Parashat Vayikra: Words Count

 A few weeks ago, Stephnie and I went to the theatre.  Ordinarily, this would not constitute a mention in one of my Drashot had it not been for the trip we experienced and what transpired once we had reached our destination.  We had the misfortune of having booked our tickets on a day when yet another Underground strike was taking place.  A journey that could have taken less than an half-an-hour on the Tube lasted nearly two as Stephnie encountered heavy rush-hour traffic driving from Edgware to Covent Garden in pouring rain, which compounded the misery that we both felt.

We arrived at the theatre nearly half-an-hour late.  We thought we might be able to request that, due to extenuating circumstances, our seats could be transferred to another performance.  The staff who were accommodating and welcoming did not accede to our pleas and suggested that we walk up the stairs to the first floor where we would be able to watch the first act which was being live streamed on a television set.  We would then be permitted to enter into the auditorium at the start of the interval.  The thought of having to spend the next couple of hours trying to return home under the same circumstances convinced us that we didn’t really have much choice and so we begrudgingly made our way up the staircase.

The site that greeted us as we reached the first floor was astonishing.  There were dozens of people either standing or seated watching the proceedings on a rather small TV.  We asked one of the usherettes to fill us in on the synopsis.  She reassuringly informed us that we hadn’t missed too much as it was a long play and the first act set the scene (quite literally) but was not in fact a critical component of the main body of the work.  We found some ‘seats’ on the staircase and settled down to watch the play from afar.

Eventually, the audience applauded, the curtain fell and we tried to make our way into the auditorium which was not easy granted that virtually everyone inside felt the need to come out for either a drink or to use the facilities.  I feared that it might take us another two hours to get in!  It reminded me of the joke where Moishe is travelling up the M1 and calls his wife who tells him that she’s just heard on the radio that there’s a meshuggene (mad man) driving the wrong way up the motorway.  He responds, “A meshuggene?  There are hundreds of them!”

The poor layout of the seating meant that it was difficult to reach your place if it was not located at either end of the row.  We were in Row A of the upper circle which meant that leg room was extremely narrow.  We excused ourselves as we passed in front of the lady who would become my neighbour, on the left-hand side.  I sat down and Stephnie, having seen that she was not best pleased to have us ‘bothering her’ tried to break the ice by apologising for being late.  She then asked if we had missed a part of the play that we needed to be aware of, to understand the next act.  We obviously knew the answer but hoped that this would pacify her somewhat.

The lady proceeded to describe how ‘fantastic’ the first act was, deliberately trying to make us feel ashamed for having missed it.  Once the second act was over (I did state it was long play), during the interval, she voluntarily repeated how much better the first act had been.  If she hadn’t made her point vividly enough, at the end of the evening, once we were preparing to leave, she repeated her comments and added, just for good measure, that we really should ‘see the play again to witness the fantastic first act’.

As tickets to the play were not exactly cheap, I chose to experience the ‘fantastic first act’ by purchasing the script on Amazon.  Once I have read it, I’d be happy to let you how ‘fantastic’ it is, compared with the rest of the play.

Words count.

Gary Lineker is not my favourite person at present.  His Twitter quote comparing the language of the Government ‘that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s’ did not rest well with many people.  We are all aware of what transpired as a result because...words count.

We know how important words are, whether they are spoken or written.

Once a thought leaves a person’s head and becomes vocalised, written or recorded, it gains legitimacy.  It becomes ‘real’.  It does this because...words count.

The first instance of this can be found at the very start of Bereishit (Genesis) in Verse 3, when Gd said, “Let there be light.  And there was light.”

Every day, we start the Pesukei DeZimra, the Songs of Praise section of Shacharit with the verse, “Baruch She’amar vehaya ha’olam.” – Blessed is He who spoke and the world came into being, blessed is He. 

 

In explaining this, Chazal, our Sages learned that Gd created the world through the use of words.  One can therefore never underestimate the power of words and the examples I have provided are a testament to this.

Why?  Because...words count.

Daf Hashavua even informs us how many words are written in each Parasha (which I often look at when wondering the number I will have to remember when learning my leining!)  You may also be interested to know that there are 1,560 words in this Drasha.

This week’s Parasha and the book that it gives its name to, is Vayikra, which means ‘and He called’, with the first verse telling us that Gd ‘called out to Moshe’ to speak with him.  You might wonder why the verse shouldn’t have used the more familiar ‘Vayomer – and he said’ or ‘Vayedaber and he spoke’, as per the usual way Gd communicated with Moshe.

‘Vayikra’ seems like an unusual manner for Gd to summon Moses.

Rashi tells us thqt ‘Vayikra’s shoresh or root is ‘kara’.  We know this from the Bible (Isaiah 6.3) and our daily Kedushah prayer when we read ‘vekara, ze el ze ve’amar, Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh Hashem Tzevakot  - ‘And they (the angels) call to one another saying ‘ Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts.  It is a term of endearment between them.

