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Ha'azinu
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Song as Existential Distress Translated by Dr. S. Nathan, l'ilui nishmat Esther bat Mordechai l'ilui nishmat Mayer Hirsh ben Laibel l'ilui nishmat Ben Tzion ben Menachem Chaim HA'AZINU “The Jewish people and the Torah preceded the universe.” How did they precede the universe? It may be possible – it may even be mandatory – for us to view this Talmudic statement as a fascinating revelation, as hinting to the fact that the Jewish people and the Torah do not require the universe in order to justify their existence. Their existence does not require a logical justification, drawn from the ways of nature. The Torah and the Jewish people do not require the universe in order to sustain their existence. They exist in their own right. Such a statement carries with it substantial implications, and it therefore behooves us to cast aside all explanations based upon justification – apologetics, in other words – to throw them into history’s rubbish bin. Apologetics have been prevalent all along the way, with historical interpreters of every shape and size drawing a wide spectrum of claims from historical evidence. Among other things, we must distinguish between needs founded on moral values, as a matter of principle, and frameworks based on the mere value of keeping order, which reject and cast out any value that cannot be compressed into the systematic framework, which exists only by the power of the principle of a need for a framework for keeping order. The above-quoted statement by the sages of the Talmud bestows legitimate value on morality, even when it does not merge properly with the military lines of those who march on command – whether the command issues forth from the authority of the group, within a democratic framework, or whether it issues forth from any other framework that represents order. Any supreme, ideal spiritual value such as a moral value, or any other value whose source lies in the Torah, given from heaven, carries the greater weight. The moral value is decisive, and overrides all principles of keeping order, or any other utilitarian principle that derives from or deviates from the need to keep order. Even esthetic value, the principle of beauty, and similarly also the principle of art – these are not given the place of highest honor; we do not find them by Judaism's “eastern wall”. Investigating the question of art in the Torah, one encounters another statement by Chazal, in relation to the verse: “ ‘This is my God, and I will beautify Him:’ Beautify yourself before Him through mitzvot.” From here the concept of hidur mitzva – “giving splendor to the mitzva” is derived. The main practical application of hidur mitzva is found in the “four species” on the Sukkot festival, where the principle of beauty determines the halachot. In relation to the verse: “There is no tsur (rock) like our God,” the Talmudic sages add: “There is no tsayar (artist) like our God.” Shabat and Yom Tov – among the other mitzvas that fall into hidur mitzvah categories – play central roles in the atmosphere of sanctity that imbues the “appointed times” of the Jewish calendar, which penetrate to the very infrastructure of the halacha. In a similar vein, the Talmudic sages state that a Torah scholar “forfeits his life” if a stain is found on his clothing, and there is no need to abstract this statement from its plain meaning, or to view it only as a metaphor, only as an allusion to moral issues, despite the critical importance of such a metaphor. The metaphor is not empowered to remove the straightforward textual meaning expressed by Chazal. From here, we are but one step away from a discussion of the value of art and esthetics in Judaism. Let it be known herewith that art as a phenomenon – as a talent – exists absolutely, in every sense of the word. The example of Betzalel is conspicuous in the Torah. His name means “in God’s shade,” for he sought the shelter of God’s shade, and merited inspiration of such magnitude that the Torah spares no words in praise and admiration of it. As young as Betzalel was, he did not shrink from confronting even Moses, his master, in the matter of the need to have the construction of the Mishkan take precedence over the creation of the sacred vessels, and Moses conceded that in fact Betsalel was in the right – which teaches you the power of artistic awareness as surpassing even a direct order that has supposedly come forth from the Almighty to Moshe Rabeinu himself. Art’s power derives from the highest heights of heaven and springs forth from the profoundest depths of human intuition. Nevertheless, its place in the Torah and in Judaism is secondary, and does not take precedence over the Godly imperative, which derives from the written and oral Torah. It therefore behooves us to assign art to its appropriate place: Amazingly enough, we find that visual esthetic art, like the literary expressions we find in the Torah, which reflect the noblest poetry, the most exalted verses – wonderful both in their meaningful content and in the artistic garb that molds them into a work of incomparable beauty – are employed only as words of rebuke, or in order to describe a bewildering or threatening situation. “Then would Moses sing…” the Song of the Sea, which deals, in exalted dramatic form, with the tragedy of the Egyptians. Similarly with the song of Ha’azinu, “Give Ear,” this week's Torah reading. It is a fiercely powerful expression that brings the entire Torah to its conclusion, on the last day of Moshe’s life: It conveys rebuke. The song of David, read as the haftorah following Ha’azinu, delivers a eulogy over the failure of Sha’ul, and as a song of praise over the victory of David’s salvation, evoking the memory of terrifying moments that David has