I've been thinking recently about the importance of write things down. If I come up with a nice thought, all well and good, but chances are that I'll forget it within a couple days. And now I came accross this little essay, which I wrote a year ago, and I have to say, I'm glad I wrote it down.

I used to be a complete mitnaged, but yeshiva in Israel, as well as college (lehavdil) changed me.

For instance, take the halacha that three people eating together must speak words of Torah. If they don't, it's as though they ate idolatrous sacrifices. If they do, their table is like the mizbeiach of Hashem. I used to look at this as referring to the merits of the people involved, or perhaps some esoteric mystical aspect of the table. Something which I couldn't see or touch- something which I didn't necessarily feel any relevance to. The halacha didn't speak to me.

Now however, I really feel the truth of this halacha. Speaking Torah transforms the experience. Whether the feeling is a result of the kedusha of the words, or whether it's due to some psychological factors, or both (sorry- can't help it; I went to Gush ;-) ), there is something there.

I'm still like cold, hard, scientific fact, but now I realize that the laws of nature are just tools which G-d has made to run His world. What makes something "real"? That I can measure it, or that I can experience it? Since the world was made for man to live in, it makes sense that anything which man experiences is "real." Whether it can be explained or defined scientifically is really irrelevant.

I have a mashal for this which I like. Someone could, if they wanted, examine a television set and explain how it works. They could understand how every photon is projected onto the screen, and trace its path back to the source. They could understand how the speakers work, how the channel-changer uses infrared signals to communicate with the box, etc, etc. They might then say they understand the television perfectly.

What are they missing? They haven't watched the television. (Not to say that it's muttar to watch television, ch"v Wink) The television was made to be watched. Millions of people watch television without having an inkling of how it works. The TV doesn't just transmit pictures and sound. It transmits feelings, from the mind of the producer into your mind. How does it do this? Could I find "feeling waves" being transmitted through the air at certain radio frequencies? (Must I put on my tinfoil hat? Very Happy) And yet the feelings do exist in the mind of the viewer, and were meant to exist.

G-d, of course, designed the world. The fact that we feel certain things at certain times, or under certain circumstances, means that they are real, and are a reflection of the Divine Will. Therefore, the fact that science has not detected certain things which the Torah teaches us about, such as kedusha, is completely irrelevant. They are quite real.