From the Context of Torah to the Torah of Context

This year's Tikkun Leil Shavuot is going to be at my house, and it will consist of 3 1/2-hour sessions of "Torah study," broadly defined.

"R. Simeon ben Lakish said: The Torah given to Moses was written with black fire upon white fire, sealed with fire, and swathed with bands of fire.

(Yerushalmi Shelamim 6:1, 49d)

THE FIRST THINGS CREATED - In the beginning, two thousand years before the heaven and the earth, seven things were created: the Torah written with black fire on white fire, and lying in the lap of God; etc.

(Legends of the Jews 1:1)

Isaac of Acre

However, this is a fire that is not a fire, as it is said by the Sages, of blessed memory….So too is the matter of this fire, the black fire hints at the attribute of judgment, which is B[inah], and the white fire hints at the attribute of mercy, which is H[okhmah]….

Look again at the image of Shirat HaYam . . .. do you see white spaces of possibility that are partially filled up with little black scrawls of interpretation? Midrash Tanchuma, in its version of the midrash, gives priority to the white spaces of possibility: “The Torah was written upon white fire with black fire.”

The conclusion is inescapable: it is our responsibility as students of Torah to live in the white spaces, to connect with the source of primordial Torah, to be critical readers and active interpreters of the black letters. The image of Shirat HaYam even gives us hints about how interpretation will come forth. One hint invites us to meditate; another invites us to feminist critique. Sometimes, what is said in the language of the black letters brings us to stunned silence, represented by the open white spaces. If we dwell in the silence, through meditation, the insight we receive there will bring us once again to language. At other times we may find ourselves miscast by the male-centered language of our tradition. At those times we need to dwell in the white spaces. The Hebrew word for “white,” levanah, is also the Hebrew word for “moon,” a symbol of femaleness that emerges month after month. The teaching is clear: when our perspective becomes biased, we must return to the white spaces of primordial Torah.

Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan 2013

Rabbi Michael Strassfeld "The Challenge of Modernity"

There is a statement in the Talmud Yerushalmi that describes the Torah as being black fire written on white fire. Over the centuries this phrase has been explained in a variety of ways. They all begin with an image of the fire you can see (the black fire) and the fire you can't see (the white fire). One interpretation is that the black fire is the letters of the written Torah and the white is the Oral Torah. For Jewish mystics, the white fire is the hidden meanings of the Torah that lie beneath the written text.

I want to suggest a new interpretation for our time. The white fire is the larger world around us. Without the white spaces the Torah can not be read. Without the white fire the Torah would be lacking a larger context.

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I want to suggest that modernity is the opportunity and the challenge to be touched by both the black fire and the white fire. It is also to understand that the real truth is we always have read the white letters. We always interacted with the world around us even when hindered by the walls of the ghetto. Now the walls are down. We are free of the limitations of so many centuries. Reading only the black letters is an inadequate response to the world we live in.

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It will not be easy but without reading both the black fire and the white fire we are misunderstanding the nature of Torah. The Midrash says that God looked into the Torah and created the world. It doesn't say God looked into the Torah and created the Jewish people or just the land of Israel. The whole world is Torah's context. After all, the Torah begins not with the Exodus or even with Abraham and Sarah. It begins with creation and Adam and Eve.

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. . . at least in America, we have the possibility of exploring Torah as it was meant to be-in the fullness of God's intention---black fire on white fire.