eXtreme Bicycle Training

By Rabbi Infinity, chabad.org

If you’ve been following, you’ve probably realized that teaching how to ride a bicycle has a lot to do with eating bagel holes. It’s all a matter of finding something in nothing. Kabbalists, even when they have something, continue searching in the nothing to find even greater something.

Maybe that’s why we’re releasing this episode just on time for Simchat Torah. That’s a celebration where we dance with a Torah. Pretty ridiculous, right? I mean, a scroll, one would think, is for reading, chanting and incanting. Which are all pretty kabbalistic activities themselves. But who ever heard of dancing with a book–even a rolled-up, scroll book?

But there again is the whole finding-something-in-nothing thing: As a bagel has a whole, so the Torah has silence. And the essence of the words of the Torah and all its guidance, wisdom and secrets is found best in the Torah’s silence, as it is rolled up and wrapped up and dances with us. There we touch more than wisdom, there we touch the essential relationship between us and our G‑d.

That’s why we celebrate with the Torah this way after Yom Kippur, and not on Shavuot. Shavuot is the time of year when the Torah was originally given–so why not dance with the Torah then? But then, when we first received the Torah, we hadn’t yet tapped into this deep relationship thing yet. We first had to mess up and break the relationship with the Golden Calf affair. Then, once we had found the emptiness, the point where the Giver of the Torah lets go of the handlebars and we start to fall–and then we discover He is still there and we are able to keep on riding, that He is still with us even when we fall and we are still with Him–then we touch that essence-core of the Torah, that which is never lost. The silence. And with that we dance.

To view the episode: click here