"And regarding the male goat for the sin-offering, Moshe diligently investigated; and behold! - it had been burned." (Leviticus 10:16)


"Everything that walks on its belly, and everything that walks on four [legs], up to everything that has many legs, and every crawling thing that crawls along the ground - you will not eat them, for they are an abomination." (Leviticus 11:42)


"The earliest [sages] were called soferim ['scribes', literally 'those who count'], because they would count all the letters in the Torah; and they said that the vav in the word gachon is the half-way point of the letters of the Torah; and the words darosh darash mark the half-way point of its words." (Kiddushin 30a; Yalkut Shimoni, Shemini 545)

The heart of the Torah is the communication between God and Israel.



Most printed editions of the Torah include a Masoretic note in the margin identifying these two midway points of the Torah. There is also a third note, in the previous parasha (Tzav), which identifies the verse, "And he [Moshe] placed the Breastplate upon him [Aharon], and in the Breastplate he put the Urim and the Tumim" (Leviticus 8:8) as the midway point of the Torah when counting the verses.


There is a well-known Hassidic vort that the Torah begins with the bet of Bereshit ("in the beginning") and finishes with the lammed of Yisra'el, which two letters spell the word lev ("heart"). The simple implication is that the Torah must speak to the heart of every Jew, but perhaps there is a deeper message here.


Three places in the Torah can be defined as its "heart": the centre as measured by letters, the centre as measured by words, and the centre as measured by verses. And these three places clearly indicate the three ways in which God speaks to us through the Torah, and how we are to understand and relate to His message.


One way in which we understand the precise meaning of the Torah is through remez - hints derived from the text of the Torah, when there are seemingly superfluous words, or unusual grammatical formations, or the like. For example: "'that walks on its belly' – this refers to snakes; the [seemingly superfluous] word 'everything' [is added] in order to include slugs and [worms] which are similar to slugs. 'Walks on four legs' – this refers to scorpions; the word 'everything' [is added] to include beetles and the like. 'That has many legs' – this refers to centipedes; the words 'up to everything' [are added] to include anything that resembles the centipede, and anything that is similar to that which resembles the centipede." (Hullin 67b) Furthermore, the vav in the word gachon is written especially large (in Masoretic nomenclature, vav rabbati), to hint that the prohibitions cover more than just what our verse mentions.


The next way for us to understand the Torah is through d'rash – precise analysis of the text. This is exactly what Moshe does in 10:16 - "darosh darash Moshe." Indeed, the Pri Tzaddik (Rabbi Tzaddok HaKohen of Lublin, 1823-1900) points out that this is the first ever example of arriving at a Halachic decision through the analytical process, which is the standard method in the Talmud.


The clearest (and rarest) way in which God makes His will known to us is directly, by talking through the Urim and Tumim in the Breastplate worn by the High Priest - the method delineated in the verse that stands at the centre of the Torah.


The moral here is simple and beautiful: the heart of the Torah is the communication between God and Israel. And, in the inspiring words of the midrash, "Just as wine causes the heart to rejoice - as it says (Psalms 104:15), 'And wine gladdens man's heart' - so too do words of Torah cause the heart to rejoice, as it says (ibid. 19:9), 'The ordinances of HaShem are straight, they make the heart rejoice.'" (Song of Songs Rabbah 1:3)