Torah Is Not a Manual for Life

Intuitively, it sounds so neat and simple. You’ve got a life. It’s confusing. Here’s the manufacturer’s manual.

Tells you what buttons to press when and what combinations to avoid at all costs. Explains how to get the best out of life and what to do when things go wrong. Covers every exigency. Comes with a post-lifetime guarantee.

And it’s from The Manufacturer. How could you go wrong?

But the logic doesn’t work. If He’s The Manufacturer, why couldn’t He manufacture a product that doesn’t need a manual?

Think about it: When’s the last time you landed on a website or downloaded a new app that needed a manual? This century? Silicon Valley can learn to create intuitive user interfaces and the Creator of the Universe hasn’t figured it out?

So it must be the other way around. The Torah wasn’t written to show you how to live. The Torah wasn’t written to show you how to live. You were given a life so you could understand Torah.You were given a life so you could understand Torah.

Your life, its frustrations, anticipations, exasperation, and elation—all of that is a commentary on the Torah. You could never grasp a thing of this divine wisdom if you didn’t go through absolutely everything you ever went through.

So yes, Torah provides instructions. The word “Torah” means “instructions.”1 But not instructions to find peace, tranquility, love, and success. Instructions to learn from life and discover within it infinite light.

Where Angels Cannot Tread

Moses said as much to the angels. When G‑d was about to give the Torah to the Jews, the angels demanded first dibs. They screamed, “You’ve hidden this precious treasure since way before the world was created—and now You’re handing it over to these icky, walking meat patties? Place the glory of Your Torah in the heavens where it belongs!”

To which Moses responded (I paraphrase), “Did you angels ever go down to Egypt?”

“Do you dwell among foreign nations who worship the craft of their hands?”

“Do you slave at a dumb job six days a week so that you could release your soul to freedom and delight with your family and friends on the seventh?”

“Do you have mothers and fathers, children and siblings, husbands and wives, and all the other turbulent relationships that forever step out of equilibrium?”

“Do you have nagging, instinctual urges that drive you nuts and threaten to destroy you from within?”2

Without a life on earth, you cannot appreciate Torah.3 What you learn won’t belong to you. You won’t have the context. Life is the stage upon which Torah unfolds. Life on earth. Deep earth.

Crazy Jews

It’s also clear from another story. When Moses asked the people if they were ready to enter into a covenant with G‑d, one that entailed a lot of stipulatory dos and don’ts known as Torah, they answered, “We will do and we will understand!”

As a certain cynic quipped—as quoted in the Talmud:

Crazy, impetuous Jews! They put their mouths before their ears! They should have first asked what’s entailed by this covenant, read the fine print, and only then decided.

They should have said, “If it looks good, we’ll sign. If not, we won’t sign.”

Instead, they rush in like fools exclaiming, “We will do! We will do!” Only when it was too late did they find out what’s involved.4

But in truth, this is wisdom. You only understand when you first do.You only understand when you first do. Experience is the master instructor. Try the ice cream. Then join the discussion about it. Live a life of Torah. Then you will be able to understand the One who gave it to you.

At Self

The Torah, as the angels pointed out, preceded creation. Elsewhere, we are given a figure of two thousand years.5 Yes, we all know that doesn’t make sense. There was no time before the universe was created.

What they meant is that even if the entire universe never came to be, even if there was no space and no time, even then there would still be Torah. Because Torah is beyond time and space. Torah is G‑d being at self.6

Have you ever been “at self”? Life is the stage upon which Torah unfolds. Life on earth. Deep earth. That’s the state at which everything is just as it is supposed to be. Everything is good. You are good, the moment is good, and nothing has to change for eternity. Because it is eternity.7

Only that for us humans this eternity doesn’t last very long. But you get the idea. There’s a state you can’t share with anyone else in the world. Because this state is you. It is you being at self.

You can share things about yourself. You can share things you want people to think about you. But you can’t share you.

G‑d, however, shares with us His Torah. And at the core-essence of that Torah is His infinite, unbounded, unknowable self being at self. That’s what He shares with us.8

The Parable

How does He do it?

Say you were a teacher. A brilliant, deep-thinking, teacher who has pondered the meaning of life for 70 years. And you’re teaching some young kids. You’re deepest desire is that these children should grow to attain at least as profound an understanding of life as you.

How do you do it?

You tell them stories. At least, they think these are stories. But really they are rich and elaborate parables. Every twist and nuance of these parables overflows with nuggets of wisdom that you acquired through great effort. And now you hand them over to these kids, sugar-coated in a delicious fantasy.

Over their lifetime, your students will grow with your stories, returning to them again and again, unfolding them, unpacking them, uncovering the wondrous gems hidden in their folds. Until, one day, some of them, the ones who try the hardest, will look out at the world and see it with the depth you saw when you taught them those stories. And perhaps even more.

The Author of the story of your life did yet better. He put you inside the parable. It is this world.9

Those who live the parable as though it were just a life gain nothing. He put you inside the parable. It is this world.Those who live life knowing that it is just a parable, they discover that which the most supreme angel in the highest heaven can’t come close to imagining.

That’s all Torah does. Rashi calls Torah “the primordial parable.”10 Meaning that it is a parable about the One who preceded the world.11 Torah renders your life a story about G‑d.

G‑d decides whether there should be light or darkness, life or death, existence or nothing at all. When you live with Torah, every moment of life becomes another decision. Those same decisions. Because darkness is the default in this world. Light is a choice. So is life. So is the choice that life is real and that it belongs to you.

You meet evil face to face, and you choose the courage to stare it down. You hit rock bottom, and you choose to understand this pit as a tunnel. You choose to take charge of your life and make it your life.

Here, on deep earth, you drag yourself across the muddy swamps of life, crawl up its rocky precipices, and swim against its fierce currents so that you can sip in a few words of Torah wisdom. You wrestle with it, ingest it, digest it, metabolize it as your own sinews and bones, change your life through it, transform who you are, and then transform again each day for a lifetime as you learn more and more—then you have Him.

For this, all the universe was made. Every detail of it.