For You As a Witness

 There is a fascinating line in today’s reading about how the Torah which Moshe wrote should be placed along side of the holy Ark where it will serve as a witness “in you” (a literal translation of bi’cha).  

For the past two days since reading about how holy objects conserve as a sign for us, I’ve been wondering what it means for any object, but especially a holy object, to serve as a sign not only for us as a witness but in us as something that is somehow incorporated into work are you being a good course dad the ultimate example of this would be the Torah, about which it is said that G-d looked into it and created the world. There must be, therefore, some bit of Torah inside each of us - literally. And along these lines I am reminded of the Holy Pisseczner Rebbe who once wrote that the Sinai experience was essentially people seeing through their very beings and instead seeing their essence - which is the letters of the Hebrew alphabet as the building blocks of creation - the same building blocks, of course, of Torah. So perhaps it can be said that G-d created the letters, created the Torah from these letters (or whichever one came first) and then used these mystical ingredients to create, form, and make the rest of creation. And incredible thought. 

And further, there must be a bit of the holy ark inside each of us as well. As we know, the entire mishkan erection is a perfect diagram of the structure of the universe - something we (the human body) exhibit as well as we are “made in G-dad’s Image.”  Therefore, these physical manifestations such as the holy ark and the mishkan simply mirror G-d’s Essence - so to speak, in ways which kabbalists have meditated on for centuries but which is still essentially unknown. And of course our bodies - “in you” as the Torah says - mirror this exact same dimensionality. 

This must be why a Torah placed in an ark can serve “in you for a witness.”  Because the Torah is embedded into every single Jew, and it is impossible for a Jew to go so wayward, to rebel so much (even as Moshe warns us) that they will ever completely lose the Torah as an internal compass and fail to return. 

In these holy days of return, let us remember - there is literally a Torah within each of us - serving as a witness - free and helping us to return whenever we want.