Hard Rain and HaAzinu: Singing the Song of the
Torah
I often
do a puzzle solving exercise with groups. Everyone gets one piece of a puzzle,
and they have to find a solution, by giving each other pieces. They can only
give, they can’t take. Usually one person winds up with all the pieces, and
struggles in vain to find a solution, while all the others look on.
The Zohar
defines advice as the synthesis between the constriction of authority and
commandment and the expansion of connection.
This is
exactly what the Torah means to me. It is a guide to our lives. The Torah’s
thesis is you can take the advice, or you can wait until life teaches you the
same lesson.
Reb Shlomo
Carlebach, in L’Ma’an Achai V’Reyai – Torahs and Stories of Rabbi Shlomo
Carlebach, illustrates this point using the metaphor of the apple and the
honey:
On Shabbat, everything is in the hands of
Hashem. On Rosh Hashannah, there is even greater depth, because on Rosh
Hashannah, I know that a little bit is also in my hands, because I am the one
asking Hashem to make a new year.
(After coming home from shul) I beg Hashem to
inscribe me, and all those I love, and the whole world, in the Book of Life.
Moreover, I bless my wife, my children and all the guests before Hashem.
Afterwards, I say Kiddush, and then I give
Hashem the simanim. The first siman is the tapuach/apple.
Of the many meanings for this, one is, as everyone knows, that according to one
opinion, the Tree of Knowledge was an apple tree.
The apple of the Tree of Knowledge was not sweetened
with honey. Instead of sweetness, it brought bitterness and death to the world.
And so, on Rosh Hashannah, I repair the Tree of
Knowledge, by sweetening the apple with the honey, and saying, “Every piece of
this apple will bring life to the world”.
Honey is very special. If you don’t know how to
take it from the tree, then you are stung, but if you do know how to take it,
you receive only sweetness from it.
Honey is like the sweetness of life. If you
don’t know how to receive this sweetness, if you don’t know for what and to
what end you are living, then it bites you and causes you pain all the time.
But if you do know how to live, it so, so sweet.
It’s one
thing to choose life, but it is another thing altogether to make life sweet.
This is where good judgment and problem solving come in.
Right now,
between Yom Kippur and Succoth, we are on the razor’s edge.
There are
two movies. One is the way the world is. This is Shabbes. The other is the way we want the world to
be, and this is Rosh Hashannah. As Reb Shlomo said, the latter is more our
responsibility. On Shabbes, everything is good just the way it is. On Shabbes
my perspective is that whatever is happening is good; it is my karma, and I am
learning from it. Shabbes means practicing taking the sweetness out of
everything – even the sting.
On
Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur, it is our responsibility to make the world
better. The Gemara in Sanhedrin tells us that we have to watch all the films of
our life. Reb Shlomo takes this one step further. He says, when you get to
Judgment City, there are two films there, not one. One film is what you could
have been, and the other is what you are. Together, the two films define the
World-to-Come and Gehenna. The World-to-Come is when the two films are close, and
Gehenna is when the two films are far apart.
This
is a beautiful image. It plays off the same Torah that Rebbe Zusia was working
on when he said, “When I get to the Gates of Heaven, they won’t ask me why I
wasn’t Abraham. They’ll ask me why I wasn’t Zusia.”
The main
thesis here is that every Jew is an entire world. This is a very important
Hassidic Kabbalistic concept. If one letter of a Sefer Torah is passul/invalid,
the entire Torah is invalid. Each person’s contribution is absolutely
necessary. This is the concomitant Torah to the Torah of obligation. Not only
is it nice to fulfil one’s potential. It is also our obligation, because each
person’s individual potential is part of God’s face, part of the mosaic of the
world. Every person’s contribution is necessary. The Torah can’t do without it,
because every neshama/soul is unique, each is a separate letter of the
Torah, each is a separate building block in the Beit Hamikdash. We have a
constant duty to work on realizing our potential, but this self scrutiny and
devotion to obligation in isolation can lead to depression. Instead of leading
to greater achievement and fulfilment of potential it can lead to a sense of
always feeling judged and insecure, and cause everything to grind to a halt.
Right now,
before Succoth, we are on the razor’s edge, between the self scrutiny and
judgment required to fulfil our potential and the sense of being
unconditionally loved – the sense of grace that tells you, whoever you are,
whatever you do, you have a clean slate, and Hashem is your biggest fan.
My mother
was my biggest fan. I never had one second of doubt, and thank God for that.
Her last words to me, before she fell asleep and died in her sleep, were, “I
love you the most”. Until the last second of her life, I never doubted her
unconditional love for me.
