Like a Flute Accompanying the Singing – Parshat Va’etchanan
Ran Oron
“What was the secret of grandfather’s manly charm? I may have only begun to understand this years later.” Amos Oz writes in his book “A Story of Love and Darkness”. “He listened. …He was not impatient . He did not strive to turn the conversation from her petty matters to his important matters. On the contrary: he really liked her affairs. Rather, it always pleased him to wait for her, and even if it was long he would wait for her and enjoy all her curves.’
Moshe opened up, spoke to us from the heart. The stuttering was gone. He revealed to us the most personal conversation imaginable, of a person with his God, with himself. He told us about the epiphany. We heard, we learned to listen. The best way to teach is from a personal experience, even if, and maybe it’s better, when it comes from a place of weakness, a moment of disappointment, a failure, a mistake. God refused to let him enter the promised land. A promised land always stands mute on the other side. Five hundred and fifteen prayers did not help. We told ourselves maybe just one more and he would grant him permission.
A leader, stood among us. A human being. He didn’t teach us about God but how to speak with God. Whispered that God impregnated inside him, for us. He promised, if you talk to him he will listen. They say he is always listening. Like him anyone can. He said that when he speaks God listens. There are moments, he added, when God speaks and I listen. He said he begged for us, then for him as well, it was not always successful. The success of a conversation, any conversation, is not whether they heard me, but asking myself if I listened. The essence of a conversation is to have it. It’s the belief in a conversation that will make it a tool of closeness, on any scale. A real conversation, one that hears and listens leads to love. He spoke softly.
At the beginning of the parasha Moses tells the nation how God refused to hear him. Later he will ask them to hear and listen to him, he will repeat the Ten Commandments to them and remind the people in front of him how their hearts did not have enough faith and love to hear and listen to God. Their disbelief, causing him to be a mediator before God for forty years in the desert, exhausted him.
“Does anyone hear me?” Hemi Rudner and the band “Where’s the Child?” sings, asks, and in fact asking each of us to learn to listen. The desire for the truth, personal and collective, to be heard, requires the ability to listen to others. There is always I and you, the secret of love is listening. Facing the Promised Land, just before he sadly ascends to Nebo, Moses transfers to the people the tool for maintaining a direct relationship with their God, an unmediated conversation. “Shma israel”, “Hear O Israel, Jehovah is our God, Jehovah is alone” appears for the first time in the Torah. For the first time it is not your God but our God. “Elohenu”, Ours.
You and I. “Elohenu” (our God) is the direct link between the people and their God. The direct connection and daily conversation with the divinity that Moses transferred to the People of Israel makes the nation unique and stands out from all other nations, a source of inspiration. The direct connection to God is the secret.The belief in a conversation and listening of any kind, at any time, even in difficult and painful times. Uncompromising listening.
The answer to the scroll “Eichah” ( Lamentations), to the collective national destruction of Tishaa B’Av that will forever be noted in the week before ” Va’etchanan“, is the personal “Shma“. It is the essence of personal involvement that comes from the heart and has an ever-increasing power to bring about change and transition anytime, anywhere. It is the personal will one’s personal will as oppose to the desire to please that has the power to turn the recurring doomsday prophecy throughout the generations into times of creation and renewal. To every person, to every generation, there is a promised land.
“Shma” is the way to “ve’ahavta”, of doing out of love and not out of fear or terror. Listening on a personal level weaves all of us, a tribe, a nation, a generation, into a living human fabric.
“He liked to accompany her like a flute accompanying the singing.” Amos Oz sees his grandfather. “Loved getting to know her. loved to understand. To know. Loved getting down to the bottom of her mind, and then some. He loved to devote himself up, he enjoyed devoting himself up even more than he enjoyed her devotion.’
promise and Eden will bloom in our garden.
Written by Ran Oron is an Israeli architect who has lived in NY for over 20 years.
