01 Sep NETZAVIM VAYEILECH: OUR CONNECTION TO THE SEFER TORAH

Parshas Vayelech
contains the six hundred
and thirteenth mitzvah
of the Torah – the
commandment to write
a Sefer Torah [Devorim
31:19]. The Pnei
Yehoshua cites in his
commentary on Tractate Kiddushin that the fact
that the number of letters in a Torah scroll is
600,000 alludes to the name Yisrael (Yud Shin
Reish Aleph Lamed), which itself is an acronym
for the expression: Yesh Shishim Ribbo Osios
L’Torah (There are 60 myriad letters in the
Torah.) It is thus not coincidental that the number
of Jewish souls counted in the census of the
Exodus was this same number of 600,000. That
number corresponds with the 600,000 letters in a
Torah scroll.
The Pnei Yehoshua explains, based on the Zohar,
the Shnei Luchos HaBris and many other
Kabbalistic sources that every Jew has within his
soul one particular mitzvah attached to one
particular letter in the Torah.
Rav Asher Weiss, in his Sefer on Chumash,
makes a comment that I have thought about in
the past, but I never knew how to fully explain it.
Whenever I go to a Siyum Sefer Torah, I am
always amazed at how much people get into the
ceremony and how they manifest such sincere
jubilation on that occasion. Today, thank G-d,

one can open up any Aron Kodesh in virtually
any shul and find a surplus of Sefrei Torah.
Basically, we are talking about just adding one
more Torah to an Aron Kodesh that already has
more Torahs than the congregation needs.
And yet somehow, the joy of a Siyum and a
Hachnosas Sefer Torah ceremony is something
that touches every Jew and brings out a Simcha
that far exceeds what one experiences on most
other occasions. How does one explain this?
Rav Asher Weiss suggests that this is because of
the above referenced mystical connection
between a Jew’s soul and the Sefer Torah, which
has a letter within it which is linked to that soul.
There is therefore a connection between every
Jew and every Sefer Torah. It consequently
becomes a personal simcha. No one ever wonders
why a Jew is joyous at his own child’s wedding
or his own son’s Bar Mitzvah. “It is because it is
me, it is my child, it is my grandchild. Of course
I am jubilant.”
I feel a connection to every single Sefer Torah. It
is not only because now we have another Sefer
Torah which we did not have before. No. It has
nothing to do with that. It has to do with the
mystical spiritual connection between a Jew and
one of the 600,000 letters in every Torah scroll.
Using this idea, Rav Asher Weiss explains a very
famous Gemara [Avodah Zarah 18a] that we
recount on Yom Kippur:
Rabbi Chananya ben Tradyon went to visit Rabbi

Yosi ben Kisma when the latter took sick. Rabbi
Yosi ben Kisma said, “Chananya my brother,
don’t you know that this nation (the Roman
Empire) has been empowered from Heaven for
they have been allowed to destroy His House,
burn His Sanctuary, kill his pious ones, and cause
to perish his precious ones. Her might persists
and I have heard about you that you sit and
occupy yourself with Torah and gather
congregations publicly to study with you. You
openly display the Torah lying in your bosom.
Rabbi Chananya responded, “May they have
Mercy from Heaven.” Rabbi Yosi answered back
to him, “I have given you a logical argument
(why you should stop your public teaching) and
you answer back ‘They should have Mercy from
Heaven.’ I will be surprised if they don’t burn
you and your Sefer Torah at the stake…”
The Talmud in fact concludes that the Romans
found Rav Chananya ben Tradyon publicly
teaching Torah. They took him out, wrapped the
Sefer Torah around his body and burned him at
the stake. They placed moist clumps of cotton on
his heart to increase the pain and slow down the
process of his death.
His disciples saw what he was going through and
they asked him, “Rebbi, what do you see?” He
responded famously, “I see the parchment being
consumed but the letters are flying off and they
remain.”
The response of Rav Chananya ben Tradyon

regarding the letters
flying off the parchment
appears to be
allegorical. What is the
deeper meaning of this
conversation?
When the students asked their teacher “What do
you see?” they were asking “What is going to be
the future of Klal Yisrael? The Romans are in
charge. They are killing everybody. What is
going to be? They have destroyed the Bais
HaMikdash they are destroying everything
connected with Torah. What is the future going
to bring? How is Klal Yisrael ever going to
survive this?”
Rav Chanina ben Tradyon told them “The
parchment is burning” – they can extinguish the
bodies of Klal Yisrael, but “the letters are flying
away” – the letters of the Torah which are linked
to the souls of the Jewish people – these will
remain forever. The letters flying away are a
metaphor for the souls of the Jewish people
which correspond, through a mystical link to the
souls of every member of the Jewish people. The
Romans can destroy the synagogues and the
study halls and even the Beis HaMikdash. They
can destroy the “body”, but not the “soul”. The
souls of the Jewish people, like the letters of the
Sefer Torah will endure forever. “…It will not be
forgotten from the mouths of his descendants…”
[Devorim 31:21].