Receiving The Torah In Your Body

I love when that happens! That was my uncle Shwartzie’s favorite line and the name of his book. He meant in the context of recognizing the hand of Hashem when seeing the dots connect in interactions and events transpiring around him/us.

I love when that happens, for me is when I connect some new understanding of the human journey with a teaching of Torah.  Seeing the Torah teaching in a new light often exposes a depth to the teaching that I wasn’t aware of.

I believe this is part of the ultimate journey of making the world a home for the Divine.  When the Divine shows up in areas of life like the sciences and new brain understanding it reveals that the world really is Hashem’s world.

This showed up for me this week, in a very profound way.

I’ve been invested in Somatic Healing in the recent months.  Both understanding what it is and engaged in somatic healing for myself.  What it is in a nut shell is accessing healing that is not available on an intellectual level or even emotional dimension. It accesses the parts of us that are felt but not necessarily unpacked in emotion or intellect.  We all have stuff stuck there and when we can bring healing to that space, we release something may have held us back to living fully in the present.

At the end of the Megillah it says; “and these days should be remembered and reenacted”.  The Torah teaching around this is that when we remember it, we reenact it. 

I always understood this on a spiritual level.  That is, that when we remember the stories of our history and the miracles that occurred then on a spiritual level the energies that were manifest the first time these occurred are reenacted and revealed again.

While there is truth to that, it is abstract and has no relevant application to the actual human experience.  So, as I’ve accepted this truth, I also accepted that the spiritual energies are left to the spirit.

In better understanding somatic healing, in particular listening to this podcast, my eyes were opened up.

The remembering of those days is not an abstract reading of the Megillah or the Ten Commandments (as we will on Sunday commemorating Shavous and the revelation at Sinai).  It is intended to be a full body feeling experience. 

When hearing the Torah reading, we close our eyes, we move ourselves into the experience of Sinai.  We listen to the Torah’s words of the thunder and lightning, the smoke on Mt Sinai, the Divine voice speaking, the trembling of the earth, the pause of all creatures to listen and experience this amazing moment of revelation.

Can you feel it? Can you bring yourself into that experience? Can you smell the mountain air, taste the dryness of the dessert, touch the earth of Mt. Sinai or the sand at your feet, can you hear the booming VOICE I AM THE LORD YOUR G-D (or hear the lightening), can you see the smoke coming up the mountain (or the thunder)?

If we can focus deeply while letting go, we can really remember the experience.  And when we can remember the experience, we can reenact the energy of the moment not only in the spiritual but in our very bodies!

I love when that happens! Are you feeling it?

It helps to study about the story of the Revelation at Sinai – you can find text and Midrash here.

Finally, come and feel the moment in real time on Sunday at 11:00 at Chabad Intown as we relive, remember and reenact the events of Sinai for the 3334^th time!

Good Shabbos and good Yom Tov and in the Chabad traditional blessing, may you receive the Torah an internal and joyous manner!

Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman

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