This is the
idea of the Succah as the mother embracing you unconditionally. You don’t have
to do a thing. Everything is totally forgiven. But if this is all you have, the
danger is arrogance, self-indulgence, and self-deception.
Only when
we get these two sides into dialogue with each other, do we have the ideal
balance. One simply can’t work without the other.
With very
powerful imagery, the Tikunei Zohar says, “Those who pray on Rosh Hashannah for
their own needs are like dogs howling ‘Give! Give! Give us life! Give us
food!’” Regarding this, the Esh Kodesh (Rosh Hashannah 1941), says, “Please,
God, give me the ability to pray for something higher.” According to this
Torah, the easiest thing in the world is to be locked in a tunnel. The Esh
Kodesh is begging God to let him see the world from a higher perspective, to be
able to pray for the higher needs of the whole world. We can’t do this if we
feel crushed inside. When we feel bad inside, we are just like howling dogs.
The beauty
of the poetry in HaAzinu is found in the way it says goodbye – in the song. The
two column structure of this song looks beautiful on the parchment of the
Torah, because the empty space of the white parchment captures so much emotion.
One of the
most beautiful Torahs in the Mei Hashiloach is the commentary on Parshat
Ha’azinu). In Part 2 of Mei Hashiloach the Ishbitzer says of HaAzinu that the
whole Torah is a song – it is important to sing it - this is why we sing the
Torah with trop, and HaAzinu, the song of Moshe, is the essence of the
song of the Torah.
In Part 1
of Mei Hashiloach, the Ishbitzer deals with the harsh and gentle voices of the
Torah and how both are necessary components of advice and good judgment. On the
verse, (Deuteronomy 32:1) ‘Give ear (HaAzinu), O heavens, and I will
speak, and the earth shall hear the sayings of my mouth’, he quotes the
Midrash: “Moshe was very close to heaven – he gave his ear to the heavens. A
parallel phrase relates to Isaiah (Isaiah 8:9), ‘give ear, all the expanses of
the earth’.”
The Midrash
explains that Moshe Rabbenu is the brain and the wisdom of all of Israel. This
(the intellect) is called ‘heaven’. The
brain has the potential to receive things that are for people as hard as sinews.
Isaiah is the heart of all of Israel. The heart (the emotions) only ever
screams and prays for salvation. It cannot receive any harsh words. It needs
comfort.
This is the
meaning of Isaiah’s name (Yeshayahu/salvation).
“Give ear O
heaven and I will speak”; the word for “I will speak” – adabrah – comes
from davar, meaning ‘critique’, whereas “the sayings of my mouth” –
imrei pi – means to speak softly, in a whisper.
The
Ishbitzer is saying; whisper to the heart, speak loudly and critically to the
mind. If I want to give advice, I have to do both. You have to know that I’m on
your side, otherwise you will not be able to receive my critique.
No one is
going to make any changes after Yom Kippur, unless they believe that God is on
their side. This is the significance of Sukkoth. It is God saying, “I am
totally on your side. I am your biggest fan. I’m your mother. I’m cheering for
you every second.”
The mind
needs Yom Kippur and the heart needs Sukkoth, and the synthesis is good
judgment. The confidence emerges out of the process, because you emerge with a
confident sense of self and of balance. Any lack of balance makes a poor
leader, because distortion leads to death. Only the middle furrow leads to
sprouting seeds.
Only the
person who has a secure core can play both roles. Insecure people have to do it
only one way – they are often called ‘over-determined’ or ‘compulsive’. They
are compelled to speak softly, or they are compelled to speak loudly and
critically. The sign of security is the flexibility inherent in playing the
appropriate role, or the appropriate ethics for any given situation. This is
called ‘making the shidduch’, and this is singing the song of the Torah,
because the Torah says, when you find this balance, you are able to swing both
ways, depending on the needs of the situation.
The first
verses of HaAzinu continue: “My teaching will drop like rain, my saying will
flow down like the dew – like a rainstorm.’
The
Ishbitzer explains; Amira/saying, denotes soft language, in which the
heart is always thirsty for salvation, while the word for “drop” – aref
can also be read oref, meaning ‘back of the neck”. And so this verse can
also mean, ‘The Torah will hit you in the back of the neck, like hard rain”.
The image
here is of being hit in the back of the neck as if by a harsh rain. The neck
always connotes stubbornness, and the word for neck – oref has the same
letters as the word Paro/Pharaoh. Through this, we can understand the
Torah as the moral physics of the universe. This is about how life happens, and
how unpleasant things happen. If unpleasant things happen, you’re going to take
it like a hard rain on the neck.
