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It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say: ‘Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say: ‘Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?’ But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.

(Deuteronomy 30:12-14)

This is what Moses said to the People of Israel.  The same Moses who crossed the Sea of Reeds with the People of Israel; the same Moses who went up the Mountain, ‘burning to the very heart of heaven,’ to bring them the Torah.  Given the context, one would have expected Moses to remind the People that he had already taken them (or at least their parents) ‘beyond the the sea’; and that he had already gone up for them ‘ to heaven’ to get the Torah — now all that was left was for them to obey.  But as it turns out, blind obedience is not all there is to Torah.  As the midrash says, it was not G-d’s purpose to give the mitzvot to angels that would have no choice but to fulfill them.  Rather, as we say in the blessing over the Torah, He ‘gave us a true Torah, planted the lives of the world inside of us’!  It is this Torah, the Torah passed down orally through the generations by mouth and found in the heart of each and every one of us, that Moses told the People of Israel they had to fulfill.  Surely we too must find this Torah in our mouths and in our hearts, ‘that thou mayest do it’!

This e-place is dedicated to Torah ‘of the heart’; to finding links on the web that help us be inspired by Torah; to expressing the inspiration of our hearts - if not ‘in the mouth’ - then at least online.  Please feel free to take a look around.