In the same way, Gd employed this word when speaking to Moshe Rabbeinu to demonstrate his love for Moshe – and for him alone.  Although His call was ‘loud and thundering’ (according to the translation in the Artscroll Stone Chumash), only Moshe heard it.  Gd conversed with our greatest prophet in the same way that ‘a man speaks with his friend’ (see Shemot 33.11).

The delicacy by which the Torah differentiates the manner in which Gd chose to speak to Moshe stands in stark contrast to the indelicate fashion that my ‘neighbour’ employed to speak to the two of us.  Similarly, people now feel that they can say or write whatever they wish, irrespective of who will be hurt by their pronouncements.

It is not a coincidence that, on Yom Kippur, the majority of our Al Cheit prayers focus on asking Gd to forgive us for the instances in which we transgressed the laws of shemirat halashon – which means literally, ‘guarding of the tongue’.  When we should have spoken words of praise, we criticised.  When we should have stayed silent regarding the actions of others, we spoke.  When we should have spoken in defence of others, we stayed silent.

We should realise that words do count.  They matter and because they matter, they count.

They make us and they break us.  They build us and they destroy us.

I’d like to think that the lady who gloated at how wonderful the first act happened to be, hadn’t realised how hurtful her comments were.  She probably left, satisfied that she’d ‘shown us’ what happens when we ‘dare to come late to a theatre play’.  If she had taken a moment to ask herself why we were tardy and how this would have led to our feeling embarrassed, she might have acted differently.

Gary Lineker felt justified by what he wrote (which  was in no small measure magnified by the support he received) and seemed completely oblivious to how hurtful his words were to those people who lived under Nazi rule in 1930s Germany.  The very same individuals who either fled the country or whose close family was subsequently murdered by laws enacted through its government over the next decade and beyond.

Perhaps if both had taken a leaf out of the Torah and understood how important it is to consider what they said or wrote, they may have avoided upsetting a great number of people.  They are but two examples of the many people who fall into the same trap.

We are all guilty of this at one time or another, are we not?

There are many lessons that the Torah can teach us but if the first is to be mindful of our language, it is one that will surely bring some more peace to our troubled world because, at the end of the day...words count.

Shavuah Tov.

Parashat Ki Tissa: The Obstinate Ones

Obstinate – adjective.  Stubborn, intractable.  (The Little Oxford Dictionary of Current English.  6^th Edition, 1992).

It’s a simple idea.  Around the country, pianos have been placed on rail concourses and anyone who is able to do so can sit down and play to their heart’s content.  I saw the instrument at King’s Cross a few years ago and couldn’t resist the urge to play it and I can tell you; it was a wonderful experience.

Somebody at Channel 4 had a brainwave.  The idea was that the broadcaster, Claudia Winkleman, would invite members of the public to play a piano without them realising that at the same time, they were being filmed.  Several railway stations were chosen as staging grounds for the talent competition, and these included St Pancras, Leeds and Glasgow.  Watching the proceedings, secreted away in a small room, were one of the world’s greatest classical pianists, Lang Lang, who was joined by Mika, an extremely talented popular musician.  They judged the pianists without their knowledge and at the end of the programme, all the ‘contestants’ were gathered together in a room by Claudia who introduced them to Lang Lang and Mika.  At that point, they described what had been happening and told them that they were all invited to be part of an audience for a concert that would be taking place at the Royal Festival Hall.  They then revealed the person they had chosen to perform at the concert based on the performance they had witnessed.

I was fortunate to start learning to play classical piano when I was six years old and it continues to give me a great deal of pleasure.  When I saw the programme being advertised, I told Stephnie that we ‘had to watch it’ as a result of the affinity I feel for the instrument.

If you have seen the show, you will know how wonderful it is.  People of all ages and backgrounds have entertained us with their talent but one young girl’s story and performance brought both of us to tears.

In Leeds, a city known for its love of the instrument, granted the annual international competition that attracts pianists from around the world, Lucy, aged just 13 took our breath away.  Her mother, Candice, told Claudia how her daughter had been born with cancerous tumours of the eyes which left her blind.  If this weren’t enough of a challenge, she was also diagnosed with a genetic disorder called Chromosome 16 duplication which affects her mental health and is demonstrated through traits of autism.

When she was younger, she was given a tiny keyboard to take to hospital.  She played ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ so proficiently that the nurse listening thought that it had been pre-recorded until Candice told her that ‘Lucy was playing it’.

Daniel Bass works in a charity that assists blind musicians and he helped Lucy to develop her skills by placing her fingers over his as he played the piano.  He said that he had never met ‘anybody who has the same depth of understanding of music’.  In the programme, he brought her to the piano and gently placed her hands on the keys.

Lucy then proceeded to play Chopin’s Nocturn in B Flat Minor (Opus 9 Number 1) not only in a note-perfect manner but with the expression of a world-class pianist.

Watching her were Lang Lang and Mika who were literally dumbstruck by what they were witnessing.  Lang Lang, with tears in his eyes, said:

“Unbelievable that she can play this piece.  How did she study?  It’s incredible.  She plays so beautifully.  I have never seen anything like this.  Oh my Gd, Oh my Gd, this is impossible.  I’m speechless, I don’t know what to say.  I really don’t know what to say.”

