Let My People Know

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: “Our world is full of ‘noises’ that drown out all other sounds.”

He who engages in Torah study and fulfilling its mitzvot is in a sense playing an integral role in creating order in this chaotic world.

To illustrate this further, let us consider the magnetization of iron (ferromagnetism).

Unmagnetized iron contains electrons that spin at random.

To magnetize a piece of iron, a magnet is rubbed against it in the same direction. This action causes an alignment of the electrons, thereby generating a magnetic quality in the iron.

The idea here is that the iron already contains the potential for becoming a magnet.

All that is required is to align and order the disordered electrons.

Our world is full of “noises” that drown out all other sounds.

Yet when one succeeds in creating order in this world, he transforms that senseless chatter into intelligible words.

The world can be either an enigma or comprehensible speech.

The Torah is the tool by which we make the continual change in the world from garbled noise to meaningful speech, from the hidden to the revealed, step by step, until the entire world is transformed from darkness into light.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz