Tehillim On The Parsha: Terumah: Silver & Gold II

We find silver that the Torah has silver in the verse, (Psalms 12:7), “The words of God are pure words, like purified silver, clear to the world, refined sevenfold.” The Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni #658) teaches that  574 generations before the world was created, the Holy One, Blessed is He, sat examined, delved, pondered, and refined each letter of the Torah. From the day of Creation until Israel stood at Sinai, God continued to refine the Torah. At that point, the words were expressed from God’s mouth and were set in the Torah. This is what it means when it says,  “The words of God are pure words,” each and every word that He set in the Torah has enough purity and strength to sustain all of creation.

We understand from this midrash that each letter of the Torah sets reality.  Each shapes the the way God interacts with the world. If a single letter will move from the place where it has been sent in the Torah it will damage the root of the entire world. It will throw all of creation off kilter.

With this we can understand the words of the holy Zohar on this week’s portion (II 161b), that the Holy One, Blessed is He, looked in the Torah and created the world. It does not mean that God looked only once and created the world based on what was there, but rather that the Torah is the root of all of existence and that God looks in the Torah every second to guide and sustains the world according to the pure and shining silver letters of the Torah.  Rabbi Simcha Zisel Broidie – Saam Derech