ספרים ומלמדים אלמיםBooks Are Mute Teachers

sefarim u-melamdim illemimIn Gamatria ↗

A book cannot answer back; a teacher can.

Won over, Shaltiel sets aside his Talmud and shuts himself in with the main books of Kabbalah. He tells Yehoyada what it gave him. Only through it does one grasp that God is beyond bodily form, and how the Torah's limbs and descriptions are meant. It explains the reasons for the commandments, large and small letters, and words read but not written. It teaches providence, the soul and gilgul. He calls it the soul of the Torah. Yet doubts about the roots of faith stay with him. Yehoyada fears he has read heretics posing as believers. No, says Shaltiel: only the early kabbalists, the Ari and the Rema of Fano. Then the fault is the missing teacher. This wisdom was never meant to come from books, which are mute teachers, but from living sages.

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