[I’m putting on a reading of the first act of my new opera this May! It’s got a rad cast, and I’m really proud of the music I’m writing for it. And there’s a livestream!]

We spent some time at the very beginning of the book of Vayiqra last week. Specifically, we spent time with the call Mosheh receives to listen to a whole bunch of commandments from G-d about various offerings for the cult. We’re told this call comes from the Meeting Tent opening, and then haSheim talks and talks and talks. We might be a little surprised this week, then, when we get to 7:38 and learn that we’ve just been studying various laws אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה יי אֶת־מֹשֶׁה בְּהַר סִינָי | asher tzivah [haSheim] et Mosheh bəHar Sinai | “that [haSheim] commanded Mosheh on Mt Sinai”. The Meeting Tent very much is not on the mountain; it’s in the middle of the camp. What’s going on here?

The standard answer is that there’s no before or after in Torah — our sacred text sometimes narrates things out of order for one reason or another. Mosheh got some of these laws on Mt Sinai, and others in the camp, and Vayiqra arranges them by theme and not in the order that they were given. Indeed, several commentators cite this verse to argue that Mosheh received the entire Torah once on Sinai, and then several parts of it again in the camp near the mountain to emphasize their importance.

Maybe so, but I still feel this displaced locative nagging at me. What else can we get from it?

In gematria, bəhar has a value of 207. This is the same as the value of אֵין סוֹף | ein sof, a mystical name of G-d meaning “there is no end” or, a little more loosely, “infinity”. In other words, haSheim has been commanding Mosheh without limit, endlessly, enough to fill up all of time and space and then some.

I am often daunted by the sheer volume of commentary on our sacred texts. Between ancient midrash and modern scholarship, the weight of accumulated words written about Torah is overwhelming. How can I even begin to have my own thoughts until I’ve read everything there is to read first?

Infinitude somehow eases this pressure. If revelation were merely very large, but finite, it would be possible to make meaningful progress towards understanding it fully. A finite library has an end, even if it’s one that’s impossible to reach in a mortal lifespan. Reading one hundred books may not be very far along the path to reading one million books, but it’s materially farther than reading just one book, and you can quantify the difference.

Infinity dissolves this sort of linear progress. The infinity of integers is no larger than the infinity of prime numbers. The infinity of even numbers is the same size as the infinity of squares. If you read ten million books, you will have the same number of books left to read as when you had only read one. It’s always possible to know more, but then, it’s always possible to know more. If a task cannot be completed, you can hardly be blamed for not completing it.

I know some things about Torah. There are many more things I do not. But the body of knowledge to absorb has no end, so there is no course of study to complete. There is only the next book, and the next, and all the gleanings I find and make along the way.

[This has been an installment of one-word Torah. You can read the full series here.]