The opening lines for the Torah service don’t talk about the Torah.
They talk about G-d.
That is meant as a reminder to us that the Torah reading is not just an intellectual exercise. It is a recapitulation of the revelation at Mt. Sinai. (Note: the aliyah blessing, which we will discuss in a few weeks, doesn’t bless G-d “who gave us the Torah.” It blesses G-d “who gives us the Torah”—right now.)
The picture we receive of G-d (and of our condition in the presence of G-d) is a complicated one. On the one hand, Eyn kamocha belohim Ad-nai: “There is none like you among the gods…Your kingship is a kingship for all worlds and your rule for all times.” It is about as universal a picture as one could imagine, G-d as the ruler of the entire universe.
But this is immediately followed by a very different picture: Av harachamim: “Merciful Father, favor Zion with goodness, rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, for it is in you alone we put our trust….”
So the creator of the entire universe is expected to focus on one particular people, and one particular land, and one particular city in that land.
And that people, in turn, is a people that is both here and there, in need of G-d’s mercy while in galut, exile, but ultimately in their (and G-d’s) home in Jerusalem.
The bridge between these two (maddening and contradictory) positions is found in the middle line of the opening: Ad-nai oz l’amo yiten, Ad-nai yivarech et amo v’shalom. “Ad-nai will grant His people strength, Ad-nai will bless his people with peace.”
The careful reader will note that even this reconciling bridge is itself contradictory. What could be more difficult than the balancing act between strength and peace? This is the tension that modern Israel lives with every day. And it is precisely from the Torah itself, and the collective wisdom gleaned from it by the greatest minds of a hundred generations, that we can learn how to maintain our balance.