Let My People Know

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: “When a person offends the Torah.”

Let us say that there are many different worlds and there is a corridor running through them, like a thread, which is never spoiled.

In all the worlds there are distortions, variations, but the one thing that remains fixed throughout is the Torah.

This Torah somehow gets to our world, so that we are allowed a passage through to holiness, to the holy of holies of reality.

When a person offends the Torah, it is a far more fundamental offense than anything else.

If one is struck or injured, the pain is transmitted to the brain just as every sensation gets to the brain and to the heart, but there is a hurt that strikes the nerve directly and this is the most painful of all.

In this way, to offend the Torah by failing to recite the blessing means to make the Torah a thing, diminishing its holiness.

And the more one is engaged with Torah in this profane manner, the greater is the injury to holiness, until the Torah is no longer able to serve as a means of nourishment for the world.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz