The Infinite Depths of Torah
How big is the Torah? It is much bigger than we think it is!
What is Torah? Is it just the five books of Moses that are written in the Torah scroll that is read in synagogue? Or does it also include the other 19 books of the Tanach, like the Prophets, Psalms, Proverbs, etc.? Or even more than that, does it include the entire Oral Law that has been encoded in the 60 tractates of the Talmud, as well as the hundreds of volumes of Midrash and Kabbalistic works?
The truth may shock you – Torah is far more than all of these combined. In fact, the sages teach that this tremendous compendium of scripture and literature is not only “a drop in the bucket,” but it is more accurately like a single drop in the ocean in comparison to Torah’s vast expanse.
This truth is alluded to in this week’s parsha, Chayei Sarah. When Abraham’s servant, Eliezer, is sent to his master’s birthplace to seek a wife for Isaac, he finds Rebecca, the granddaughter of Abraham’s brother, Nahor. The introductory verse about Rebecca mentions only her parentage and that “her pitcher was on her shoulder” (Genesis 24:15). The subsequent verse describes her beauty and her virtue, and then once again mentions the pitcher that she carried, which she now dipped into the fountain and filled with water.
The mystics teach that the word for pitcher, “כד/Kad,” has the numerical value of 24 (‘כ’ is 20, and ‘ד’ is 4), and that the pitcher that Rebecca carries thus represents the 24 books of Tanach. The Alter Rebbe writes that Torah derives from “chochma/wisdom,” which is called the “yam ilaah/higher ocean.” For this reason, the written Torah is called “shamayim,” which literally means “heavens,” but which can also be broken down to “sham mayim/water is there.”
Yet this water that fills the pitcher – i.e. the 24 books of the written Torah – is only like a pitcher’s worth of water that is drawn from the infinite ocean of Godly wisdom. Furthermore, the Alter Rebbe teaches, the fact that Rebecca’s pitcher “was on her shoulder” indicates that the 24 books of the Torah that we have access to are only the “achorayim/back-part” of divine wisdom.
When we study Torah, we are drawing from an infinite wellspring. Every sip from the well’s water is sweet and deeply satisfying, yet it does not slake our thirst but only stimulates it further. The more we learn, the more we realize how little we know and how much more there is to discover.
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