We Received the Torah Nearly 3,500 Years Ago, So Why Is the World Still So Dark?
As we approach the holiday of Shavuos this Sunday evening, the Jewish world is reeling. Dozens of our hostages are still held in captivity, antisemitism continues to escalate worldwide, and two young Israel supporters were just gunned down in the street in Washington, DC. As we prepare to celebrate the gift of the Torah on Mount Sinai, and indeed to receive the Torah anew as we do each year at this time, it is possible that many of us are struggling with a powerful question: If Torah is God’s wisdom and we have had it for nearly three and a half millennia, then why does the world continue to be so dark?
The Chassidic Masters explain that God created darkness prior to light – “it was evening and then it was morning” – because there is a benefit in the progression from the one to the other. That is that light which comes after darkness is more brilliant than light by itself. Therefore, every moment that there is continued darkness and concealment, we are building toward an ever greater eventual revelation. It was never God’s intention that we should quickly move from exile to redemption. If He had desired that to be the case, then it would have been so.
The fact that human existence has been marked by consistent conflict, confusion, and frustration, is not an accident or an indication of either divine or human failing. Rather, it is the precise process through which God’s ultimate goal of the meticulous transformation of darkness to light will be accomplished. And though it may seem to be moving too painfully slow from our perspective, we must remind ourselves that everything must and will move at God’s pace, which is precisely the right pace.
The advent of the Torah was not meant to immediately usher in an age of total revelation. It was not intended to overturn the creation or eradicate the laws and systems that God had previously put in place and set in motion. The complete disclosure of God’s essence and reality would cause the world to revert to nothingness in the face of His absolute oneness. This would be utterly contrary to His initial intent in the creation of a multiverse where His unity would be concealed and otherness could exist.
Therefore, He provided a tool with which bits of light would be gradually revealed within the darkness. Every “mitzvah/commandment” prescribed in the Torah would create an individual act of illumination, a breaking of a small shell which contained and concealed a morsel of divine light. Through the aggregate performance of innumerable such acts throughout history, the darkness would slowly be transformed and an age of unprecedented radiance would evolve.
The end of this process is known as “yemot hamashiach/the days of the Messiah,” the messianic era when “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God like the oceans fill the sea-bed” (Habbakuk 2:14). At that point, all of the world and its creations will recognize the spark of God within them. Until then, we remain in the dark with the lantern of Torah which lights the path in front of our feet and urges us forward step by step.
It is vital that we do not despair. This is precisely what the forces of darkness are aiming to accomplish – that through their unremitting campaign of terror and intimidation, we will lose hope and therefore forfeit our connection to the source of light and life. The Alter Rebbe states in Tanya that an enemy combatant fights more vigorously when he senses that his defeat is near. Our response must be an ever greater celebration and rededication this Shavuos. May we receive the Torah anew with tremendous joy, gratitude, and optimism, and may its promise of peace finally be realized throughout the creation.
— Excerpted from Pnei Hashem, an introduction to the deepest depths of the human experience based on the esoteric teachings of Torah. www.pneihashem.com
