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"How could the Almighty establish a bond through the written Torah? The scroll, which rests in a closet, can certainly not be the medium of the bond between God and Israel. But the Torah which is with man to the point that he is becoming a Torah person is capable of establishing a bond between man and God."
Maharal of Prague
How does one pass from the book of the written Torah to the text of the oral Torah? How to impress the eternal word in its implicit and explicit dimensions in the exigent consciousness of the past and future generations? How to achieve intimacy with the Torah? How to insert its text into the texture of life?
These are the questions of every educator. My wife and I have experienced this passage in teaching Torah to our five children. We have adopted the approach of Oriental Jewry dating back thousands of years. In this rhythmic and mnemonic pedagogy, the book must be chanted, played, balanced and accompanied at times with gestures. Soon the reader experiences gratification of his efforts through poetic and muscular pleasure. The text becomes the internal sensation of the whole body, throat, lungs, and diaphragm. The book, the body and the soul are no longer separate but join in a consubstantial union. Because the prime mover of the mechanism of memory is the body, it is the gestures, rhythm and melody, which fix the text in the imaginative faculties.
But to know by heart is not the end. Rather knowing by heart to better understand. The aim is to press hard the text so that the living word should spring forth. Through this global and oral method, a power of truth emerges from the book that could not have been grasped from the simple reading of the eyes.