Shabbat Nachamu
The actors and the audience
Ours is a religion of conversation. We talk to G-d, and most of all like all good conversationalists, we listen for Him: listen... listen... listen. We are not spectators we are participants. We are not creations; we are partners in Creation. We are not an audience that gawks at lifeless objects of worship; we are the actors, we dialogue. We dialogue with each other. We dialogue with the Torah and its Laws. We dialogue with the universe: King David could interpret the songs of nature and the music of the luminaries, Solomon the chatter of birds. We dialogue with our G-d. That is Judaism.
Spectators are not only passive, but they also often sell themselves to what they see. They lose ownership of their own ideas in the face of compelling visuals. TV advertisers know that, as do the journalists who manipulate visual media for political advantage. We often accept what we see indiscriminately and react with immediacy. Sometimes we don't even subject our impulses to rational testing. Seeing gives us a level of clarity that none of the other senses provide. "Seeing is believing." This is not so with hearing.
We retain our ownership over what we hear: we question it and filter it through our lenses of reason, values and life experience. We take time before we act on what we hear. We decide ourselves whether to give credibility to what we hear and how much credibility to give it. Powerful visuals can dominate us. A powerful idea empowers us.
Our Parsha, more than anything, is about conversation, about speaking and listening. It repeatedly warns against visual images of deities and encourages verbal communication: speaking and listening. It starts with Moshe pleading to Hashem, Va'etchanan. Then Moshe urges us to listen: "Ve'attah Yisrael, shemah …" (And now Israel, listen to the statutes and the laws that I am teaching you to do).[1] Our stature among the nations rests on our "listening to these statutes."[2] Don't forget the time "when I enabled you to hear My words."[3] "You did not see any image when I spoke with you atChorev."[4] "Do not make graven images."[5] "Has any other nation ever heard the voice of Hashem speaking?"[6] "Face to face G-d spoke with you."[7] The Parsha reaches its thematic crescendo in 6:4 with the heart of our daily prayer, the statement of Shema: "Listen, Israel!"
"Most civilizations have been cultures of the eye. Judaism, with its belief in the invisible G-d who transcends the universe, and its prohibition against visual representations of G-d, is supremely a civilization of the ear. The patriarchs and prophets did not see G-d; they heard Him. Hence the key word in Judaism is Shema, "listen." To give dramatic force to the idea that G-d is heard, not seen, we cover our eyes with our hand as we say these words (of the Shema)."
– Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his Siddur, a liturgical and literary gem, P382.
Owning our Imagery
Visuals have more clarity than the voice of sound. However sound penetrates more deeply into our beings than sight does. (For a full treatment of this idea, see Daniel Birnbaum's essay "On Listening and Hearing" in his just-published "Everything is Connected – The Power of Music".) Although we are not as easily moved by sound as we are by sight, when we are moved it is deeper and more sustainable. Music moves us more deeply than visual art does. Stories impact us in ways that pictures cannot. Sound triggers our imagination; it allows us to create our own pictures in our minds. As the creators of our pictures we are attached to them in ways that we could not be attached to pictures placed in front of us. Sound engenders intimacy; conversation connects us.
To this day I am grateful that as children in the ‘50s we were not allowed to see Charlton Heston's classic Ten Commandments. My parents wanted our images of the scenes of the Torah to be the creations of our own imaginations not the visual images of Hollywood – or of anyone else for that matter. I own the visual images that move me, I created them, I love them. They grow as I grow. They reflect who I am, and who I could become. The images of my mind cannot dominate me; I am their master. I am my own artist.
Security in Dialogue
Insecure religions and ideologies emphasize dramatic visual image, for that gives them control over the minds of their adherents, it enslaves their imaginations, and robs them of the freedom to challenge and question. Think of the imposing military parades put on regularly by despotic regimes like Nazi Germany and the USSR. Secure religions and ideologies are fundamentally audial: they do not impose dogma, they offer ideas and indicate the pathways to discovery: discovery of truth, of self and of G-d. Secure religions do not always answer questions; sometimes they ask them too.
Our religion never imposes images on us. On the contrary we are consistently warned away from material images. In the most dramatic moment of our history, Sinai, we heard, we experienced sound with the clarity of sight, but we saw nothing, we just listened and heard. When we insisted on making something material (a golden calf) to gaze at, we lost everything we gained when we simply heard, heard the voice of G-d. When Moshe sensed the people were more interested in seeing the Tablets of stone as if they were some exotic museum exhibit than they were in hearing the words engraved on them, he smashed the stones and preserved the words.
Matter is not where reality resides. Max Plank said:[8] "As a man who has devoted his whole life to…the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atom, this much: There is no matter as such."
Isn't it interesting, that the words of the Tablets were engraved right through the stone? The letters were made from the space between matter, not from matter itself. Words are to be heard, not seen.
G-d is found in the "empty" space in between matter. He is found in the silent space between sounds. We need to listen intently to encounter His presence. Torah is a practice of listening to G-d and talking to Him. G-d never overwhelms us, never imposes Himself on us: that would diminish Him. He has always left us empowered to choose to listen or to ignore; to question or to accept.
What a privilege it is for us to be so secure in our beliefs and the ideas that we have no need to impose them dogmatically on anyone over the age of 12! Although at Sinai we accepted unconditional observance, the Torah commands us to study and then to observe because it knows the power of studying, of listening. Every day before the Shema we ask G-d to give our hearts the capacity to "learn and facilitate learning" and only then "to observe and to upkeep." G-d treats us as the adult partners we are, not as infantile, mindless followers in need of idols and powerful clerics to dominate our minds and control our lives. If we teach our children to listen, and we expose them to the wonders of G-d's world and G-d's word, they will Hear and they will Do.
