Ki Mitzyon Teyze Torah - For Out of Zion Comes Torah

Ki Mitzyon Teyze Torah - For Out of Zion Comes Torah

Rabbi David A. Kunin, Congregation Beth David 

Yesterday, on Thursday morning, we journeyed from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, seeking meaning and perhaps comfort for the difficult experiences in the South on Wednesday.  Over the short time of our mission, we have felt pain and a little hope, and have borne witness to horrors not in the distant past, but in the present, creating an ongoing wound both here in Israel, and across the Jewish world.  Symbolically going up to Jerusalem, we were I think hoping to find Torah from Zion, and not just words. 

Eliza Doolittle (GBS), perhaps quoting Hamlet, once sang, “Words, words, words all I get are words.” (Learner and Lowe)  Like Hamlet she was rejecting the utility of language, wanting actions, which are reputed (according to Samuel Clemens) to “speak louder than words.”  Yet, sometimes we need words to help us along our paths, as we try to find meaning, especially for events which seem so meaningless.  In this case, the words can either serve as a vehicle for jumping from futility to hope, or at least they allow us to create a space where, as a community, we can suffer and find strength together, rather than to remain in isolated despair.  Of course, words can also either bring us together or force us apart.  Perhaps it is for this reason that I find “amen” to be the most powerful word of prayer.  Its two syllables are shared by those who listen, are a statement from the listeners that “we too are with you, in your seeking, suffering and isolation.  We are your community.”  In this sense, prayer language is at least the beginning of action, rather than being only “words.”

 

This was the power of the words that we heard at the Hebrew Union College Jerusalem campus on Thursday.  What, we were asked by Rabbi Dr. Dalia Marx, was the Jewish response to tragedy?  Where, and how can we find the words that will allow us not only to find meaning, but also to continue to build our Jewish lives, and work for Tikkun Olam.  Rabbi Marx reminded us that the Aleynu prayer was just such a response.  In medieval France a blood libel (accusation that Jews use human blood for matzah) led to pogrom and despair.  The Aleynu, reminding us both of our unique connection with God, as well as our mission to perfect an imperfect world, was incorporated into daily prayer carrying a message of hope, pride, and our continuing role in the world.  

 

Yet, Eliza and Hamlet were both right.  It is often tempting to use far too many words.  When we hear of suffering and sadness, we too often want to jump in to fill the space.  Silence scares us, perhaps, and we instead try to fill the void.  This thought led me to the Kaddish, that oft repeated prayer that punctuates our religious services and our lives.  The Kaddish offers comfort to mourners through its very simple formulaic responses.  Instead of answers the responses allow us to say, “We are here with you in your time of pain and to give you the strength as partners in the creation of God’s kingdom.” These responses are as critical as the mourner’s recitation of the prayer itself. They are a reminder that all Jews are part of a single people, and that when one suffers all suffer. The Kaddish responses are also an affirmation by all of us, that despite tragedy life needs to go on, and that the communal obligation for tikkun (repair of the world), expressed in the obligations of mutual responsibility, goes on.  

 

Rabbi Marx reminded us that prayers can also express complexity, reminding us that our responses can be far from simple.  Like clowns we can be smiling on the outside and crying on the inside.  Our minds can be two places at once.  Tel Aviv last night felt this way.  Everyone we have met, younger and older, is traumatized by the events of October 7^thand the continuing war.  Yet, despite the trauma and pain, the cafes and restaurants around our hotel were filled with the traditional Thursday night crowd (Thursday, rather than Friday night is the traditional weekend night out here in Israel).   

 

This dichotomy too can be expressed in prayer.  Dalia shared a song, written by Yaakov Orland, as a response to a terrorist attack in the 50s which expresses both the need to cry and to laugh.  “Even if our head is bowed and sorrow is all around us – let’s catch on fire and shout out loud the happiness that’s found.”  As we listened to this song, I was reminded of another song with a similar refrain, “To life, to life, l'chaim.  L'chaim, l'chaim, to life.  Life has a way of confusing us, Blessing, and bruising us.  Drink, l'chaim, to life!”  (Jerrold Lewis Bock / Sheldon M Harnick).  

(https://lyricstranslate.com/en/shir-sameiach-cheerful-song.html

Lyrics for Shir Samei-ach)

 

Professor Marx concluded with the words of poet Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000) which I too want to share. 

 

“I want to sing a psalm of praise to all that remains here with us and doesn't leave, doesn't wander off like migratory birds, will not flee to the north or the south, will not sing "In the East is my heart, and I dwell at the end of the West." I want to sing to the trees that do not shed their leaves and that suffer the searing summer heat and the cold of winter, and to human beings who do not shed their memories and who suffer more than those who shed everything. But above all, I want to sing a psalm of praise to the lovers who stay together for joy, for sorrow and for joy. To make a home, to make babies, now and in other seasons.”  (Translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld)

 

We need to take all these “words,” and allow them to help us, not perhaps to find simple meanings and explanations, but instead to enable us to continue to build meaningful and fulfilling lives here in Israel and across the globe.