FOR EIKEV
SOAPY CLEAN
(from a previous Good Shabbos Email)
How clean is your soap?
Yes, I know. Soap is a cleaning agent in and of itself. The question of how “clean” is soap is like asking how dirty is dirt…
The question is motivated by a recent visit to the DEB Company, a prominent commercial soap-making plant, for Kosher supervision purposes.
As manufacturing plants go, this one had all the usual sophisticated machinery, loading docks and storage areas one would expect.
What I did not expect, however, was the incredible measures this company takes to ensure the cleanliness of the dozens of soaps, lotions and hand creams they produce. A team of chemists inspects and tests every single ingredient that enters the plant, as well as every batch of cleansing agent produced. After each batch, without fail, the huge vats in which the soap is processed are washed out with boiling water and a solution of bleach.
Just to confirm that these procedures were the regular and ongoing company standard, I was shown the logs from the previous week. The commitment of vigilance and attention these people maintain is unquestionable and uncompromising.
The cautious measures which this company takes to preserve their products, keeping them free from contaminants and impurities, were even far and beyond governmental requirements. This formed a very impressive eye opener for me about making soap: Something which is supposed to be purifying had better be pure itself.
There is hardly anything more spiritually “pure” than the Torah, given to the Jewish people by Almighty G-d Himself. Despite its being given to people living in this physical world, the Torah, as the Almighty’s document, maintains its divinity and purity.
At least twice each day, the Jewish people are required to recite the “Shema” prayer. This prayer consists of three sections from three different Torah portions. This week’s Torah portion, “Eikev,” contains the second of these three sections, and last week’s portion, “Va’eschanan,” contains the first.
It is interesting that in both sections in these two Torah portions, there is the same positive commandment that seems to be missing something. The Torah commands: “And you shall teach them (these words of Torah) to your children and you shall speak of them…” (D'varim (Deuteronomy) 6:7; 11:19). These words essentially command people not just to study Torah with their children and students, but to study Torah themselves. If a person does not study Torah, he or she would have no chance to teach it to anyone else.
There is, however, no clear instruction in the Torah to study the Torah. It is somewhat perplexing to work backwards like this. It would seem to make more sense for the Torah to command the Jewish people first to study the Torah and then ask of them to teach what they learned. Why is the obligation of self-study inferred from how people are to teach to others?
The answer is about maintaining purity. Studying Torah can be misleading. By definition, when a person studies and commits some intelligent piece of information to his or her intellect, it is grasped and absorbed by the human cognizance. The acquired Divine knowledge through Torah study also becomes part of a human’s own intelligence and mind.
In contrast, when a person is engaged in an action, such as a “Mitzvah,” a good deed, the main focus is to perform the action, the deed, in the right and proper manner. True, the deed should be accompanied by focus and concentration on its importance, its spirituality, and its cosmic outcome. All of those focuses, however, are secondary to the main point of the deed: The deed itself must be performed and completed in the right way. Moreover, the deed itself is generally performed with an object outside of the person.
The question becomes, then, can human beings, having the Divine Torah knowledge enmeshed and absorbed in human minds, recognize and maintain that Divinity? It is quite easy to see how a person can attribute his or her Divine Torah knowledge to human intelligence and ability, losing focus on the purity of the Divinity of Torah.
When the Almighty wishes to convey the importance of teaching the Torah to children, thus actually encouraging its study it as well, maintaining a child-like approach to the Torah and its Divine Author is being implied. One is to recognize that the Torah must not be interpreted in a way that would lead people astray from its Divinity.
The Torah, while given to people for interpretation, maintains some very rigid and fundamental standards. Unless it is treated very carefully and “cleanly,” contaminants can easily enter, rendering it all unusable.
When manufacturing soap in order to cleanse and purify the skin, tremendous caution is maintained to preserve its purity. When studying Torah, the purest form of spirituality and G-dliness, its purity must also be maintained by taking every caution to keep away contaminants, maintaining and preserving its “cleanliness.”
And then, the Torah will provide cleanliness and purification. Plus, studying it will provide a pleasant aroma as well…
SUMMARY: The Torah is the most spiritually pure element available to people. It has been given to humans to use, but its purity is expected to be kept intact.