experienced. All of these cry, darsheini – they beg explanation and investigation. The lyrical poem in our parasha does not use mere figures of speech; every allusion is deliberate. What is the meaning of Moses addressing the Jewish people not by directing his words towards them but rather by addressing himself to the heavens and the earth? “Give Ear, O Heavens, and hear my words, O Earth.” Is it not remarkable? We turn to Rashi, who views Moshe’s intention in addressing the heavens and the earth as reflecting a need for immutable witnesses. Yet what need is there for witnesses? Why not address the Jewish people directly, as he has always done? “And Moshe spoke to the people of Israel, saying to them…” The implication is that Moshe felt a need to reinforce his fateful message, to arm it with greater force through the use of an external coat of armor, borrowed from inorganic nature – in preparation for that moment of weakness that could one day befall Israel, due to their ceaseless preoccupation with nature’s wide open spaces. He would do this through the use of a natural framework that could not be ignored, but rather on the contrary. One is obligated to sanctify the natural framework as the vessel that preserves and bears blessing, as the container that holds the meaningful content of sanctity. This indeed is what the natural framework was meant to do: To serve human beings, when they are serving their God. For human beings cannot express their yearnings and longings through abstract expression. Therefore, they attain this end through the means of nature, drawing their pearls of poetic expression from nature. By doing so, they are actualizing the murmurings of their inner hearts, bringing spiritual longing from a state of dormant potential into a state of tangible realness. This may be the splendid garment that nature dons, as it envelops itself in a tallit. Wrapped in its prayer shawl, it leads the prayers, addressing itself to God. To be more exact, it is the shliach tsibur who clothes himself in the garments of nature when he is addressing God. In this way, the prayer leader, “the messenger of the congregation” is endowing nature with spiritual merit, by causing it to be used for mitzvah. Through this, nature is privileged to be raised up, to be elevated above its condition as mere physical matter, to merge with the mitzvah and become part of a spiritual condition. This process gathers together all of time’s disparate parts, which have been separated into past, present, and future – each of which contradicts the other – and joins them together into an all-encompassing and broadened present that makes it possible to attach to God, for dvaikut exists only in the present. “Then Moshe will sing.” “This proves that the Torah hints at the reincarnation of the dead,” says Rashi. For it does not say, “Moshe sang,” but rather “Moshe will sing.” Moshe is grasping the future here, grabbing it by the hair of its head and joining it to the present, to that realm reserved exclusively for God’s servants through that poetic creativity that unites man and universe in the dvaikut of worship. The Talmudic warning against ceasing from one’s Torah study in order to admire a tree, i.e., to cease one's Torah meditation in order to say, “How beautiful is this tree,” (and forfeiting one’s life thereby) intends to warn against the act of “ceasing.” This means that if you are directly involved in serving God, through the study of Torah which has greater value than all the other mitzvahs, you have no need to pass through nature, which is a roundabout route. If your relating to the esthetic aspect of nature does not serve as an expression of your Torah study, but rather on the contrary causes you to cease your Torah study, and to relate to esthetics as to a separate issue, then inevitably, you are despising the Torah. Human Beings Possess an Artistic Dimension Esthetic sensitivity to forms and to content is not the only sensitivity that exists. The garden of esthetics has a snake hidden in it: The form possesses its own charm. On the surface, it appears to not even require meaningful content. It is capable of creating a powerful impression, of exerting a spellbinding fascination on its own merit. This is a curse, for it raises the possibility of separating form from content. Judaism views such separation as leading to the gravest of all transgressions: Idolatry. The Torah warns, at every opportunity, against the danger of separating form from content: “False is grace and futile is beauty.” “A gold ring in a pig’s nose is a beautiful and tasteless woman.” “Do not look at the container, but at what is in it.” The Dimension of Music as Art Nevertheless, the art form that is closest to the gates of glory, that is purest in substance, that remains unstained – the artistic expression that knows no separating between form and content, is the art of music. Here is an art that unites space and time, stability and movement: Space as stability and time as the element of flow and movement. It is a stable and permanent space from which and around which time flows. For music unites two components, tone and rhythm, with no dividing between them. When rhythm is absent, it is as tasteless and meaningless as when tone is absent. A jarring rhythm is like a jarring note. Both tone and rhythm find their place in the present. The whole power of art is that it fills the present with experience. Chief among the arts that utterly rivet one in the present – is music. The telltale signs of this riveting power may be glimpsed in the creator of the music, who can become so overwhelmed by its sheer power as to lose his sanity. Yet you will never find a creative musician in bad spirits. Music is optimistic by its very nature, in that it fills the present, and brings the past and the future closer. They are merged within