Torah (and, for some reason, they didn't tell us this in Sunday school) is the combination of the intensely personal and the universal. Every group experience must be personal to be remembered, but must be outside the self to be life-changing. I wrote a few weeks ago about a wedding that was more than a wedding of two people - we all were getting married, we all felt our parts being moved around, we all danced beyond ourselves.
In the Torah is a love story. It is the story of Hashem who sees His beloved in chains, enslaved, and He rescues her amidst great signs and wonders, designating her as His beloved. He draws her out into a wilderness, where there is no food and no water, and she trusts Him. This it says later in Prophets; "I remember the kindness of your youth, when you followed me out into the wilderness, a land with no seed... " This is an experience we shared as a nation - but also as individuals.
After the Jews left Egypt, as everyone knows the story, they crossed the "Red Sea," and as they crossed onto dry land, the Egyptians drowned. Afterwards, and maybe less people know this, they sang a song, from which this special Shabbat gets its namesake - "Shabbat Shirah - the Shabbat of Song." It is a special song which we sang, all together, telling the story of being saved, of God's awesome might rendering all enemies powerless. But it is sung in the singular, "This is MY God…", "God of MY fathers... ", "I will sing to Hashem..."
It is so important that any group experience also be real and true for each participant. And it is an amazing thing when people can unite over individual experiences, when each one can say, "That was amazing!!!" and not even have to explain it to each other. In fact, if they try, they usually confuse each other and end up thinking, falsely, that they expereinced different things altogether!!! When really they did experience the same thing, it was just like one light shined through many different filters.
Rebbe Natan of Breslov explains that song is the ultimate thanks of Hashem, because it has this quality of shared individual experience. In fact, it is the truest indication of Divinity in the world, and the greatest revelation of unity. Unity does not mean everything is the same, God forbid; it means everything is unified, in one song, so to speak. Unity in the world means harmony (which includes, of course, dissonance), it means each aspect or part being fully itself, and in being so, adding to the great song that is happening. As Rebbe Natan writes, many people with such different opinions can be included in one True opinion...
As many of you know, my wife gave birth to a bouncing boy this week. Being in the Misgav LaDach Hospital for women, there were both Jews and Arabs in the hospital. If there is one place to unite, to start with, it is the miracle of birth, and life, so that I could walk down the hall and see a smiling Arab man and smile back and say "Shalom," because on this we can agree. We should all be blessed to find our individual voices to add to the Great Song, and to hear the song around us, to find the ways we can agree and start there, and to hear the harmony in dissonance.
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |