Dear Friends,
This week’s Torah portion may be the most difficult in all of Torah.
We read a poem from Moses, amid his final words before he departed to his death, in which he endeavored to impart his last messages to the people which he had shepherded for forty years.
The poem begins with this supplication, “Give ears, O heavens, let me speak; Let the earth hear the words I utter!” (Deuteronomy 32:1)
Although the poem is cast somewhat as a trial between the people of Israel and the Heavenly Court, the simple message of the verse is compelling for this time in which we live: listen to me!
Among the most difficult and trying demands of our day is simply to get another one to listen. Or, to listen, oneself. We seem to live in a period where so many are trying to be “right,” or claiming to be “right,” and listening to varying points of view has become a lost art. Hence, “let me speak,” or “hear the words I utter!”
It may be comforting that Torah had to implore the same request three millennia ago. Or, it may be exasperating, that even with all these centuries of Torah, we are still trying to learn to listen.
When I lived in California prior to coming to Newburgh, I had many occasion to visit American Indian communities, as there were many “reservations” about the southwest. I learned that the conversational cadence of American Indians was considerably slower and more deliberate than that of others. American Indian culture prized each individual slowly listening and understanding the words of the other, such that it was common for a second or so of silence before one would reply in a conversation. Unfortunately, in the 19th century, American pioneers or cowboys took this period of thoughtful, silent listening as demonstration that Indians were less intelligent or even stupid, and in some cases used it a as pretext for demeaning or destroying them. It wasn’t stupidity that prompted their silence, it was careful, conversive listening and thinking.
Perhaps, that is a healthy model for us, as we read this week, “Give ears, O heavens, let me speak; Let the earth hear the words I utter!”
Shabbat Shalom and with joy in our forthcoming festivals of Sukkot and Simchat Torah,
Rabbi Doug Kohn
This week’s Torah portion may be the most difficult in all of Torah.
We read a poem from Moses, amid his final words before he departed to his death, in which he endeavored to impart his last messages to the people which he had shepherded for forty years.
The poem begins with this supplication, “Give ears, O heavens, let me speak; Let the earth hear the words I utter!” (Deuteronomy 32:1)
Although the poem is cast somewhat as a trial between the people of Israel and the Heavenly Court, the simple message of the verse is compelling for this time in which we live: listen to me!
Among the most difficult and trying demands of our day is simply to get another one to listen. Or, to listen, oneself. We seem to live in a period where so many are trying to be “right,” or claiming to be “right,” and listening to varying points of view has become a lost art. Hence, “let me speak,” or “hear the words I utter!”
It may be comforting that Torah had to implore the same request three millennia ago. Or, it may be exasperating, that even with all these centuries of Torah, we are still trying to learn to listen.
When I lived in California prior to coming to Newburgh, I had many occasion to visit American Indian communities, as there were many “reservations” about the southwest. I learned that the conversational cadence of American Indians was considerably slower and more deliberate than that of others. American Indian culture prized each individual slowly listening and understanding the words of the other, such that it was common for a second or so of silence before one would reply in a conversation. Unfortunately, in the 19th century, American pioneers or cowboys took this period of thoughtful, silent listening as demonstration that Indians were less intelligent or even stupid, and in some cases used it a as pretext for demeaning or destroying them. It wasn’t stupidity that prompted their silence, it was careful, conversive listening and thinking.
Perhaps, that is a healthy model for us, as we read this week, “Give ears, O heavens, let me speak; Let the earth hear the words I utter!”
Shabbat Shalom and with joy in our forthcoming festivals of Sukkot and Simchat Torah,
Rabbi Doug Kohn
