Shabbat Shuvah 5770 God, are You hearing me? Rabbi Aaron Goldstein 26 September 2009

Ha’azinu – Give ear, O heavens, let me speak (Deut 32:1)

Most common text books on Judaism have very near the beginning (see Liberal Judaism: A Judaism for the Twenty-First Century by Rabbi Pete Tobias, p. 9), if not at its opening, the commandment to ‘Hear:’ “Hear, O Israel, the Eternal One is our God, the Eternal God is One (Deut 6:4).” If a Jew prays daily they will recite these words (most commonly known by the opening Hebrew word, ‘the Shma),’ twice; and thrice they will petition or praise God with the words, “Blessed are You, Eternal One, Who hearkens to prayer.”

You might know of the game called, ‘jenga.’ In this game, you build a tower of blocks and slowly remove them. It is also like the game, ‘pick-up sticks.’ You lose if the block or stick you take causes the tower to fall or the sticks around it to move.

If we were to remove many of the enumerated 613 mitzvot (commandments), we would not really notice the difference. If we were to remove the Shma, the foundations of religious Judaism from Haredi – ultra-Orthodox – to Liberal Judaism would fall. For Jews who do not describe a belief in monotheism as central to their identity, such a phrase removed from the Synagogue service they know as being over 2000 years old, the catchword of a People, would still leave them without an authentic – however metaphorical – an anchor.

We begin the Torah by encountering God creating through words (Genesis 1:3), “And God said: ‘Let there be light; and there was light.’ Our foundation myth understands God creating the world with words. One might reasonably assume that the materials with which God created the world, heard that command. The final commandment to the Torah insures the perpetuity of God’s word: “Now therefore, write you this song/poem for me, and teach it to the people of Israel (Deut 31:19).” Or as we have understood it through Rabbinic Judaism, write Torah scrolls so that God may be heard by every generation of Jews there is to be.

If you were to doubt this, consider the book of Mishlei, Proverbs (1:8). Mishlei is not a highfaluting book. It was written for the individual, regular Israelite. It is not concerned with the nation of Israel rather, the Israelite: the one who went to school or had an on-the-job apprenticeship, had relationships, children, regular jobs, and who feared for the things that regular guys (it was still guys-only, I regret) fear for: fending for their families, providing, being adequate, surviving. Being heard was a key to that – being heard by God and hearing God – perceiving a purpose in life.

And so Mishlei opens with hearing a/the word (1:1-9):

“The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel:
For learning wisdom and discipline;
For understanding words of discernment;
For acquiring discipline for success,
Righteousness, justice and equity;
Fro endowing the simple with shrewdness,
The young with knowledge and foresight.
The wise ma, hearing them, will gain more wisdom;
The discerning man will learn to be adroit;
For understanding proverb and epigram,
The words of the wise and their riddles.
The fear of the Eternal is the beginning of knowledge;
Fools dispise wisdom and discipline.
My son, heed the discipline of your father,
And do not forsake the instruction (torah) of your mother;
For they are a graceful wreath upon your head,
A necklace about your throat.”

These words might well be the ethical corner-stone of Liberal Judaism. Wisdom, for Mishlei sprung from the expectations that your father set; and interestingly, from the Torah, that was the instruction given to you by your mother. They were words of wisdom that your parents or parent-figures gave you from the Torah and they were equally the words of torah, of instruction that were passed-on to you. They were booba-meisers, recipes for food and for life, they were words of a Bob Dylan song or of Neil Diamond’s ‘Jazz Singer,’ they were so real, for they were for the regular guy and for us Liberal Jews, gals.

I often ask myself: “How can I hear God? And whilst I am at it, how do I know that God hears me?” My answer comes back to hearing God through Torah. Sometimes I know that God hears me through my hearing of or study of Torah, and as often, it is through torah, the words that we Jews have ourselves created from our connection to God, Torah and our heritage, or just the impossible to shake fact of our Jewishness.

We stand in the midst of this penitential season on Shabbat Shuvah. We need little urging to shuv, to return. For we return with every living breathe. Even when we get distracted from the God of the Shma, we cannot and do not want to escape the indescribable fibre of our being that draws us near.

And so, I end this Shabbat Shuvah sermon, with the prayer that we might all hear God this coming Day of Atonement and that we might also be heard by God. The mechanism might be through the Torah, but just in case it is through torah, instruction or wisdom gained through our regular, daily encounter with the Divine, I offer you this wonderful interpretation of Psalm 73: a Psalm of belief in God, of disillusionment and of return to belief; or in the hands of David Rosenberg (A Poet’s Bible, p.29.), a Psalm of hearing God, of distraction by listening to others, and a return to hearing God.

My Lord is open to Israel, to all hearts within hearing
But I turned and almost fell
Moved by flattery spoken
Through transparent shrouds impressing me with the power of imagery
And fame of the mind loving to strut in its mirror with its unfelt body
Smooth as a machine without a care in the world.
Prosperous mouthpieces in their material cars of pride
And suits of status covering up crookedness,
Their eyes are walls for wish-images
Their mouths big cynical megaphones
Self-made gods whose words envelop the heads of men
Hiding their fears they go through the world
In self-encasing roles in which they will die
Lowered in heavy caskets they made themselves out of words
But meanwhile they suck in most people
Draining their innocence until everyone believes
God isn’t there
No wonder these men prosper
They push through the world
Their violence makes them secure
It seemed I opened my heart and hand stupidly
Every day has its torture every morning my nerves were exposed.
I was tempted to hide to kill the moment with pride.
Instead I tried to know you and keep your song alive
But my mind was useless
Until my heart opened the cosmic door
To a continual presence
That is you
Lighting the future above the highway
Down which self-flattering men travel in style
To prisons of mind-locked time
They have their pleasures cruelly pursued
And you urge them to their final reward
You let them rise on dead bodies so they have to fall
Like a bad dream
The moment you awake they are gone forever
My mind was dry thought
My feelings drained through dusty clay
I was blindly eating through life like a moth in wool
I was crude, too proud to know you
Yet continually with you take my hand in love
It sings with you
Inspired advice leading to your presence
What will I want but continual inspiration
In the present with you
What else will I find
In the blues of the sky but you
And me in you
Where am I
In what universe without you
My body dies of exhaustion
But you are the mountain
Lifting my open heart
Higher than a mind can go
Into the forever
Into the future
Men who hide in their hearts have bitter minds
They will lose
Those people become no one
Leaving you for an ideology
For a material car
But I waited for you
I was open, My Lord
To find my song
I found you here,
In music I continue to hear
With each new breath
Expanding
To give me space.