Finding Freedom in a Good Book

I have very much enjoyed being back in the rhythm of studying Tanya from the beginning once again. This foundational mystic text is ridiculously deep on a cerebral level, but equally mesmerizing as a work of art. A literary equivalent to those masterpieces like the Mona Lisa, whose eyes gaze at you no matter what side of the room you're standing on, but the expressions of mood conveyed by subtle shifts of the lips and mouth, however, feel active and dynamic. When I am studying Tanya in depth, and treating it with the requisite seriousness it commands, I feel the wise and saintly presence of its author, the Alter Rebbe, quietly lingering, like a fixed gaze, locked on to me no matter what side of the existential room I happen to be standing on. His wisdom, however, is dynamically comprehensive, and there is an accompanying logical framework conveyed that breaks down the underpinning spiritual dynamics of whatever scenario is unfolding—like a subtle but unmistakable shifting in facial expressions that can be detected on the position of the lips and mouth.

This week, beginning yesterday, the fifth day of Tevet, is like a Chasidic equivalent of a national book week. A unique celebration of books and their inhabitants, the dazzling ideas that can change our lives each day.

A celebration that encourages us to imagine each book holding up its own torch, with its own promise of a particular mental release valve, beckoning with its mental wares and the unique psychic relief they offer, each a ticket to a desirable destination, a place one can go to feel infinitely free, where the clouds lift and the soul can soar again.

"Hei Tevet" (the fifth of Tevet), as it has become endearingly known, is a celebration of the magical eyes of any book that transports us to a different place and subsequently returns us, even slightly altered and ennobled—that remain fixed on us. When the idea that we have read in a book kindles a fire in our brain that continues to flicker even after we are done reading, the book remains open within the very opening to the glimpse of the sublime that it facilitated.

This day of books encourages us to explore the role we play in "allowing" books to exceed and surpass their "normal" impact, beyond being the catalyst for a fleeting moment of freedom only while actually reading the book. At its least impactful it isn't unlike the way a souvenir from a vacation in an exotic locale can imaginatively reignite its peak moments. At its most vibrant imaginative height, however, it is far more powerful, having the capacity to summon and reactivate significant simulations of the actual experience.

The Rebbe pointed out the ultimate irony of books in an emotionally charged address on the day that the contents of his extraordinary library that were stolen were returned. The Rebbe evoked his own anguish over the pilfered rare books, by intimating and lending voice to the inner anguish of the books, and in the process opening up a window into the existence of, and dynamics of, the secret and soulful world of books themselves.

He did so, most brilliantly, by pointing out the irony of the imprisonment of a book that has been taken, by re-framing it as an imprisonment of freedom itself.

That being the case, the leap from a book that has been physically removed from a library and whose contents are inaccessible, to a book that we HAVE in our possession and don't read, as an imprisonment of that book, languishing along with its ideas, unopened on a shelf—is not a difficult leap to make at all.

To be continued, I'm sure.