D’var Torah for October 12, 2019

Parasha Ha’azinu

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D.

Dr. Michael Mantell

SAN DIEGO — This week’s parasha begins with “Listen, O heavens, and I will speak! And let the earth hear the words of my mouth!”

הַאֲזִינוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם וַאֲדַבֵּרָה וְתִשְׁמַע הָאָרֶץ אִמְרֵי־פִי

The parasha immediately draws our attention to two key words, two essential capabilities, to key gifts, hearing and listening. To see that though, depends on two other facilities, vision and sight. Let’s understand this in the service of our striving to live a more fully engaged life, with more openness and receptivity to the world around us.

We heard the Shofar, we say the Shema “Hear O Israel…,” we hear a d’var Torah, but do we listen? You see, hearing is a passive sensory experience, simply perceiving noise, vibrations, jangle, echo. Listening is an active choice of paying attention, assigning meaning to what we hear, necessary to promote and advance our learning. Ha’azinu differs from sh’ma, the verb familiar from the Shema we say daily. Where sh’ma means to hear, ha’azinu points to a more empowered listening, an experience that requires intentional effort and purposeful persistence.

Seeing, Rashi tells us, similarly, can be understood to involve passive sight, seeing what is in front of us, while vision is the gift of seeing possibility, with deep understanding, clarity and empathy.

It seems that language – verbal and non-verbal – matter. We’ve just come through Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, days filled with stirring words. We’ve asked for forgiveness and in the words and in the body language of others, we read authentic forgiveness – or superficial forgiveness. This week’s parasha reminds us of the value of language, of hearing and envisioning what is said, and not said.

Moshe offers us a very moving, inspirational and quite dramatic moment in history in his song – his last gift to us, to help us grasp the core values he wants us to understand, to live by and to continue to pass along to future generations. Are we listening, can we bring our vision to see what could be when we take Moshe’s heartfelt cry to us and live by his words, or are we dulled and stultified, with a deaf ear and a closed mind, simply hearing the din of the Torah reader, merely seeing activity on the bima in our synagogue?

How much more can our lives be enriched, uplifted, enhanced, upgraded if we chose to hear and bring vision to the song of Moshe? Could Moshe have led us out of Egypt without vision? Can we live the better life we promised ourselves during Yom Kippur without vision, without hearing clearly the teachings of our Torah?

We have the ability to imbue our lives with holiness, and to do so requires that we use the gifts of vision and listening, not just seeing and hearing.

As we build, decorate and dwell in our Sukkot, as we wave the arba minim, the Four Species, the Lulav and Etrog, what will we envision, what will we listen to around us that can elevate our experience? Will we grow through, or will we merely go through, the motions? Sure, words can be more precious than gold, but only if we listen to those words and only if our vision allows us to truly see gold in words.

Ha’azinu tells us there is always a song that we can sing if we will listen and use the depth of vision to see that. Long after the Shofar has stilled, we can continue to listen, not merely hear its alarm to awaken and remain visionary.

Chag Sameach…

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Dr. Mantell writes a d’var Torah each week for Young Israel of San Diego, where he and his family worship.