Friday, March 28, 2008

Ben Bag Bag Omer


בֶּן בַּג בַּג אוֹמֵר: הֲפֺךְ בָּהּ וָהֲפֺךְ בָּהּ, דְּכֺלָּה בַּה; וּבַהּ תֶּחֱזֵי, וְסִיב וּבְלֵה בַּהּ, וּמִנַּהּ לָא תְּזוּעַ, שֶׁאֵין לְךָ מִדָּה טוֹבָה הֵימֶנָּה


"Ben Bag Bag says: Turn it over and turn it over, for everything is in it. Look deeply into it, and grow old with it, and spend time over it, and do not stir from it, because there is no greater portion." (Avos 5:22)


Obviously this Mishna is referring to the Torah Hakedosha. While standing by the Kosel one erev Shabbos a friend of mine told me over the following in the name of his Rebbi: The Torah can be compared to a love letter. When someone receives a letter from a loved one he reads through it over and over again. He analyzes every word, every comma, every cross out. He wants to understand EXACTLY what his loved one meant to say at every point throughout the letter. The same is true by the Torah. It is a love letter from Hakodosh Baruch Hu. As Ben Bag Bag put it, we should but turning it over and turning it over. The more we delve into it, the more we understand Hashem and His amazing universe. The more we break our heads on it, the more Chochmas Hashem we bring into ourselves. Hashem wrote us a love letter that contains EVERYTHING within it. Once we tap into it, meaning and emes will fill our lives, because "there is no greater portion."
Remember-When we Daven we are speaking to Hashem. When we learn the Borei Olam is speaking to us...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love CR!!! His blog is a great and so is he. Keep it going strong!
-AMA

CR said...

CR- I teach a class on the meaning in songs, so i was looking at blog its an awesome blog- found it even cooler that I'm CR too!

Anonymous said...

I very much like the love letter analogy! Thank you for sharing it. It just goes to show, when you really, really want to know what a text means, you read it in a very different way than if it doesn't matter to you...

Anonymous said...

Yes, beautiful words from a man who was a convert to Judaism himself, being b'nai Noach, I found his words in Pirke Avot to be inspiring to me in my own study of Torah and on my way to my own conversion...!!!