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D'var
Torah, Rosh HaShanah Day 1
R' Yair Hillel Goelman
1 Tishrei, 5761
September 30, 2000
A few minutes ago when we held the Torah aloft we all saw the letters
and words in black ink swimming in a sea of white parchment. Usually we comment
on the letters and words in the Torah, but today I want to focus with you on
the white spaces between the letters. Today we focus on the silences between
and underneath the written and spoken narrative of the Torah.
A few years ago when our teacher, Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
met with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, they began by explaining what it
was they wanted to learn from the other. The Dalai Lama said that he wanted to
learn how to keep a religion alive in exile for over 2,000 years. This, he
said, was an important lesson that he wanted to pass along to his people. Reb
Zalman said that what he wanted to learn from the Dalai Lama and what he wanted
to pass along to Jews, was how to sit in silence. In our own community we are
blessed with people who teach and model silent practice. People like Yehuda
Angel who conducts frequent weekday and shabbat silent meditation gatherings
through his yeshiva program; and Evelyn Neaman who offers Torah and Yoga
classes throughout the year; and Alan Morinis's work on the contemplative
aspects of musar, self reflection and improvement; and Mel Kaushansky's deep
and continuing work in the realm of silent devotion. Thanks to teachers like
these we are starting to learn more about silence in the Jewish tradition.
There are many qualities of silence in our tradition. For
example: We read of stunned silence in the book of Leviticus when
Aaron's 2 sons, Nadav and Avihu, were killed. The Torah tells us: va'yidom
Aharon. He was silent. There were no words he could utter in that moment.
In the Talmud we read of silence as wisdom when the rabbis describe silence as
a "fence that protects the Torah". Reb Zalman teaches about a
kind of watchful or attentive silence. When someone asks Reb Zalman to speak up
more loudly his response is, "I can't speak any louder - you'll have to
listen louder." And then there as kind of loud, bold, explicit
silence. I'm thinking of my father, Dr. Elazar Goelman, Z"L. When he
strongly disagreed with someone he would simply say, "Notice how I'm not
saying anything."
In today's Torah reading and in the chapters leading up to it we also see a
number of different and very specific qualities and textures of silence. For
example: We read about a joyful silence in Sarah's silent, inward laugh when
she hears God's messengers promise that she will conceive and bear a child in
her old age. She laughs silently; the men in the tent do not hear her but God
does. In Chapter 20 we can infer a kind cowardly or
humiliated silence on the part of Avrahama when he never explains or asks
forgiveness from Sarah when he asked her to pretend to be his sister instead of
his wife. This resulted in allowing her to be taken by Avimelech, almost
forcing his wife to commit adultery. And today we hear a great deal of
silence pain and betrayal. After Hagar and Yishmael have been banished to the
desert and the miraculous intervention by God to save their lives, neither of
these characters are heard to speak again in the Torah. Last year at Rosh
HaShana service Rabbi Mivasair very dramatically gave two Palestinian women the
opportunity to try to give voice to Hagar's silence. Sarah
experiences and expresses what a number of current Jewish feminist theologians
interpret as a silence of regret and shame. After telling Avraham that Hagar
and Ishmael must be banished, Sarah is forever silent in the Torah.
In tomorrow's Torah reading when we read of Avraham taking Yitzchak to be slaughtered,
Avraham says nothing to Sarah and Sarah watches in horrified silence as her one
and only son is led to the slaughter. Midrash tells us that seeing her son go
off to a certain death the way in whch she sent Yishmael off to his certain
death, Sarah dies of shock and horror.
A different kind of silence appears in the haftora: We are told of a
prayerful silence in today's in that when Hanna prayed, "el liba" to
her heart. Her lips moved but no sound escaped. God could hear her but Elie the
High Priest could not.
There is a veritable cacophony of silence that envelopes and permeates
today's narrative. In effect, today's reading gives us a story of the
destruction of discourse within a family caused by jealousy and anger and
resulting in harsh, even brutal silence. The text echoes hauntingly until this
day and the silence permeates the stories as well. The silence of the men seems
to me to be a very loud silence because the torah tells us the men were silent.
