Place-Spaces and Time-Spaces
In Torah, you are an expert too
My son, Moshe, has just completed a rich and growing period at the Yeshiva Gedolah in Johannesburg. More than any Yeshiva I know, it successfully blends a focus on midot and character mastery, balance (in both outlook and conduct), and crystal clear, laser straightgemarrah lomdus (science of Torah learning) and Yediat Hatorah(knowledge of the Torah).
Credit for the Yeshiva’s greatness goes not only to its brilliant, humble, and noble founder, the late Rosh Yeshiva ztz”l and his sons who now lead it, but also to his Rebbetzin. Mrs. Goldfein is a powerhouse of energy, a beacon of midot tovot, and also the most learned woman I know.
I took my son to say goodbye to the Rebbetzin. Apart from receiving us with her exuberant joy and warmth, she was bubbling over with excitement over a Targum Yonatan she had just been learning on the Parsha. She shared it with us, and I would like to share it with you.
People who are experts in their fields often try to make their field appear obscure and difficult for the ordinary person to access. They use jargon and express themselves in ways that are hard to follow. Rare is the genius that can make the complex, easy to understand, simplifying it without making it simplistic. Religious “gurus” are sometimes the most notorious for keeping wisdom locked up as a tool of control.
It is refreshing to read Moshe Rabeinu’s approach (Devarim 30:11): “For this Mitzvah in which I have instructed you today, is not mysteriously hidden from you, nor is it distant. It resides neither in the lofty and heavenly space of inaccessible spirituality (my translation for bashamayim), that it needs a specialist intermediary for you to access it, nor does it reside overseas that you need a foreign expert to bring it to you and teach you how to do it. For The Word is extremely close to you, it is in fact in your mouth and in your heart to do.” Each of you can be expert; each of you can access the wisdom of the Torah, because it already exists inside each of you. The tools you need are just your mouth and your heart.
Place-Spaces and Time-Spaces
But the Targum Yonatan has a different take on “The Word is extremely close to you, it is in fact in your mouth and in your heart to do.”
The Torah recognizes the energy we gain from the spaces we are in. Sometimes it is a geographical space, a place-space, and sometimes it is a space in time, a time-space. Both place-spaces and time-spaces have their own unique energies about them. You feel that energy when you travel from one country to another, or even from one town to another. You can even feel it when you go from one room to another in the same house. The same applies to time-spaces. You feel the transitions from Chol to Shabbat and Shabbat to Chol. Kedusha attaches both to space-places and to time-spaces.Tumah attaches to place-spaces but not to time-spaces.
For example, Eretz Yisrael is a place-space. Everyone I know who visits Israel knows that there is a level of spiritual intimacy and purity that is attainable in that space that cannot be replicated elsewhere. This quality is separate from the energy created by the people who live and learn in Israel. It is a quality described by Rishonim who came to Eretz Yisrael before there was any Yishuv to talk of.
The Beit Hamikdash (Temple) is also a place-space. There are certain practices that may only be performed in that space. Batei Kenesset and Batei Midrash (centers of prayers and of learning) are also place-spaces like the Beit Hamikdash. Shabbat and Yomtov are time-spaces, and there are certain levels of spirituality that we can only access in those time-spaces.
Sometimes we need to be at the intersection of time and place-spaces. Tefilah ideally occurs at the point of intersection of time-space and place-space. We daven at certain times in specific spaces. Not only should we daven in a shul or Beit Midrash, but it is recommended that we have a Makom Kavuah (a fixed place) in theshul at which we always daven.
The Targum Yonatan says that the close proximity of Torah to each of us refers not to a metaphysical proximity in the sense that Torah resides inside each of us, but refers to the geographical proximity of place-spaces that are designed and conducive for Torah learning: The Beit Midrash. “The Word is close to you” means, he says, that you can access it by entering a Beit Midrash and by opening your mouths to learn it.
A Beit Midrash is a unique space:
- In a Beit Midrash there is a continuous, palpable and audible, energy of learning. A Beit Midrash is the opposite of a library. A library is a warehouse of books, a repository of knowledge. It is about wisdom that was accumulated and recorded in the past. A Beit Midrash is a factory of knowledge; it is a living laboratory. In a Beit Midrash, wisdom is being created in real time all around you. The Talmidim (students) are the main feature of a Beit Midrash. The books are secondary. There were times when Batei Midrashim were alive with the sound of learning even though they contained no books.
- In a Beit Midrash there is sanctity. It is used for nothing but learning, praying and experiencing closeness to Hashem.
- Not only has a coarse word, a lie or Lashon Harah never been uttered in a Beit Midrash, even valuable but secular conversation has not taken place within its walls. Even the walls of a Beit Midrash are drenched with the sounds of Torah and wisdom.
- There is continuous chessed (kindness) happening in a Beit Midrash all the time, as people help each other to find meaning and access in the Torah.
- Often great minds and saintly souls are learning or have learnt and taught in any given Beit Midrash.
All of these characteristics generate an energy of learning and sanctity in a Beit Midrash that cannot be found anywhere else.
Being in the space is one requirement. Active engagement rather than passive reading or listening is the other. “Pettachu pumchon lemehevei hagyan behon”, says the Targum: “Open your mouths to reflect on the words of Torah.”
Torah learning is not about thought alone, it is also about articulation of thought. Articulate the words, explain them to yourself or explain them to another. The act of mouthing out the words of Torah, articulating your thoughts coherently enough for someone else to understand them, is the foundation of growth in Torah learning.
You create an idea (even if it is merely reorganizing someone else’s idea) by articulating it, not by merely thinking it. Writing your ideas down is also a form of verbal articulation that bears your thoughts from the amorphous landscape of the abstract into the reality of vibrant Chidushei Torah. These Torah ideas that the ordinary person, you and I, articulate, are radiated across the universe to the very throne of Hashem, amplified there, and transmitted back to us in ways that change the world.