Mika added:

“Technically speaking, she sang those melodies…turning a tuned percussion instrument into a breathing, breathing, living vocal instrument and it took a 13 year old girl to show us how to do that.  I feel very, very lucky.  If you had told me that I was going to live one of my strongest musical experiences of the past five to ten years sitting in a train station in Leeds, I would have been like completely out of your mind.”

At the end of the performance, I looked at Stephnie and our respective mouths were ajar in tandem with everyone on the concourse who was watching.  Suffice to say that a great number of tears were shed, both on and off the television.

It would be disingenuous of me to reveal what happened at the end of the programme and which ‘contestant’ ended up being chosen because that’s not the point of what I am describing.

Lucy communicates with the world through music.  Her obstinacy is manifested in the manner by which she refuses to let the challenges that she has faced, throughout her young life, silence her.  She talks to us in a different mode but what she says is just as powerful, if not more so, than the spoken word.

In this week’s Parasha of Ki Tissa, we read about the Chet Ha’Egel, the Sin of the Golden Calf, which happened a mere forty days after the giving of the Torah (and one of the events that took place on the 17^th of Tammuz, later to become known as the Fast of Tammuz).

After hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt, they witnessed the destruction of the greatest Empire of the Age by Hashem who through Moshe Rebbeinu led them into the inhospitable wilderness.  Protected and cossetted against the elements, what they had seen at Sinai should have been at the forefront of their minds, but inexplicably, it seems to have dissipated in a very short amount of time.

‘There are none so blind as those who will not see’ as the old saying goes (which incidentally originates in Sefer Yirmiyahu – the book of Jeremiah.)

Not physically ‘blind’ in the sense that Lucy has been impacted, but morally blind to the extent that they demonstrate such atrocious behaviour.

Our freedom could have been extremely short lived.  In their many conversations recorded in Ki Tissa, Gd tells Moshe:

I have seen these people…and they are a stiff-necked people.  Now leave Me alone so that My anger will burn against them and that I May destroy them.  Then I will make you into a great nation (Exodus 32.19)

And later on, He adds:

Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey.  But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.  (33:3-5)”

Moral blindness on behalf of some of the people had led Gd to come to this decision.

Moshe’s response to Hashem seems counter intuitive.  He says:

“If I have found favour in Your eyes, my Lord, may my Gd go among us, ‘because’ (the Hebrew word for this  is ‘ki’) it is a stiff-necked people and forgive our wickedness and our sin and take us as Your inheritance” (34.8-9)

Moshe wanted Gd to forgive the people for the very same attribute that He wanted to destroy them, namely their ‘stiff-necked’ nature or as I have referred to it above – their obstinate character trait, which is no-doubt a feature that we have been handed down through the ages!

Rabbi Sacks ztl cites a few Rabbinic interpretations of the word ‘Ki – because’.

Rashi understands it to mean ‘if’ so that we could read the verse as:

‘If they are a stiff-necked, then forgive them.’

Ibn Ezra and Chizkuni translate the word as ‘although’ or ‘despite the fact’.

Ibn Ezra suggests that the verse should be interpreted as

‘(I admit that) it is a stiff-necked people, therefore forgive our wickedness and our sin and take us as your inheritance.’

History has indeed demonstrated that whatever challenges are thrown our way, we doggedly refuse to let them defeat us.  The case of Purim is just one example of this.  Fighting against overwhelming odds in the Warsaw Ghetto and battling every enemy, however big or small, in The State of Israel is another.  We just refuse to give in.  Time and time and time again.

I saw a lot of myself as a Jew in Lucy.  In her spirit, her determination, her refusal to accept her situation and her desire to communicate with others in ways that may seem a little odd.  In her pride at what she could achieve, despite her challenges.  Lucy did not need to talk the same language that we do.  We got the message, loud and clear.

Rabbi Sacks concludes his piece with the following paragraph:

‘Forgive them because they are a stiff-necked people’ said Moses, because the time will come when that stubbornness will not be a tragic failing but a noble and defiant loyalty.  And so it came to be.’

(Covenant and Conversation: Exodus, ‘A Stiff-Necked People’ pp 251-258, Rabbi Sacks, OU Press/Maggid 2010)

Lucy’s physical blindness and our ancestors’ moral blindness did not stop them from shining a light onto others at the end of the day and illuminating their lives.  Lucy, through her exceptional musical talent.  She too is stiff-necked in the metaphorical sense (physically, she swung her head side to side in tandem with the music).  She is obstinate because she has had no choice but to be.  She revels in a joy that the rest of us can only marvel at.

As for the Jewish people, we, the stiff-necked descendants of those Israelites, can proudly attest to all the above.  The Torah’s music and spirit lives within us and we continue to shine its light to all who want to listen to its melodies.  In our own way, when you think about it, all of us are different facets of Lucy.

Shavuah Tov.