The Baal Shem Tov taught that from everything you hear or see in this world you must find a teaching in how to serve Hashem.
A computer needs instructions to work. Those instructions are written in computer language called code. A computer will execute (run a program, do a calculation etc.) whatever you command it to do (which may be a lesson in Kabbolas ol or Merkava, for another time…).
The way a computer follows that code, has an interesting lesson for us.
Consider the following code (in PHP, my favorite programming language):
<?php
print("Hello, Berel!");
print("How are you today?");This will cause the screen to display: Hello, Berel! How are you today?
What if I ran this code instead:
<?php
print("Hello, Berel!")
print("How are you today?");The screen would show Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘print’ (T_PRINT) on line 3.
That’s not what we wanted! That’s an error!
Can you spot the difference between the 2 snippets of code above?
In the second example, the first line is missing the ; (semicolon) at the end of the line. But why does that matter so much? The commands look the same, and you can certainly figure out the code just by looking at it for a half a second.
But a computer works differently. It must have each and every letter in the correct place for it to work properly, otherwise it can’t understand the code and the program will crash (or actually crash, in the case of a NASA rocket which crashed because of a missing hyphen (-) in 1962!)
This concept existed way before computers. We all know that for a Torah to be Kosher, it must have every single letter, and they must all be intact; not rubbed out, not cracked etc.
You would think that a missing letter is not the biggest deal, after all, the meaning of the Torah might still be the same, and at the very least you can infer what the Torah wanted to say…
We see, however, that the Torah is more than letters on a scroll. There is a current behind each letter, connecting it to every other part of the Torah, and when one is missing, every other letter cannot perform their task, not even a part of their task!
There are unique lessons to be learned from this – about the unity and necessity of every Jew etc.
One aspect to highlight, which is relevant every moment of our lives, is to recognize, that the entire world depends on your action, no matter how big or (seemingly) small, and without it, the world cannot function the way Hashem wants it to. And when we act the right way, it has the potential to complete the entire mission, just like fixing the bug, fixes the issue instantly, and fixing the letter in the Torah, makes the entire Torah instantly Kosher!
Notes:
- The Torah is even more precise. In code, if you make a typo, for example:
<?php
print(“Hellos, Berel!”);
This will work, even though the word Hello is misspelled. (I’ll leave it to you to figure out why it would still work). But in a Torah, any letter, even from a simple conversation, must be precise. - Here are some places where the Rebbe speaks about needing every letter in a Torah, with a unique lesson:
1. ש”פ ויקרא תש”מ (שיחות קודש תש”מ ח”ב ע’ 530)
2. ש”פ משפטים תשכ”ח (שיחות קודש תשכ”ח ח”א ע’ 407)
3. מכתב כללי כ”ה אדר תשמ”ב (לקוטי שיחות חכ”ב ע’ 258) - The year תשמ”ב is like this year’s kvius (calendar schedule), and the Rebbe is constantly pushing everyone to buy letters in a Sefer Torah, and to make sure that every single Jew owns a letter in the Unity Sefer Torah. Many chassidim are learning these farbrengens this year, and that is the reason that this blog is starting with this article. My biggest passion is to influence as many as possible to watch/listen/learn the Rebbe’s Farbrengens more and more often!