The silence of the women seems to be a quieter, more intuitive silence that God
can hear, but men cannot.
But what do we make of an even louder and more stunning silence: the silence
of the children in today's and tomorrow's stories. Where is the children's
voice and where is the children's silence? One moment we can hear
the laughter of Yitzhak and Yishmael playing together -
"mitzachek". The boys are separated and the next thing we hear
from Yishmael - his name means "God will hear" - is his cry of pain
in the desert and absolute silence from Yitzchak that his playmate has been
sent out to certain death. After Yishamel calls out in the desert, his voice is
not heard again in the Torah. We know that Yitzchak and Yishmael meet years
later to bury their father Avraham. Do they talk? The Torah is silent on this point.
And what of Yitzchak's voice and Yitzchak's silence? Tomorrow we read
of Avraham taking his only remaining son to be slaughtered in order to pass
God's test. Isaac chats away all the way to the top of the mountain. The
Torah tells us "the two of them walked together." Then his father
ties him to the altar and comes within a nano-second of killing Isaac. God
intervenes, Isaac is saved but after that, the Torah tells us that they that
Avraham walked down alone. They never speak again in the Torah, father to son.
As in the Torah, it seems that today both the voices of the adult world and
the silences of the adult world effectively drown out both the voices and the
silences of children. Two fundamental rights that children have come from the
names of the children we read about today. Yishmael: children have the right to
be heard. Yitzchak: children have the right to laugh.
Like Yishmael millions of children today suffer from homelessness, poverty,
poor health, and imminent starvation. Like Yitzchak, millions of children today
are led to the mountain top and are tied down, ready to be sacrificed upon the
adult world's altars of war, economic power and ecological destruction. Can we
hear these voices of Yishmael and Yitzchak today?
If we listen carefully enough we might be able to hear the
voices of the 11 million children in the world who die every year from the
effects of preventable disease and malnutrition. we might be able
to hear the voices of the over 2 million children die each year in developing
countries due to diarrhea; and over 90% of those cases are
preventable. we might be able to hear the voices of the
19,000 children who die each day because their developing countries are being
strangled by homicidal debt repayment schemes of the developed
world. We might be able to hear the cries of children as young as 5
or 6 years old who toil in oppressive labour conditions so that we and our
children can wear comfortable jogging shoes.
But lets not deceive ourselves into thinking that these echoes of modern-day
Yishmaels and Yitzchaks come only from far-away developing countries with
funny-sounding names. Right here in Canada, if we listen carefully enough, we
would hear the painful silences caused by the great injustices perpetrated
against children in this country in this time of economic prosperity and an
estimated federal government surplus in the billions of dollars. In 1989
a unanimous, all-party resolution in the House of Commons declared that Canada
would eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. Well, 2000 has come and gone
and what has happened? Nationally, the percentage of poor children
has gone up 49%. Whereas in 1989 1 of 7 kids in Canada was poor;
now it's 1 in 5. There are over ‡ million (463,000) MORE kids are
in poverty now than in 1989. At a time of unprecedented government surpluses -
created largely by massive cutbacks to health, education and welfare services
for children and families - it is simply an obscenity that child poverty
persists and grows in Canada today.
We are told to expect federal and provincial elections before next Rosh
HaShana. One of the questions I think I'll ask at the all-candidates meetings
is straight out of the Rosh HaShana liturgy: Who shall live and who shall die?
Will homelessness, poverty, disease, malnutrition and suicide - all preventable
causes of death - will all these continue to take the lives of our youngest,
poorest and most vulnerable in society?
Hevre, I can't tell you who to vote for. The Torah says very
clearly, "M'dvar sheker tirchak", stay far, far away from lies and
falsehoods, and anyone denying the enormity of child poverty and its
consequences in this country is someone to stay far, far away from.
And so, hevre, it is very clear to me that one dominant message coming
through the Torah readings this year, "listen to the silence to the ones
who have been silenced."
.......................................
