“Sensing the Sacred” | Parshat Va’etḥanan

Rabbi Ḥanina ben T’radion taught:​

שְׁנַיִם שֶׁיּוֹשְׁבִין וְאֵין בֵּינֵיהֶן דִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה, הֲרֵי זֶה מוֹשַׁב לֵצִים שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (תהלים א) וּבְמוֹשַׁב לֵצִים לֹא יָשָׁב. אֲבָל שְׁנַיִם שֶׁיּוֹשְׁבִין וְיֵשׁ בֵּינֵיהֶם דִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה, שְׁכִינָה שְׁרוּיָה בֵינֵיהֶם

When two sit together and there are no words of Torah between them, this is a gathering of scoffers… But when two sit together and there are words of Torah between them, the Shekhinah dwells among them.   – Pirkei Avot 3:3 

On the surface, this teaching seems almost absurd. If two friends sit down for lunch and don’t discuss Torah, they are automatically a moshav leitzim—a gathering of scoffers? Can’t we simply enjoy one another’s company? Can’t we talk about our gardens, our children, or the new kinds of mushrooms they have at Trader Joe’s?

When I encounter a teaching like this, it brings to my mind the image of a nut in its shell. Today we buy nuts already shelled, but when I was growing up there was always a bowl of walnuts on the coffee table with a heavy metal nutcracker beside it. Recently, while Lisa and I were cleaning out my mother’s house, we found that nutcracker tucked away in a box in the garage. Holding it in my hand brought back those memories, and it reminded me that Torah is often like that; teachings are often presented in a shell that must be cracked before we can taste what is inside.

So what is this mishnah really saying?
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Notice how it defines its own terms. It says that the opposite of divrei Torah—words of Torah—is not ordinary conversation. The opposite is leitzanut: scoffing, mockery, the impulse to diminish what is before us. A leitz is not simply someone with a sense of humor. A leitz is someone who has lost the capacity for reverence, for wonder, someone who reduces everything to the level of personal opinion or amusement, someone who cannot receive another person—or this moment itself—with genuine openness.

If that is true, then this mishnah is actually describing to us what “Words of Torah” actually are: they are not defined only by being quotes from scripture, or even by their subject matter. They are words that arise from a consciousness of appreciation rather than dismissal, from blessing rather than cynicism, from sensitivity rather than indifference. They are words spoken from the recognition that this moment possesses an inherent sacredness. And this is why, when such words are spoken, Sh’khinah is present: the thoughts we cultivate and the words we speak become the lens through which the present moment is revealed. All day long our minds generate a continuous stream of interpretations, judgments, memories, expectations, and inner conversations. We tend not to experience reality directly, but through the filter of the patterns our own minds have created. This is why our words matter so profoundly. They reinforce the forms of thought from which they arise, and those forms of thought become the world we inhabit.

If our words spring from irritation, fear, or contempt, we begin to live inside those qualities. If they arise from reverence, gratitude, and genuine curiosity, they shape an entirely different world. Sh’khinah has not suddenly appeared because we uttered certain religious phrases. Rather, our way of seeing has become transparent enough to recognize the Divine Presence that was already here.
If this is so, if our words and thoughts literally create the qualities of the world we inhabit, why are we so careless with them?

It is not because we choose carelessness; most of the time we are hardly aware that a choice exists. Strong emotions carry us away before we have time to notice them. Old habits of thought repeat themselves with such familiarity that they feel like reality itself. We become identified with the momentum of our conditioning, and from that conditioning our thoughts and words naturally follow.
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This is why it is so important to balance Torah study – the exploration of the sacred through thought, with meditation – the deliberate transcendence of thought. Thought has an unconscious momentum, and over time, becomes more biased, more repetitive, more stuck in its own assumptions. Meditation creates a space within the momentum of thought; it interrupts the automatic flow long enough for us to recognize that we are not required to believe every thought that appears or to speak every impulse that arises.

Meditation is not confined to the few minutes we spend on the meditation cushion. Again and again throughout the day we can pause, release our identification with the stream of thinking, and return to simple Presence. Over time, the hard shell of conditioning is cracked open, revealing the nourishment within – the radiant field of awareness from which thought emerges.

Without that inner spaciousness awakened through Presence, even Torah study can become another expression of habit, as we read every verse through the same familiar mental patterns. But as the mind grows more open, so does scripture, and Torah can reveal something bew.
There is a hint in the parashah: 

   …רְאֵ֣ה לִמַּ֣דְתִּי אֶתְכֶ֗ם חֻקִּים֙ וּמִשְׁפָּטִ֔ים 

See, I have taught you decrees and judgments…   D’varim (Deuteronomy) 4:5
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The Sages distinguished between ḥukim and mishpatim, “decrees” and “judgments.” Mishpatim are the teachings we can understand through reflection and discernment. Ḥukim are those that cannot be grasped by reason alone. They invite us beyond the limits of conceptual thought. Both are necessary. Without discernment, we cannot live wisely. But without the willingness to enter the space of awareness beyond the thinking mind, discernment itself becomes confined within the assumptions it has inherited.
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Kabbalah expresses this through the language of ḥokhmah and binah. Binah is the movement of contemplation, the mind probing deeply into experience, discerning, distinguishing, understanding. Ḥokhmah is something different; it is the spacious awareness from which understanding itself arises—the openness that precedes thought.

וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם֮ וַעֲשִׂיתֶם֒ כִּ֣י הִ֤וא חׇכְמַתְכֶם֙ וּבִ֣ינַתְכֶ֔ם לְעֵינֵ֖י הָעַמִּ֑ים אֲשֶׁ֣ר יִשְׁמְע֗וּן אֵ֚ת כׇּל־הַחֻקִּ֣ים הָאֵ֔לֶּה וְאָמְר֗וּ רַ֚ק עַם־חָכָ֣ם וְנָב֔וֹן הַגּ֥וֹי הַגָּד֖וֹל הַזֶּֽה׃

Guard them and do them, for She is your Wisdom (Hokhmatkhem) and Understanding (Binatkhem) in the eyes of the peoples that will hear all of these practices and say, “Surely this great nation is a people of Wisdom (Hokham) and Understanding (N’Vonam).”
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This is how the Torah defines Herself: as ḥokhmah and binah – spacious awareness and thoughtful understanding. The rhythmic oscillation between them is itself the practice. We become present; thought comes to rest. From this space, contemplation arises from creative clarity rather than from automatic conditioning. Again we become present, again thought emerges, back and forth – this is the inner breathing of the spirit.

“Surely this great nation…” The nations are not meant to admire Israel because of intellectual achievement alone. Every culture possesses ways of thinking. What Torah offers is the possibility that thinking itself can emerge from a deeper ground of Presence. Words have their limit. They can point, they can invite, they can prepare the heart. But they cannot contain the Reality toward which they gesture. It is the nature of the thinking mind to always try to complete itself by reaching into the next moment. But Presence reveals that, beneath all that movement, nothing essential is missing–we have arrived, now, into This. 
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When two sit together… When we meet one another not through the momentum of our conditioning but in the spirit of Presence, then our words are no longer merely expressions of habit. They become divrei Torah—not because they quote sacred texts, but because they arise from That which we call the sacred – the ever-present  miracle of Being that patiently waits to be recognized.