“What is your favorite pasuk from this week’s sedrah?” This was the question my father used to ask us children at the Shabbos table. We did not leap to offer an answer because we were wary of the next question: “Why ?” This was a creative way to get us thinking about Chumash and we found ourselves preparing our choices even before the Shabbos meal began.
Of course as we grew older we realized that every pasuk in the Torah carries equal weight and importance as indeed does every single letter because as Ramban says the entire Torah is the manifestation of the great Name of G-d Himself. Should a tiny yud be missing from a Sefer Torah that Torah cannot be used for public reading until the error is corrected.
Nevertheless different psukim strike different chords in different people and certain neshamos respond to certain psukim more deeply than to others. So he would ask us to think about “our” pasuk because as Nefesh HaChaim IV:11 says every Jew has his own letter somewhere in the Torah — and maybe even his own pasuk.
Decades have passed I have grown older (though not much wiser) and still hear lingering echoes of that childhood question. Now however it is not a search for “favorite” psukim but a sighting of psukim that light up that fairly leap off the page and reverberate within the mature soul. And so with the climactic Simchas Torah just around the bend I share with you one verse from each of the Five Chumashim that most resonate with me — fully aware of the caveat that all Torah verses are equally sacred.
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