Glasses

If you look at a scene without your glasses, and then look at the very same scene with your glasses on, it is exactly the same scene. Nothing has been added. The scene hasn’t changed, but your view of it has changed completely.

Without glasses the world is all fuzzy and blurred. You don’t recognize people, you can’t read signs, and there are many obstacles that you may bump into on your way, simply because you didn’t see them coming.

Then you put on your glasses, and a new world opens up to you. Everything’s clear, you recognize things for what they are, and you foresee the bumps and obstacles before you stumble upon them. It was all there before, but now you have vision and perspective, now you can see it.

The Torah is like a pair of glasses. Its divine wisdom gives us clarity of vision. It develops our ability to identify good and evil, and differentiate between truth and falsehood. It teaches us to recognize the good in people, even when that good is not so apparent. And it sensitizes us to the subtleties of life, to see beyond the superficial and find deeper meaning in our everyday experiences, to read the signs that point us in the right direction, to avoid moral pitfalls and behold the beauty of the world around us.

The Torah does not provide some magical relief from the vicissitudes of life. But it does provide perspective and clarity, direction and inspiration, which allow us to see those challenges in a new light, and face them with a deeper resolve.