The following article originally appeared in the Jewish Community News of the San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys in early 2006.

Reading Between the Lines

by Rabbi Rick Brody

Michelangelo is reported to have explained that the work of his hands did not create his Moses.  Rather, the Biblical figure had already existed within the stone; the sculptor’s task was not to carve Moses but rather to chisel away the rest of the material to reveal the beauty that lay within.  This inverted perspective on the creative process and, indeed, on reality in general, can open doorways to enlightenment that are usually closed to us.  Our Jewish world of thought and practice includes similarly evocative motifs that, if we contemplate them and integrate their meanings into our lives, can take us to great spiritual heights.

The operative Jewish metaphor for radically different perspectives on the world is the Rabbinic concept that the Torah was written in “black fire on white fire.”  We see this phenomenon in any Torah scroll, where the parchment is not mere background, but frames each letter and word and distinguishes each element of black writing that rests upon it.  The more abstract notion of Torah itself can be seen to have (at least) two levels of meaning – that more obvious meaning that derives from the words themselves (commonly referred to as p’shat), and the more mysterious or interpretive possibilities (variously referred to as d’rash, remez, and sod) that are embedded in the unspoken pauses or spaces that surround what is written.  Essentially, the white space represents the realm of thought and contemplation, the spiritual growth that comes from silence and humility.  I was reminded of these ideas recently when talking with a colleague about the ritual of t’fillin.

The hard leather boxes that traditional Jews place on their arm and head each weekday morning contain four passages from the Torah, each of which refers to the act of “binding them [God’s words] as a sign upon your hand,” and having them be symbols “between your eyes” – bein einecha.  The idea of being “in between,” particularly as it relates to the part of us responsible for seeing, suggests the mysterious ability to apprehend the world in ways that go beyond normal seeing, to see the white fire behind and in between the “text.”  A subtle yet profound example of this “transcendent seeing” is available to anyone who looks at the t’fillin box for the head.  On it is embossed, on opposing sides, two renderings of the letter shin, the three-pronged letter that resembles a “W.”  On the left side of the box, however, we find a four-pronged shin, a letter that is not part of the normal Hebrew language.  This four-pronged shin remains an enigma, yet one common explanation is that the shin is actually inside the four prongs, the white fire in the “between spaces.”  (Hold up four fingers.  The shin is the spaces between your fingers.)  The t’fillin seem to be calling us to see the world differently than we usually do, to use a different set of eyes. 

Artists, spiritualists, and other champions of imagination refer often to “our other set of eyes,” or our “third eye,” necessary for creativity and enlightened contemplation.  The third eye has both a mystical and biological legacy, and is associated with the pineal gland, located in the center of the brain, behind and between our two “seeing” eyes.  The t’fillin we place on our head – between our eyes – is a way to activate this other way of seeing, this beholding of the white fire.  After putting on the head t’fillin, we discover another example of reversal of perspectives, looking down at our arm.  We see the r’tzuah, the strap that is connected to the box on our bicep, that we have already wrapped around our forearm seven times.  What else can we see as we look at our forearm?  If we focus on the “black fire,” we see seven lines.  However, we can also contemplate the spaces between the lines, the “white fire,” which will reveal six spaces.  I like to think of these spaces as the “six degrees of separation” that lead us from one end of the arm to the other.  These “six degrees” also take us from one Shabbat to the next, each one occupying the usually imperceptible space between one day and the next.  For Jews, that space is dusk, bein ha’sh’mashot, another powerful and mysterious “in-between” time.  As day fades to night and a new Jewish day begins, we move closer to Shabbat, the ultimate “white space” of pausing between creative acts.  Thus, we continually reenact the Divine cycle of creation and refrain, becoming partners with God.

Many will recognize the phrase “six degrees of separation” as referring to the somewhat mystical notion that anyone on earth is connected to anyone else through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than six intermediaries.  Each chain of connection has seven members, and a “degree of separation” refers to the “space between,” of which there are six.  This corresponds to the seven wraps of the r’tzuah around the arm and seven days in a week, with the accompanying six spaces, just as there are three spaces inside the four-pronged shin.  Why is this significant?  I believe that t’fillin, which we bind to our arm, is a way of binding us to creation at large.  We recall the Divine act of creation in seven days, and we commit to being a vital and meaningful contributor to that creation.  Ideally, through our spiritual discipline and our contemplation of the white fire to which t’fillin also calls us, we can develop a feeling of connection to all other human beings, each created in the image of God.  We may not all actually be connected through six acquaintances, but an enlightened appreciation for the world and its daily miracles and opportunities can leave us feeling a spiritual connection to the rest of humanity.

There is one final “in-between” space that t’fillin reveals.  After we place the box on our head, we take the two straps that hang on either side of that box, and run them down our torso, setting them as doorposts that frame the center of our body.  Just as a m’zuzah helps to frame the space that separates or connects other spaces, these straps draw our attention to the white fire that is our own bodies.  We are standing in the doorway, at the threshold of “becoming,” blessed with infinite possibility to manifest holiness in our lives.  We are empowered to make the connections to other people and to our imagination that can transform the world.

The empty or white spaces that we find in the world when we look and listen closely and read “between the lines” celebrate the idea of subtext, the d’rash, remez, and sod that offer infinite interpretive possibility.  The black letters, like the t’fillin straps, give us structure for daily living; they, along with the white space, remind us to manifest and discover Godliness in both mystical and ordinary encounters of action in our seven-day cycle of work and rest.  May our reading between the lines celebrate our universal connectedness in this sacred undertaking.