This week’s parsha tells us, “Avraham zakan, ba b’yamim, v’Hashem berach et Avraham bacol,” meaning, “Avraham was old, he came with his days, and Hashem blessed Avraham with everything.” Pshhhh… to be blessed with everything. Do you ever feel like that? Like Hashem has blessed you with everything that you could ever possibly need or want, and more?
Sometimes when we’re all dancing around the bimah on Erev Shabbes I get a feeling of that – an insight into the ineffable – that Hashem has blessed me at that moment with everything beyond what I could ever need or want… community… an expression of love and awe of Him through joined voices and motion…closeness to His ultimate transcendent Oneness through the simple avodah of joyously keeping his holy Shabbes… of course, a few moments later, we’re still davenning, it’s still Shabbes, but the euphoric rush of emotion and adrenaline slowly recedes and the blessing is still there, but just a little more hidden, more distant, less immanent or accessible.
The Kiddushas Levi says that the col that Hashem blessed Avraham with when its says he blessed Avraham ba’col, was a bat kol, a heavenly voice. He brings a Gemara from Chagiga to support his intuition that this bat kol was the same one that issues from the summit of Mt. Horeb (Sinai) every single day, once a day, that begs every soul of Israel to “Return, my children!” to do teshuvah. Evidently, this bat kol is not the kind we can hear over loudspeakers or headphones; rather we’ve been designed with special subconscious receptor circuitry that pick up Hashem’s frequency when he transmits…(“You’ve been listening to W.K.O.L., broadcasting from the heart of the universe right into the subconscious core of your very soul…thanks for tuning in…”)
The word bat in bat kol denotes limitation, measurement, proscribing; the letters bet and taf can be used to form the word bayit, “house” or “home,” which proscribes the limits between inner and outer, public and private, holy and secular. They are also the first and last letters of bereshit, and as such, serve as containers or limitations within which all of Hashem’s creation fits. The word kol (koof-vav-lamed), “voice,” evokes the word col (caff-lamed), “all” or “everything,” and denotes Hashem’s infinitely expansive and all encompassing sheffa, “influence,” that he wishes to bestow upon us. In combination, these two words (bat and kol) denote that Hashem’s infinity, in order to influence us human beings, must be channeled through certain proscribed, measured limitations – which, says the Kedushas Levi, take the form of the personal “pathways” that we develop within ourselves to allow Hashem’s sheffa to influence us; in other words, we prepare ourselves, through the development and concentration on certain character traits, skills, or middot to receive Hashem’s kol. Our personal “pathways” are the batim through which the kol can arrive at us.
When “Avraham was old, and came with his days” (concerning which the Sfas Emes explains that the fresh insights that Hashem would give to Avraham about his avodah every single day never faded from his consciousness (as our own insights often do), but they rather continued to strengthen, reinforce and illuminate one another in a constructive relationship of constant, continuous action and movement), Hashem blessed Avraham with col, that all of his pathwaywould be open and developed to receive, grasp and utilize His holy sheffa, not just a few of them.
Avraham, of course, was in a league all his own – we are his children, bound in a holy brit with the Master of Every Single Last Little Thing, that says we will do His mitzvot and connect to Him through them. We should all merit this Shabbes (and every Shabbes) to not only forge new pathways for ourselves in our avodah, but to allow Hashem to speak to us through all pathways, and to allow the fresh, new insights and inspirations that we receive through all of these pathways to pile up high, and to continuously renew, replenish and reinvigorate one another, and to keep pushing us higher and higher!
Living Midrash: Midrash lives! We are all living darshanim. Find a moment in the story, a word or sentence and expand it. What was he thinking? What did she say to him? What happened that night?
Here’s one by Darshan Larry: In what I consider one of the most beautiful and pristine moments in Tanach, Rivkah follows Eliezer back to Avraham’s dwelling. Yitzhak went out to do hitbodedut in the field around evening time, and he lifted his eyes and saw camels approaching. Rivkah, at the same moment, of course, lifted her eyes and saw Yitzhak and fell off her camel (it’s pshat, people). There is no doubt what Yitzhak did next – he cracked up laughing. And when she found out this was Yitzhak, her future husband, she covered herself with a scarf – because she was blushing, red as a beet, so red that Yitzhak could see it, even at evening time. Blessed are they who, in their love, can laugh – even at each other.
Jerry Silverman
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Jerry Silverman is a former student of Yeshivat Bat Ayin. He is working in new media, designing and managing media projects. He lives in Riverdale, NY with his wife Sarah and their two children. |