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The Zohar on Torah
Said R. Shimon: Woe to the man who says that the Torah merely tells tales and ordinary matters. If this were so, we could compose, even nowadays, a 'torah' dealing with ordinary matters, and an ever better one at that! ... In reality, however, all the words of the Torah represent lofty themes and sublime mysteries... The Torah is clothed in 'garments' which relate to this world, because otherwise the world would not be able to contain and absorb it. The stories of the Torah are only the garment of the Torah, as opposed to the Torah itself... David thus said: Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Your Torah' (Tehillim 119:18) - i.e., that which is beneath the garment of the Torah.Come and see: There are garments which everyone can see. When fools see a person in clothes which to them look beautiful, they look no further... The Torah also has a body, namely the precepts of the Torah which are called gufei Torah (the 'bodies', i.e., main principles of the Torah), and that body is vested in garments namely the worldly tales (and language of the Torah).The fools of this world look at the garment, the narrations of the Torah, and they do not know anything more. They do not consider what is beyond that garment. Those who realize more (than the fools) do not look at the garment but at the body beneath it. But the wise the servants of the Supreme King, those who stood at Mount Sinai they look for the soul, the very essence of everything, the real Torah... |