A Piece of Prayer

Thank You that I’m feeling alive with inspiration from the Torah I’ve been studying, especially over the Sabbath. It would be nice if I could isolate a particular teaching which is really inspiring me, like a coal hot with a long enduring glow. Perhaps, my feelings are not so much from a particular teaching as much as from an overall euphoria from multiple yet unified voices of Torah.

Each book I study is a different voice of Torah.

~ The Lubavitcher Rebbe is a voice.

~ The Alter Rebbe is a voice.

~ The “Benei Yissaschar” is a voice.

~ “Otzrot Chaim” is a voice.

~ “Sha’ar HaKavanot” is a voice.

~ The Maimonides is a voice.

~ The “Ma’am Lo’ez” is a voice.

~ The “Ben Ish Chai” is a voice.

~ The Talmud is a voice.

~ The Pentateuch is a voice

~ “Ethics of the Fathers” is a voice.

~ The “Book of Psalms” is a voice.

I guess I’m just feeling giddy from hearing so different many sweet voices of such depth, insight and connection to You. They all flow from You. They’re all integrated. My heart feels them like a song sung by a harmonious choir of voices. But, they’re so much more than that.

True music is a manifestation of something so much more significant, something which reaches to the highest of high to the point where it’s closely associated with You. The voice of You echoing into refraction as the voices alive in so many works of Torah just makes me want to sing, dance and jump for joy!

You may have stopped Biblical prophecy, but You’ve given us works of Torah in which Your voice can still be heard in various, though unified, refractions. These are not mere recordings of Your voice. That would not be a living experience. These works of Torah are channels for Your voice. Studying Torah, I hear Your voice anew.

This does not mean that I have become a “prophet” or the like. A prophet hears an entirely new message. I’m just sometimes privy to feelings of new life within existing messages. Even my flashes of new insights are usually sparked out of the internal friction to reconcile and integrate such existing messages. Though new, they’re forged on the existing.

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From the Next Day’s Prayer:

Yesterday, I waxed poetic about Your voice. I was so drunk in love with You, so overwhelmed, that my feelings ran ahead of my articulative capacities. Now, that my articulative capacities have caught up, “What is this voice?”

It was not that I literally heard a sound, not even an imaginary one. It was that I felt feelings behind the words, animating them very vividly. These feelings were too overwhelming, sweet and powerful for me to believe that they were entirely internally generated. I believe that at least in the main they emanated from you. My heart was just like a radio amidst the waves, singing them forth. Flows of Your feelings met mine and then Yours’ overwhelmed, took over. Yes, what I meant by Your voice is the feelings which await access behind every word of Torah.

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