Why are the Jewish people the emissaries chosen to bring the light of God as contained in the Torah to the world.
There is a verse that reads, “Listen to Me, you who care for justice, O’ people who have my Torah in their heart” (ּעוְמִׁש םָּבִלְי בִתָרֹוּם תַק עֶדֶי צֵעְדֹי יַלֵא). In this verse, Isaiah first describes humanity, telling us that every human being has an innate knowledge of what justice is—they do not need to be taught, they intuit justice, the difference between good and evil. That is the core of the good latent in every human being. The prophet then proceeds to describe the Jewish people and says that a Jewish soul not only learns Torah and grows from day to day, develops, and makes progress in understanding the Torah. Rather, a Jewish soul is implanted from birth with the Torah in its heart.
In other words, the innate recognition of justice that exists in all people is seen prominently in the Jewish people and then manifests even further so that the entire Torah is innately found in the heart of a Jew. That is what makes it possible for a Jew to bring Torah to the world. The fact that a Jew intuits justice is something that he or she has in common with non-Jews allowing them to relate with non-Jews. The ability to form a relationship and bring the light of the Torah to the whole world is based on Jews and non-Jews having a common sense of justice, a sense of what is right. When I can connect to the nations and feel a certain brotherhood, then I can manifest my innate Torah, which God implanted in my heart when He chose the Jewish people to be his emissaries to bring that light of the Torah to the whole world.
God is My Brother, Torah My Sister
There is another important saying that relates to faith. Sometimes we refer to God as our Father, our Father in heaven. Sometimes we refer to God as our King. At times we refer to God as our Beloved.
God Himself sees us as His brothers and companions. Indeed, Kabbalah explains that there are certain souls that experience God not only as a Father, as a King, or as a Beloved one. These souls experience God like a brother. They feel like they have a big brother.
A big brother is a good partner, and you feel that He is going to help you. It may seem at times that our Father is old. One might feel that his father no longer has the power to save us and help us. But a big brother is a symbol of a certain will and ability to help us in every situation; to partner with us and help us succeed in everything that we do. I have a big brother. This is a very beautiful recognition that not everyone is aware of: that one can feel kinship to God in the sense of God being our brother, as it were.
What about the Torah? The Torah is God’s wisdom and there is a verse that reads, “Say to wisdom, you are my sister.” That is a very beautiful description of the Torah. So now, the Torah is my sister. And God is my brother. Everyone should have a brother and a sister.
We can come to experience God as our brother and the Torah as our sister through faith. Faith is the deepest connection at the super-conscious level of the soul. As we saw earlier, faith has multiple dimensions to it. One of the expressions of faith is the ability to experience God, not only as a father figure, as a kingly figure, or as beloved, but also as a brother.
There is one time in the Bible that the word “one” (דָחֶא), like “God is one” is written just with the first two letters of the word Echad, which are Ach (אח), implying that to experience God’s oneness begins with the experience of God as my big brother.
The Torah as we said is called my sister. The word sister is Achot (תֹחָא), which is written with the exact same letters that spell Achat (תַחַא), the feminine form of the word one. It follows that this dual experience of God as my brother and the Torah as my sister is the experience of the masculine oneness and the feminine oneness of God Himself. There is more to study in relation to the masculine and feminine aspects of oneness, but for now let us leave it as a call to have faith that thank God, I have the best big brother, and the best big sister.
In fact, when the Torah commands us to honor our father and our mother, the verse includes an additional word “et” (תֶא), which is untranslatable. That additional word, et, means to include in the commandment to honor one’s parents also one's big brother and one's big sister.
Thus, the big brother and the big sister, which are God and the Torah, are all included within honoring one's father and mother. The brother and the sister are my siblings, and we all come from the same mother and the same father.
We must all experience every single Jew and every single human being as our brother, this is all a reflection of God and my sister is a reflection of the Torah in each one of us. What it all boils down to is that we are all brothers and sisters and we are all expressions and reflections of Godliness. That recognition itself is the redemption that the Lubavitcher Rebbe devoted his life to and felt the responsibility to fulfill.
1. Isaiah 51:7.
2. Particularly in the Song of Songs.
3. Psalms 122:8. These words are spoken by King David through Ru’ach HaKodesh.
4. Proverbs 7:4.
5. Deuteronomy 6:4.
6. Exodus 20:
7. See Zohar 3:83a.
