some of the more profound, mystical ideas of Israelite theology, we would have had less of the ‘wrath’ in Torah, and more a piece of literature that was more fully able to expound the enormous power, infinite love, and merciful compassion of the incredible God we worship.
Introduction to the Sinai Covenant
Before I go too far too fast, let me first say a little about the covenant made at Sinai. Until then, the religion followed by the early Yahwists, like the families of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was the religion of early nomads and pastoralists. Those families had now become a nation, and as I mentioned earlier, the religion that they were given by God had to expand to serve the needs of an entire nation, as well as those of individuals.
As with all covenants, God has God’s responsibilities, and we have our responsibilities.
What God will do:
- Work wonders such as have never been seen before
- Treasure Israel among all peoples
- Put God’s dwelling place among us, so that God’s Presence is in our midst (the central focus of this covenant)
- God will not spurn Israel, and will always be with us
What Israel must do:
- Keep God’s commandments, statutes, ordinances and precepts forever
- Not worship any other god but Yahveh
- Not use the name of God to swear false oaths, deceive, or do evil
- Be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation
- Keep the Sabbath forever
- Not make any treaties or pacts with the peoples of Canaan
- Not make any cast metal idols, nor set up sacred stones/poles, nor worship them
- Have reverence for God’s Sanctuary
- Respect one’s parents
- Not commit murder
- Not to steal
- Not to give false testimony
- Not to seek to have what belongs to someone else
- Redeem (buy back) the first offspring of all domestic animals that are non-kosher, whether male or female
- Redeem the first-born child with five sheqels of silver (additionally the first-born son, if the first child is a girl)
- Keep all three pilgrim festivals
What Torah enables to happen
I mentioned in the above list, that the central point of this covenant was to sanctify Israel, to allow God’s powerful Glory and Presence to dwell in our midst without harming us. Torah enables that to happen.
If you witness something incredibly complex, and don’t understand what you are witnessing, then when you are asked to write and describe what you have seen, you are in danger of describing the events only according to your limited understanding of what happened. This type of thing is unfortunately what has happened with certain events described in the narrative sections of Torah.
If you don’t understand the theology or spirituality behind what ‘the fire of God’s Glory’ is – if you don’t understand this supremely important aspect of the very nature of Yahveh – then the only way you have of describing God, from your limited experience and understanding of the universe, is to think that God is always angry, punitive and intolerant of mistakes.
But then you read the legal parts in Torah, about God’s intimate concern with the poorest of human society, the very least of society; how people should not be exploited; how Israelite society should be egalitarian, just and fair; and how even our animals should not suffer, but be allowed to rest – you realise then that no, God is not this angry Deity. And when you read the books of the Hebrew prophets, and how they speak about God’s desire for social justice, God’s unfailing love and God’s boundless compassion, you can only conclude that you have gotten God all wrong. Yahveh is nor an angry, wrathful God who is eager to punish, but a God who reaches out even to the least of us, because Yahveh loves us.
Have any of you seen the episode of Stargate SG1 called ‘Cold Lazarus’? The SG1 team visited a planet that was apparently filled with empty deserts of yellow sand, except for these scattered groups of blue crystals. When Jack O’Neill touches one, he is zapped with a bolt of energy that is so incredibly powerful, that he is blown many metres away, and almost killed. The viewer’s immediate impression, is that these crystals are malevolent and dangerous. As the story progresses, you learn that the crystals are a very intelligent and powerful life-form. However, they were not evil, or even angry. Their powerful nature simply meant that it was very dangerous even to merely touch one of them. They were, in fact, very compassionate and gentle beings, even to the extent of being extremely concerned and apprehensive about the effect that their own power had on lesser mortals.
If you only saw the effect of what one of these crystal entities did, you would conclude that they were evil, angry and dangerous conquerors. However, once you got to know them, you realised that this incredible power was simply what they inherently were in their nature, and they were not evil – or even angry.
This is the mistake, I believe, that the writers of the narrative portions of Torah made. They interpreted the incredible power of Yahveh as God being angry, but that’s not what was happening. Yahveh is so incredibly powerful, that being too close to the raw power of God’s Glory (the fire of God’s Divine Radiance), would kill you. Yahveh is a holy God, and it is in the nature of God’s holiness that it automatically seeks out to annihilate what is evil; nothing evil can approach Yahveh and survive.
This automatic and inherent power is why the ordinary Israelites were so afraid during the Sinai experience at the foot of the mountain – they said to Moses, “For who is there out of all flesh who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived?” (MT Dt 5:26). They were afraid that if they continued listening to God, such physical closeness might kill them. So they deputised Moses to go up the mountain to listen to God on their behalf (MT Dt 5:27), “but let not God speak with us directly, in case we die” (MT Ex 20:16b).
