Devekut
by Avram Davis

Devekut is the only Halacha
All the laws, customs and admonitions of the Torah are ultimately meant to liberate us. The central metaphor of the Torah can be framed as a question: How can I as an individual, how can we as a tribe, and how can we all, as a species, move from the constriction of slavery, from mitzraim, to freedom?
Toward this end the Torah lists many different types of methodologies and behaviors. Additionally, in the long evolution of the Torah path, through the temple and the prophets, through the early Tannas and the settling of Europe, through persecution and precious peace, there have been many good and useful commands and admonitions and additional methodologies all beautiful and fertile. But all stem from this central premise: how do we move from slavery to freedom? Several answers are possible, but one reappears again and again like a thread of gold running through a mountain of commentary: devekut. Be attached to the Infinite. Be so attached that there is no separation—and no difference, ultimately—between you and the Holy One. Know the One. When we come to this deep knowing, we realize that we too are part of the Infinite Unity, created as we are in Its image.
Devekut. If a law helps us to achieve this state, then it is good. If it does not, then at that moment it is not useful. Devekut. The embrace of the Beloved. The kiss of the Ayn Sof.
The philosophy that underpins our inherent yearning for freedom is the principle of unity. All things are God, ultimately. All reality, seen and unseen, is indivisible and part of that totality.
Though we live lives that seem governed by multiplicity and fracture, though our hopes seems consumed by despair and our equanimity wrecked by confusion, yet this Unity is unwavering in its love and compassion for the world, like a mother’s heart as she nurses her baby. All of creation, seen and unseen, is woven together in a great tapestry. Each thread of the tapestry touches every other, and each of them has a face turned toward the other.
And this divine face has a human countenance.
To recognize this is to gain insight into the ordering of the universe, both natural and supernal. Knowing this in the deep heart’s core, we know all things worth knowing (in the soul sense). Not knowing this, all of the learning of the scholastics and the ever more stringent halacha of the legalists are dust that masks the light of the sun and ink that clouds the pure water of life. Torah is not a book of logic.
    It is a book of stories.
    Torah is not a description of the rational,
    It is a description of the relational.
    It is the path of the awakened heart yearning for the Beloved.
    The divine is an ocean and we the fish that swim in Her.
    The divine is the air, we the birds that fly in Her.
    Open your mouth and drink deeply of the liquor of this ocean!
    There is only one way to know the Torah path,
    For nature itself is her poetry.
Experience is good, my friend. It springs from the divine abundance. From experiencing the unity of God comes inevitable love. From experiencing the unity of God comes inevitable compassion and passion, comes mercy and wonder.
In our simple experience of the self we experience great separation. We think that this is representative of all life, this duality—Heaven and earth, light and darkness, good and bad. We think that this is the cause of all our woe. And in a simple sense it is, but more deeply, it is not so. What gives rise to our brokenness is the constriction of soul and its yearning to be liberated. Our deepest consciousness can become caught in endless loops of dogma (whether religious, economic, political or interpersonal makes little difference), and the deep, inner wisdom heart, the song of our deeper selves, becomes muted and unheard. But Shiviti Hashem L'Negdi Tamid. Devekut breaks out of the endless loop. It is the sound of rain giving life to the earth and the touch of food for the desperately hungry. It is the Shofar of the Messiah echoing in jubilation in each person's expectation and fulfillment.