A Place of Calm Within the Storm: A Meditation on Torah from R. Moshe Rosenstein
This is a teaching from R’ Moshe Rosenstein (1880-1941), the spiritual guide of the Lomza Yeshiva. This teaching was delivered Monday January 23rd, 1929 and recorded in the sefer “Ahavat Meisharim”.
“Every person needs a home, a dwelling wherein they may rest. A place where they may find relief for their body and soul whenever they may need it, so that even when they find themselves wandering outside they will know that they have a space to which they may return. In that space they will find all that they need, prepared and arranged for the rectification of their body and soul. Woe to the person who wanders incessantly with no permanent space to which they may return, dragged throughout the marketplaces and roads without comfort, with no place to hide from the stormy winds and pouring rain. Every person- wherever they find themselves- knows where their dwelling of comfort is, so that they may return there to find relief and comfort.
So too, each person as a thinking soul must know where their place of comfort is. A comforting space that is always with them even when they are forced to leave it, wandering away for the sake of this-worldly needs. They must know- even then- that they have a place of rest to which they may return. Woe to the person who has no answer when asked where their place of comfort is so that they may find relief. For this person is incessantly wandering with no place of comfort wherein they may find relief from the onslaught of the stormy winds we find ourselves in. Wandering from place to place without any permanent space within which they may hide and find relief. This is what the holy books describe when they speak of the punishment of “being flung from a slingshot” (kaf ha’kellah), wandering from place to place without any space to rest.
Now the soul’s place of comfort is within the Torah, as we find in the words of the Sages, “the Holy One blessed be He has no comfort except in the Torah”. This is obviously not speaking about G-d, but rather that which relates to the human spirit. Every person must build a dwelling of truth within the Torah to protect them, to hide them away from the strong winds of this world. To find comfort in the Torah itself.”
Being-at-Home I
The world is full of light. The darkness that swells is but a shadow that scatters in the face of the light.
When the world gets dark, the lightness of being retreats inside. The doorway- the threshold between the outside and the inside- beckons us, calls us inwards. The cold, the noise, it stops at the doorway.
Inside, enveloped by the warmth of being-at-home. Of family, of connection. To arrive back at home, the days end embedded in its beginning. To return. Having turned outwards towards the world, we re/turn, roundabout, backwards now. Turning inwards we shut the door on the cold noise of exile.
In the absence of the “Home”, the Beit ha-Mikdash, we build a “home”, a miniature, the Mikdash Me’at, a copy of some unimaginable original whose memory is nothing but the endless hope towards its future restoration.
The kitchen, the pleasure of sustenance, where the exterior becomes the interior. Warmth and cold working in unison, cold sterile utensils turned vessels of the holy. The promise of satiation, and the murmuring of a future hunger. The table, elevating that which was degraded.
The playroom, the faithful ignorance of innocence. Meaningful meaninglessness. The space of imagination.
The hallway, transitional space, running-and-returning between the mindlessness of play, the doubling sha’a’shua and the seriousness of the study.
Each room with its own sense, the mood of the room…
Lower Waters/ Part I
Originally, the water(s) were unified. Only after they were separated did they realize that they were different. Whether their original unity or their actual division was their essential state doesn’t matter much. What matters is that they are now separate.
The ‘higher’ waters were allowed to remain in their original state, the state of presence, of fullness and an awareness of their original purpose.
The ‘lower’ waters, however, were cast out and away from their original space. Thrown into the nothingness of the outside, these waters gather and form into the abyss. Banished and lost, the ‘lower’ waters confront the absence of the depths, murmuring, trying to remember their forgotten origins.
Within the depths of forgetting, there is an awakening. A movement from within when the ‘lower’ waters gaze at their own distance, a self-reflection that opens unto the rootlessness of the self. The ‘lower’ waters of the abyss begin to rumble. Murmuring, depth calling unto depth, seeking out their barred origin, they cry out. The inaudible cry of distance, the sigh born in the shadows of the abyss rises above, silenced by the same depths that give birth to the cry.
The separation of the water(s), the primordial split that separates above from below, presence from absence, enables the functioning of being. Without the division of the ‘lower’ waters from within the ‘higher’ waters, the potential of being would be foreclosed on in the inundation of water, the oceanic sense of unity that prevents the possibility of duplicity.
Once awakened, the desire of the ‘lower’ waters to ascend from her depths, the cry for the return to the never-present presence threatens to return the world to “water in water”, a return back to the beginning before the beginning where the saturation of presence denied even the whispers of absence.
For the sake of being, the ‘lower’ waters are held in abeyance, never overcoming the boundary placed between her and her source. Perpetually assaulting the border, the ‘lower’ waters surge forth from their abysmal depth only to retreat back into themselves in the face of the impenetrable limit.
Chained to their depth, the ‘lower’ waters seek out a crack, a fissure, a moment to burst free…