Tzipiyah.com

I was in a Falafel shop this evening, when an old man walked in. He didn’t look very different from most old Sfardi Israeli men, but he was, as it turned out, most remarkable. And he inspired me more than most of what I’ve experienced in Israel since I made Aliyah not long ago. What did he do?
First of all, when he walked in, he said, ‘Shalom le’kulam!’ - Shalom to everyone; to the Americans, to the Moroccans, to the Spanish; to everyone! And he meant it. I got my schwarma, sat, and began to eat. I heard the shop owner talking to the old man, asking him about someone they both knew. ‘How old is he?’ asked the shop-owner. ‘Twenty-two,’ said the old man. ‘To me, everyone’s twenty-two! You’re twenty-two, I’m twenty-two, he’s twenty-two…’ OK, I thought, that sounds cute. He came to a young man sitting at one of the tables and asked him, ‘How old are you?’ ‘Twenty-three,’ he replied. ‘No, you’re twenty-two,’ countered the old man. Then he turned to me. ‘I’m twenty-one, and he’s twenty-three, so together we come to twenty-two between us,’ I said. ‘No! You’re both twenty-two! Everyone’s twenty-two.’

Okay, so the guy’s a bit mad. Nothing new. But then he explained it to me, and it blew me away. ‘Did you get the Torah?’ the man asked. ‘What?’ ‘Did you get the Torah, are you a Jew?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you know how many [letters] there are in Torah? Twenty-two! You are a ben-Torah [person who lives by Torah], therefore you are 22.* Do you understand?’ Suddenly, I did. And I was awed. ‘Yes. Thank you.’ I said, and I meant it.

Twenty-two? He was referring to the letters of the Aleph-Bet, of the Holy Tongue, of the Hebrew Language, the language with which the Torah is written, the language that G-d used to create the world. There are 22 letters in the Holy Tongue. 22 letters used in the Torah.

This man, with what seemed to be an old man’s idiosyncrasy, powerfully expressed the holiness of every single Jewish soul, its potential for holiness and its inherent worth. Every single Jew, as expressed by this man’s straight-forward approach, received the Torah. Every single Jewish soul, we know, (inlcuding future converts) experienced the historic revelation of G-d at Mount Sinai. Thus, every single Jew, every Jewish soul, is made up of, or is filled with, the 22 letters of the Torah.

The old man’s insistent, outright declaration, full of force and conviction, taught me more than many books and lectures. I know in my mind how every Jew is holy, how every Jew received the Torah. But I had never known it in such a tangible way… This man’s belief in all of these things was so pure, so inherently a part of him, that when he expressed it I felt its essence. I was blessed to see such a person, and to see the shine of such holiness.

Picture from here

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* The linguistic power of this sentence is lost in translation. Here is an equivalent of the original Hebrew:
קיבלת תורה?
מה?
אתה יהודי? קיבלת תורה?
כן.
וכמה יש בתורה? 22. אז אתה בן 22. אתה בן תורה, ולכן אתה בן 22. כולנו בני 22.