“Hello darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping. And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains Within the sound of silence.” This song, “Sounds of Silence,” of course written and performed by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, begins with the power of silence; even though there is nothing said it can still be heard. We find a similar quandary here in this week's parasha, Haazinu, when it begins in Deuteronomy 32:1. “Give ear, O heavens, let me speak; Let the earth hear the words I utter!” When we look into the sky, what do we hear? Well, if we are away from the city, or population of any kind, we hear nothing, but its message is still very loud is it not? Here we can recall the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who called the experience of hearing the creation, ineffable, or something inexpressible by words.
My mentioning “Sounds of Silence” is not to interpret this classic song, more so than to touch upon an underlying truth I feel it shares. Its truth is that there is no such thing as silence, it even says in Psalm 65:2, “For You silence is praise,” understood by Rashi to mean silence to God is a form of praise but when made glorious, our audible, it becomes praise with awe. Let’s consider this idea of silence, or maybe better the idea of hearing silence. There is a story from 1 Kings 19 where Elijah is searching for God, and although Elijah does not find God in the great and mighty wind, an earthquake or in the fire, Elijah discovers God is a soft murmuring sound, understood to be a still soft voice that only Elijah could hear. Again calling on Rashi he writes of Elijah; “But I heard, it is a voice coming out of the silence, still a voice, but a voice itself not heard.” For Rashi, whatever Elijah heard was not a voice but had a sound, a sound that only spoke with Elijah. It is pretty much agreed upon that Haazinu is read on Shabbat Shuva because we are supposed to listen, and even more so during this Holy Week of the Yamim Noraim. But it is also worth noting that Haazinu, which means to listen attentively as opposed to Shema, which simply means to listen, are interchangeable but different. Here, Haazinu comes from the root ohzen, which means ear, connecting such hearing to our physical person. But for the Bible, hearing was just not a physical activity but a multifaceted one. We read in Proverbs 2:2, “If you make your ear attentive to wisdom And your MIND open to discernment,” but the English does not do it justice. The word for mind, libcha, can be translated to mean your inner part, midst (of things) heart (of a person), soul, heart (of person), mind, knowledge, thinking, reflection, memory, inclination, resolution, determination (of will), conscience heart, (moral character, the seat of emotions and passions or even a seat of courage. So the above could have just as easily read, “If you make your ear attentive to wisdom And your HEART/INNER BEING open to discernment.” Sure it matters, it means we listen with more than just our physical ears but with our entire being; is that not what Elijah did? On Rosh Hashanah we stood before God on a day of judgment. We stood as the ark was open and said the words “Avinu Malkaynu, our father and our King,” but for some the image of standing before their sense of God, a sacred moment before the Holy, the God of our mother and fathers, was more meaningful. Either way, the words on the page of the machzorim functioned like a mirror, reflecting its word calling us to account, not so much as God judging us but giving us the tools to judge ourselves, as every “humanhand leaves its mark, an imprint like no other,” leaving us each to silently stand and contemplate our own existence. On Yom Kippur we will respond to our self assessment, our judgment, responding to what we have gathered. On Yom Kippur, it is about t’shuvah, repentance. We have judged ourselves to only see once again that we are still not perfect and must repent. But, at the end of the day the one whom we repent to is ourselves, because no matter how much God forgives us or someone forgives us for the wrong we committed against them, if we can not forgive ourselves then what is the difference? On Shabbat Shuvah we recall that our t'shuvah more often than not is based on the loudness of a voice of silence; “Give ear, O heavens, let me speak; Let the earth hear the words I utter,” the sounds of silence that are deafening. We hear of our inner person, the part of that we refer to as B'tzelem Elohim, hearing the holy spark within that leads us in silence to repent and be renewed for the next year to come, being sealed in the Book of Life. Now that I know better, “Hello darkness, my old friend.” Shabbat Shalom, and G’mar Chatimah Tovah,
Rabbi Adam
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