The problem
with hard rain in Eretz Israel is that it just leads to erosion. The Gemara
says this type of rain in the desert doesn’t sink to the roots, it just runs
off. The danger of the Torah hitting you like a hard rain is that you might not
learn anything from it, because you become bogged down with bitterness.
The
Ishbitzer is saying that the harsh side of the Torah grabs you, the way a
person grabs a kid by the back of his neck, and you are forced to take on the
yoke of the Torah, whether you like it or not. When you do this, when you
appropriately deny yourself and use the Torah consciously, then “My teaching
will flow like dew”, and dew is the most effective moisture in Eretz Israel,
because it is so soft.
How can the
Torah be so harsh and so gentle? There is Yom Kippur and there is Sukkoth –
column A and column B, and you have to mix and match.
The verse
from Parshat HaAzinu continues, “…like a stormwind on the lawn”.
The word
for “lawn” is desher, which is the corporate noun for grass.
Reb Shlomo
Carlebach picks up this image when he says that on Rosh Hashannah and Yom
Kippur we are standing corporately before Hashem. On Sukkot, however, Hashem
takes each Jew individually into the love room – the cheder hayichud – the
room of seclusion, which gives the dramatic sense of the couple being alone in
the wedding.
So many
weddings are destroyed by other people’s expectations, and young people wind up
feeling destroyed at their own wedding. Then they experience this sudden refuge
of going alone into a room and being alone in the midst of the commotion.
This idea
of corporate and individual also relates to the issue of Shechitah/ritual
slaughter.
Many
European nations have outlawed shechitah, raising the question of
whether these are really humanitarian laws, or simply anti-Semitic. A show on
National Public Radio recently compared Shechitah to all other methods
of animal slaughter, and concluded that all the other methods are corporate. Shechitah
is the only method where the shochet/slaughterer takes each individual
animal. The word traf (unkosher) means “torn”. The other methods are
predatory. They all cause pain. The two most popular of these methods are
stunning and shooting in the brain. When the stunning is done corporately, some
animals need it done two or three or four times. This is agonizing, and it
causes panic and fear. The same happens with shooting in the brain. They often
miss the brain, or miss one animal altogether, and then there is total panic
among the survivors.
All these
methods are done in a group. Shechitah is the only method where the
animal is taken individually. The very
sharp razor used in Shechitah is, theoretically, one molecule wide, and
it actually separates like liquid, in a very gentle way. This year, for our Kapporot
(slaughter of hen or rooster as vicarious atonement before Yom Kippur), we had
a very feisty rooster. Yet, in the hands of the Shochet, this feisty,
fighting rooster became totally serene. It was really amazing to watch. This is
an important feature in our Torah of the Lowest Common Denominator. We have to
raise the predatory moment. We squeezed the blood into the hole, and got on our
knees to cover the blood with dirt, and said the blessing. This really connects
us with the inner predator that we all have.
The
Ishbitzer quotes Rashi on the issue of the corporate in dialectic tension with
the individual. Rashi explains that when all the land is covered with grasses,
we call this desher/lawn. This represents all the 613 Mitzvot and
pertains to all of Israel, which hit the corporate entity of Israel “like a
stormwind on the lawn”.
The
corporate hits like a vicious storm, like a hurricane. This is Column A. Column
B pertains to the individual, and here we have “fructifying rain”, which,
explains Rashi, individually nourishes “each and every species of grass, known
as eisev.”
This, says the Ishbitzer, corresponds to each individual Jew, each of whom
recognizes the bias in his own heart, and the deficits pertaining to this. One
person’s deficit is not the same, or even similar to another’s.
Through
recognizing our deficits, we become strong in our most broken places. The
broken bone becomes the strongest bone in the body, because the healing process
of Tshuvah actually turns your deficits into your strongest points.
This rain,
says the Ishbitzer, needs to fall drop by drop as the specific Torah that
pertains to your deficit – the Torah that is the healing Torah for you alone.
Each person needs to increase the words of Torah in that one place where he
finds his deficit. This is akin to treating a wound that needs special
medicine.
The Succah
teaches us that protection can only be felt by being vulnerable, when you take
the risk of moving out of yourself and your ego, and try something new. It’s
only when you really beg for help that God responds. And so, a big part of
Tshuvah is the ‘one-to-nine ratio.’ One step is your responsibility, but you
must leave room for Hashem to take the nine steps. If you’re taking all ten steps, that’s not called Tshuvah. That’s
called control. Harshness means I have to take my one step. I have to be
self-critical and penetrate my self-rationalization. The other nine steps are
about me trusting Hashem and others to give me the help that I need. Otherwise,
I will try to do all the pieces myself, and everything will be stuck and bogged
down. In this scenario, you are guaranteed to repeat your mistakes over and
over, because there is no outside input.