So Moses goes up Mount Horev. While he is there, he experiences the Theophany – when the Glory of God comes through from the realm of heaven, to our earthly realm (MT Ex 33:18-23, 34:6-8). This Theophany is the central salvation event of the Israelite religion. However, the Glory of Yahveh is so powerful, that Moses is only allowed to see the back of this doorway between heaven and earth, because if he were to see this doorway of light at its full strength, it would kill him. Yahveh wants us close to God, and Torah enables us to get close to the heavenly Presence of God without killing us.
When he comes back down the mountain, his face is glowing (MT Ex 34:29-35). What had in fact happened, was an example of one of the effects of God’s Glory – the purification of the soul from the stain and blemish of all evil and sin. Moses’s soul had been so completely purged during his time so close to God’s Glory, that it was now completely spotless, and his soul within him had become so clean, it glowed within him.
When you come to understand the nature of Yahveh, and the nature of God’s purifying Holiness and Glory, then you can finally realise the incredible power of Yahveh’s qualities, and that Yahveh was not angry or wrathful – Yahveh is not a God of wrath, vengeance and destruction; that is just how limited human beings would interpret God’s inherent power, in the same way as a human being might interpret being zapped and almost killed by a blue crystal life-form on an alien planet (who turned out to be, not an angry creature, but a very gentle entity).
Torah shows us a way of being intimately close to Yahveh – safely
When the Glory of Yahveh is approached properly, it brings blessing and good fortune (consider the episode of when David leaves the Ark at the house of a Philistine, Obed-edom, and it brings blessing to his household – 2Sam 6:2-12). One of the many purposes of Torah, is to show Israel how to be intimately close with the Presence of Yahveh, without it destroying us or harming us.
The Tabernacle was a portable housing for this doorway between heaven and earth to open up on a permanent basis in our midst. Moses was told that the Glory of Yahveh would appear between the cherubim on the lid of the Ark (MT Ex 25:22).
This then, is the reason for the Tabernacle, and later, the Temple. We can truly pray to Yahveh anywhere on earth, anywhere we choose. However, the doorway to God’s purifying Presence in heaven could only be opened up inside the Temple. With this doorway permanently open, God’s Divine Presence would be a source of blessing to Israel, and thence to all humanity.
The rituals described in Torah – however boring they might sound to most of us – allow this doorway to be kept permanently open, without God’s Glory harming anyone. If you could understand the incredible, mind-blowing symbolism behind all the rituals, you would understand that it is not the ritual itself that does anything, but rather it is the understanding of what it all means – the effect of that symbolism on the human soul – that is so powerful.
A Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation
I need to make it clear here that the Israelite religion is not for everyone; we Jews do not, and have never believed that all human beings must convert to Judaism and follow Torah. Torah is for a kingdom of priests, and not every human being is called to be a priest. The life of non-Jews is analogous to the lives of the laity in any religious society.
The actual anointed priests and Levites had to understand the meaning of the rituals in Torah, to be able to work in such close proximity to the doorway to God’s Glory, but ordinary Israelites had to understand the ethical and moral way of life that allows us, as non-priests, to get close to God’s Glory. Torah-living allows both Israelites and Gentile Godfearers to experience an intimate closeness to God in a meaningful way.
This means that our inner attitude, ethical mindset and moral behaviour has to be one of holiness, that allows us to be physically and spiritually close to God. Torah gives us ordinary mortals a way of right behaviour, that allows us closeness to God’s Presence in our daily lives. In short, a small portion of the fire of Yahveh’s Glory lives in the heart of those who live Yahveh’s Way. This is how following Torah makes all the Assembly of Israel into priests.
God’s Presence can dwell amongst a people that is holy. This means that our system of government must be just, egalitarian, and fair. Our leaders have to be leaders for all our people, not just for certain sections of society that they have vested interests in. The higher up in the power-ladder you are, the greater the responsibility you have, to be just and equitable in God’s sight. A righteous leader is a leader who invites God’s peace and stability to dwell amongst us, so that Israel remains stable and safe. This is the underlying message of the last covenant we shall look at, the Covenant with David and his anointed descendants.
The human heart in which God’s Glory dwells, is the heart that houses a good, compassionate and kind outlook on life. That heart is not swift to judge, but eager to listen and understand, to embrace wisdom and the sanctity of all knowledge. A person who only engages in the rituals of a religion, without also paying attention to the ethical and psychological requirements of the Israelite faith, is a soul where God’s Glory cannot dwell.
Social Justice and Good Governance
If you could read a translation of Torah in modern English, you would realise how great a part that social justice plays in the Israelite religion. Back then, the leaders and rulers of nations around the world had little or no concern for the ordinary people in their society. Kingdoms back then existed solely for the benefit and glory of their king; the lives of ordinary citizens in a country existed to serve their rulers, and fight their wars. If you were poor back then, you were on your own – no one was going to help you. In such societies, the poor were treated like forgotten, disposable trash.
That was not how it was going to be with Torah – in a society where Yahveh was the Sovereign. This was therefore the astonishing innovation in Torah – to enshrine concern for the welfare of the least in a society within the religious laws of that nation. You can then understand why the poorest people in Israelite society were the most in favour of Torah.
I genuinely fail to understand how someone who claims to take every word of the Bible so literally, yet still has no compassion for the poor in their society. It is ironic that the more literally people take the Bible, the less social concern they seem to have.
In those days, to criticise a leader was to invite the death sentence. What was different about how Israelite leaders were to be treated, was that they could be criticised without fear of execution. The ideal Israelite leader was someone who cared about the welfare of their whole country, not just certain sections of it. A good, ethical, Torah-observant Israelite leader would be a leader who governed in the interests of all his people, not just a small portion of them.
The Israelite religion had this inbuilt correction mechanism. If you cannot criticise wrongdoing – especially wrongdoing by a leader – then your society becomes ever more corrupt and rotten. And when society becomes so rotten that it is in imminent danger of self-destruction, God sends a prophet to warn them (in the Israelite religion, a prophet is not someone who delivers a new revelation, or predictions of the future, but rather someone whom God sends to warn people that they have gotten dangerously off-course).
The overall ethos of Israelite society was that it was meant to be egalitarian. It was not meant to be hierarchical or top-heavy, run only in the interests of the rich and powerful. The leader who oppressed their country’s poor, was a leader who was far from what God wanted; their authoritarian behaviour would invite ruin on the country.
The angry, hateful soul that comes close to God’s Glory will die slowly inside
The daily practice of holiness within the human mind, by striving to maintain ethical uprightness and goodness, enables us to keep out wickedness from our personal psyches. Practicing holiness of the mind, invites the Presence of God to dwell within you; it awakens your ‘heavenly self’ – the kevodh neshamah, the ‘glory of the soul’, which is the purest, most perfect part of our souls, that is normally dormant while we are on earth (see Ps 7:6, 16:9, 30:13, 57:9, 108:2).
However, if a defiant person tries to approach God’s Glory – someone who is unrepentant, and is even proud of the aggressive and destructive way they practice their religion, with hate and psychological violence – the soul of such a person will die slowly, day by day, every time they try to approach God.
The soul that can safely approach God’s Holiness is one that is not haughty or proud, self-important or presumptuous, but one that is humble before God. Such a soul seeks good things for others, even for those who do not belong to their religion. They will tell themselves, “Your ways, my Sovereign Yahveh, are the standard by which I am to behave.”
There are self-centred people who think that they decide their own proper values and standards – that they decide what is good and bad themselves, what is correct and incorrect, or what is acceptable from a religious person, while ignoring all the compassionate and just values, principles and standards that God has already given us. If you bring disrepute to God’s Name, and by your very words and actions, make others hate God and despise religion, then coming into God’s Presence with head held high and face defiantly proud, is just like walking into a nuclear furnace to have your body destroyed by nuclear radiation.
What are the real-world signs of coming into the presence of God’s Glory with arrogance and defiance
An unrepentant person who tries to approach the Holiness of God, risks being harmed by it. It’s one thing to say this and believe it; it’s another to actually know what this means in real life – what are the signs of this harm?
You may have met someone who claims to be religious, and yet they constantly judge others, refuse kindness or help to certain groups of people they disapprove of; or they become obsessed with the rules and regulations of religion, while ignoring the true heart and just principles of their faith; these are the people who dared to approach God’s Holiness, while denying to themselves or to God that their wrongdoings were even any kind of fault at all.
These are the kind of people who keep a demeanour and mindset that denies others the right to enter the kingdom of God, but neither are they able to enter the kingdom of God themselves. They exclude people from God’s love, and turn religion into something that is angry, hurtful, burdensome, punitive and ultimately, destructive. Turning religion into this, desecrates the Holiness of God, but they continue in their offence – they continue trying to approach God while staunchly maintaining their intransigent ways; they proudly show how faithfully devoted to God they are, and all the while, more and more of their goodness gets burnt away; it is a vicious cycle that they refuse to see or acknowledge.
Summary
Torah is essentially a way of life that allows the holiness and Glory of Yahveh to dwell among us and within us, without harming us. It gives us a holy way of life that tells us about the ethics of good governance and good business. It tells us about the way of managing the Land and our environment, and the ethics that underpin our lives – it appends the laws of a nation, to the ethics of the individual soul. Torah is a protection for the poorest and the least of society; it is a protection for the weak against the strong; it is a liberation for those in bondage and exploitation.
Torah-living is about bringing the Presence of Yahveh into your personal life. God is not ‘up there’, while we are ‘down here’. Yahveh is present in the souls of those who love Yahveh, and Torah-living helps us to really feel this and experience this for ourselves.