But until now we've spoken mainly about one aspect of the silence we
find in the Torah, the silence that kills, obliterates, and diminishes the
other. There are obviously, other more positive qualities of silence.
This year, for example, is the "shemita year, the 7th in our seven year
cycle. For six years we've been yelling and demanding of the earth to produce
more and more. Torah tells us the earth needs to rest and so this year, the
shemita year, we try to silence our demands and to listen to the needs of the
earth. We are thankful to our friends in the Adam v'Adamah Jewish Enivronmental
Group in Or Shalom for continuing to raise our consciousness of these matters.
The rabbis tell us that another form of silence is called
"shetika" . This is of silence is seen as a form of wisdom that
creates a fence around the Torah This is the kind of silence where we hold back
from saying something destructive or petty. "Shetika" keeps us from
saying stupid things, blurting things out, doing l'shon ha'ra, gossip, rumour
and bad mouthing. You can actually hear this just in the way we say the
word. Say it: "shetika". It sounds like you're about to choke. It
closes off your throat. It's a silence that holds back the words. Kind of like
a gag reflex. Perhaps the silence we hear from our brothers in Iran who have
been convicted unjustly, their voices are silenced and this is "shetika".
Then there is another very beautiful word for silence, too. The Bible
tells us to listen to the "kol demama daka" : the still small voice.
To hear the voice of God we are instructed to listen to the kol demama daka,
not to the thunders and lightenings of Sinai. "Demama". Say it:
"demama". It sounds like an echo:. "Demamamamama*.". If
"shetika" is a choking sound, "demama" is a caress, a soft
warm breeze with a faint but distinct fragrance. "Demamamama*" Its
very comforting. Like you're calling for your mother: "De Mama. De
Mama"
Perhap it appropriate therefore that today, the first day of Rosh HaShana,
falls on Shabbat. This means that we don't blow shofar today. Notice, I
said we don't BLOW shofar today, but I didn't say, "we don't LISTEN to the
shofar today." And the mitzvah, the bracha we recite just before the
blowing of the shofar is exactly that: "l'shmo'ah kol shofar." So
we're not excused today from HEARING the shofar, just from BLOWING it.
The Slonimer Rebbe, a 20th century Hasidic master, quotes the verse in the
Torah that's calls Rosh HaShana, "Yom ZICHRON teruah": the day on
which we REMEMBER the blowing of the Shofar. It is this mitzvah, to remember
the blowing of the shofar that we are commanded to do.
But how do we do this? One answer, from an entirely different context, comes
form our beloved rebbe, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. He cites the verse in
the Song of Songs that says in Hebrew "Kol dodi dofek", I hear the
voice of beloved knocking. But "dofek" in modern Hebrew can mean a heart-beat
or pulse, "defika". In this understanding, I am the lover and God is
my beloved. And if I wish to hear the voice of my beloved, I don't need e-mail
or sprint or a pager or voice-mail. I simply touch my pulse, and with each beat
of my pulse I can feel and hear the rhythmic "I love you" from the
One who created me and brought my existence.
In a moment we will rise for our silent shofar blowing. In the moments of
the silent shofar. I will call out the names of the notes and will suggest
where we focus our listening with each call. Following this first
tekiah, I suggest that we draw our attention to the aching silence of the
oppressed men, women and children whose cries, perhaps, have become too
familiar.
TEKIAH..
In this next call, shevarim, I suggest that we all draw our attention to the
silent aspects of our own beings, our own neshamas, our souls, whom we haven't
been able to listen to because we've been too busy surfing the web of our
minds. Our shattered selves will be the focus of shevarim.
SHEVARIM.
In the next call, teruah, I suggest we draw our attention to those
individuals who are not here with us today because they are not well, and are
in need of healing and support, healing of the mind, and a healing of the
spirit.
TERUAH.
And in this final tekiah gedola, we will let our mind go to the
silence that calls each one of us personally in, the one distinct way that God
calls to each and everyone of us. Please join me in calling the tekiah
gedola.
TEKIAH GEDOLA....
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