a present that encompasses the person creating the music and the person listening to the music within an experience of unambivalent joy. As one of the Chassidic masters expressed it: “Why was war created? So that they would compose military marches to be sung at my Sabbath table.” All music is good and proper when used by a Jew to sanctify the Sabbath! The Torah student sings his study, and the Torah that issues from his lips is steeped in a melody that has come from a source directly beneath God’s throne of glory, as the Vilna Gaon expressed it. Bitter memories from the past, and worries regarding the need to face the future make their appearance by way of the music, dressed in the glorious garments of the present, steeped in optimism. Their bitterness becomes sweetened, coming forth to gladden the human heart, purifying the life force, deepening the emotions. Immersed in music, one forgets one’s anguish and is absorbed in sweetness; the deeper the sadness of the music, the stronger its sweetness. Its neighbors, song and poetry, are just the same, for they are the other side of music. Like music, poetry has tone and rhythm. It appears to me that this is the reason the Torah has clothed it in harsh words, of moral rebuke and of painful visions of the future, but clothed in tone and rhythm to bring them closer to the listener, to connect them to his soul as it sings its melody in a rapturously melting present. The Evil Urge may find its place in the past and in the future, but it is not to be found in a creative, optimistic present. It is normally found only in a present severed from past and future, and empty of creative content; here the evil urge celebrates. A person whose present is detached from his past and his future is empty of values. This emptiness is then filled by lusts and urges, which originate in the self-preservation instincts, which enslave by their destructive power. Someone who possesses values, and who expresses these values through creativity, connects to a broadened present and penetrates to the deepest recesses of his own soul, filling it completely, leaving no empty space for the temptations of the yetser. The evil urge then shrinks and grows weaker, having no empty space in which to create a niche of its own. We see from this that with "a righteous person [who] controls his own heart, the power of the evil urge is weakened and reduced, whereas with "a wicked person [whose] heart controls him," the evil urge is increasingly dominant. This is why “the wicked are called dead even in their lifetimes,” because the yetser does as it wishes with them, and they are unable to oppose it with any opinion of their own, nor with any power of their own. Shabat unites space and time within itself. There is thus nothing like the seventh day, sanctified with the sanctity of the Sabbath, to bestow the rest and the tranquility of the sacred, in that it is a present that encompasses and purifies past and future within a single unit that liberates from the distressing past, and that prohibits the planning and pondering of future causes of worry. It purifies us, preparing us for something like an ever-continuous present, which is what our sages mean by “something like the next world,” which is the major characteristic of the holy Sabbath. It is comparable to the simhat beit hasho’eva, the water-drawing celebration, of which the Talmudic sages said that "anyone who has never seen the water-drawing celebration, has never seen happiness.” Active rejoicing during the water-drawing celebration was permitted only to the righteous. This rejoicing would then endow them with ruach hakodesh, the sacred spirit of prophecy, as Yonah the prophet discovered, for he began to prophesize as a result of his active participation in the water-drawing celebration. “Blessed are You…Who have given the rooster understanding…” What is a rooster doing in the prayer book? Wherefore this place of honor at the head of all the blessings of the dawn, carrying the banner of understanding, and no mere understanding but even discernment? For after all, it has the ability “to distinguish between day and night.” At prayer, we need first to attain that level of understanding which the rooster possesses, by allowing ourselves to be assisted in our spiritual efforts by a force of nature that is supposedly materialistic. Only then can we progress to the next stage (see prayer book: “Blessings of the dawn”) which is to distinguish between Jew and non-Jew, a distinction that is not particularly clear or obvious in our modern world that presumes to carry the flag of anti-racism and liberalism. Only by virtue of our basic ability to make distinctions, to discern day from night, which is the most natural of all distinctions, and then by attaining a more subtle ability to make distinctions among human beings, do we become capable of discerning a slave from one born free, and thus we advance toward the most fundamental distinction of all: Discerning man from woman. The intention here is not to make a distinction that will separate a man from his own fitting and proper partner, who constitutes a complementary and inseparable part of himself, but rather to make a distinction between his own fitting and proper partner and all other women, who are a nation unto themselves, and might be carriers of the virus of the evil urge. We see then that the rooster has the honor of beginning the process of making distinctions. One thus recites the blessings of the dawn in this progression, commencing with the most natural of all distinctions, separating night from day - unlike the idlers who exchange day for night and night for day – and continuing onward to the finer distinctions, ultimately separating “one’s own wife who is as one’s own body” from all other women. |
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