When we put the Torah away, we sing “etz chayim he”—“[The Torah] is a tree of life to those who grasp it, and those who hold it will feel fulfilled.” “Etz Chayim” is also the expression used to describe the wooden shafts to which the Torah scroll is attached. So that when we lift the Torah during hagbah, we are literally “grasping” and “holding” the Torah.
Obviously, though, simply holding onto the wooden handles is not exactly what the rabbis had in mind when they composed this prayer. And to understand how deep it actually is, we have to remember the origin of the expression “tree of life.” It takes us all the way back to the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve eat of the tree of knowledge, G-d exiles them specifically because He fears they will partake of the tree of life. But in our prayer, the rabbis are urging us to hold onto that very tree, as symbolized by the Torah!
What gives? Why was G-d afraid that Adam and Eve would partake of the tree of life, but now G-d urges us to do the same?
A closer reading of the Garden of Eden story can perhaps explain this. There, G-d says, “’Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, what if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!’ So the Lord G-d banished him from the Garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he was taken.” Why living forever would be a problem is not explained (or rather, the rabbis explain it in so many ways that we really have no certainty). But what is clear is that the “opposite” of eating and living forever is tilling the soil from which we are taken.
“And the dust returns to the earth from which it was taken.” Before partaking of the tree of life, G-d insists we understand our own mortality (something of which Adam and Eve had no clue). Now that we know our life is of limited days, we can ask ourselves what immortality, “living forever,” really means.
And that is where Torah comes into the picture. What endures when our physical bodies do not? Torah offers us a path to change the moral character of the universe. This is certainly true if we are the only sentient beings in the vastness of space. But even if there are others out there somewhere (given enough time, Jewish fundraisers will most assuredly find them), every little bit helps. We can make our contribution to the world being perfected as malchut shadd-ai, the kingdom of G-d. And what could be a greater source of fulfillment than that?
PS: It is hard to write of the Tree of Life without recalling the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. If we imagine that holding the tree of life leads to physical immortality, the irony becomes unbearable. If, on the other hand, we see the tree of life as a pathway to immortal values, the contrast between evil and innocence illuminates that pathway even during our darkest hours.