The Key Nobody Holds

This is a reading from Kol Tehom, offered as a teaching and marked as such. It starts with a question every seeker eventually asks: if God wants the sea opened, why does nobody hold the key?

Infinite infinities

There may be infinitely many infinities, and so infinitely many universes. The Midrash already pictures worlds before this one: God kept building worlds and taking them down until He said of this one, this pleases Me (Bereishit Rabbah 3:7). With infinite worlds come infinite locks, and every lock wants a different key.

That is why nobody ever holds the final key. A known answer would end the game. God keeps it hidden so every soul keeps trying new combinations, and the trying is what keeps creation alive.

שִׁבְעָה דְבָרִים מְכוּסִים מֵבְנֵי אָדָם

Seven matters are concealed from people: the day of death, the day of consolation, the depth of judgment, what is in another’s heart.

Pesachim 54b

Particle and wave

Light behaves as a particle and as a wave, depending on how it is measured. Kol Tehom reads this as the same design at the smallest scale: the answer stays open until someone looks, so the looking matters. Where the Sages disagree, both readings can be correct, each one the key to a different universe.

The first key: sesame

Every quest needs a door to start from. When the Mishnah lists the oils the Sages permit for the Shabbat lamp, the first one named is sesame oil (Mishnah Shabbat 2:2). Open sesame. Kol Tehom takes it as the first entry in the formula, the one that starts the game.

Think of the hunt in Ready Player One: a hidden puzzle, a world of players, and clues that open only to the one who keeps going. Here the clues are oils, letters and verses, and the players are souls.

Follow your nose

If nobody holds the key, how does a soul choose which combination to try? The Shema answers with what not to follow.

וְלֹא תָתֻרוּ אַחֲרֵי לְבַבְכֶם וְאַחֲרֵי עֵינֵיכֶם

Do not stray after your heart and after your eyes.

Bamidbar 15:39, the third paragraph of the Shema

The eyes are ruled out. Yeshayahu names the sense that replaces them, and it belongs to the redeemer himself.

וַהֲרִיחוֹ בְּיִרְאַת ה׳ וְלֹא לְמַרְאֵה עֵינָיו יִשְׁפּוֹט

He will be scented with the fear of God, and he will not judge by what his eyes see.

Yeshayahu 11:3. Rava reads it: the Mashiach will smell and judge (Sanhedrin 93b)

Geula, redemption, runs on the nose. The Kol Tehom reading follows from it: each person has to discover the scent they love most, and give that to God. The offering the Torah keeps naming is a reiach nichoach, a pleasing scent to God (Vayikra 1:9). Your own key begins with what you love to smell.

Read more: the Mashiach judges by smell.

The winner makes the next key

Whoever opens the sea does not keep the prize. The winner makes the next key, for the next universe, and becomes a partner in the next Bereishit.

In the end every soul wins, once its contract of lifetimes is complete. Even then, many souls simply love the game. They choose more lifetimes of playing over building universes of their own, and that is allowed too.

לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה

It is not your duty to finish the work, and you are not free to stop. Faithful is your employer to pay you for your labor.

Rabbi Tarfon, Avot 2:16

Rabbi Tarfon is the same Sage who allows only olive oil for the Shabbat lamp. The one who held out for the single right oil is also the one who says nobody finishes. Keep trying combinations.