Our Portion in the Torah
As part of the Amidah prayer which we recite three times on Shabbat, we request from God to “grant us our portion [chelkeinu] in the Torah.” According to the Talmud there are 70 faces of the Torah. The Arizal posited that there were 600,000 faces to the Torah, one for each letter. Both of these statements express the idea that the Torah is multifaceted and can be understood on many different levels. Thus, we are asking God to reveal to us not only our portion in the Torah, but our unique “face” in the Torah.
One of the most important teachings from the Ba’al Shem Tov is that the soul is “an actual portion [cheleck] of God above.” The word here for “portion” is the same root as in the word for portion in the above prayer on Shabbat. Therefore, our request to be granted our portion in the Torah goes beyond wanting to connect to our unique “face,” it is a desire to understand and connect to the Torah in a truly Divine manner. This type of soul connection is expressed in the Zohar by stating that God, the Torah and Israel are essentially one. To return to the metaphor of faces, we could say that what we truly desire is to find our own face in the Torah, a hint as to our soul’s mission in this world, and the face of the Divine, the Infinite One who has no “face” and is also every possible face we encounter.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach imparted a certain message repeatedly, although he clothed it in multiple parables and ways: it is not a matter of how smart we are or how much Torah we learn – the main thing is how deep is it getting into us, how much is it refining, uplifting, transforming and rectifying ourselves and the world around us. This simple but profound message lies at the heart of all Chassidic teachings. Put in another way, Reb Shlomo also said: you’ll know you are getting closer to God when you are getting closer to people. If our Torah learning is connecting us more to everyone around us, lifting the veil of multiplicity to reveal oneness, then we know that it is seeping into our beings.
The Ba’al Shem Tov taught that if you hold onto a portion of a whole, you are in essence, holding on to all of the whole. Therefore, our prayer that God grant us our portion in the Torah means that by holding onto, developing and nurturing our unique “face” in the Torah, we are connecting in the deepest way to not only the Torah, but all of Israel, and ultimately to God, the giver of the Torah.
