{"id":63851,"date":"2019-10-03T11:10:50","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T08:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=63851"},"modified":"2022-10-18T21:14:54","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T18:14:54","slug":"the-torah-as-song-and-witness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-torah-as-song-and-witness\/","title":{"rendered":"The Torah As Song And Witness"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In this week’s parasha, which is one chapter long (Deut. 31), we are told twice that the Torah is an \u201ceid,<\/em>\u201d a “witness\u201d and four times that it is a song. What is the significance of these two terms, particularly at this time of year, the ten days of repentance, when we are reviewing our deeds of the past to try to decide what should stay and what should go?\u00a0<\/p>\n

How can it be that something as impermanent as\u00a0a \u201csong\u201d as the Torah is called can also be a “witness”?\u00a0These two terms encapsulate two sides of the text: on the one hand something enduring and permanent, as constant as a witness, and on the other something that can be modulated, sung in different keys, adapted to the pitch and timbre of the singer, fluid rather than fixed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A description of the voice of singer Jessye Norman, who passed away this week, can serve to explain the value of song. Anthony Tomassini<\/a> writes that her voice was always, \u201cenveloping you, coming at you from all corners of the opera house.\u00a0 Her voice penetrated; it permeated.\u201d If we think of Torah as a song that we all need to give voice to, it is a tremendous task to have an instrument that contains such power as to be able to permeate its listeners. But the possibility that it can attain that power makes it necessary to maintain the instrument properly.<\/p>\n

A witness\u2019 testimony needs to be seen and interpreted over time.\u00a0A recent novel by Siri Hustvedt, Memories of the Future<\/em>, illustrates this clearly with its premise that the writer has found a journal she kept her first year out of college among the things of her elderly mother. The physical writing in the journal proves that the writer cared about certain things and noted others, yet many of its entries were events she did not recall. Her subsequent reading of her journal and grappling with what events meant to her, give it new meaning forty years after it was written.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

The Talmud in Sanhedrin 21b teaches that \u201ceven if his ancestors left a person a Torah, it is a mitzvah to write one of his own, as it is written, \u201cand you should write for yourselves this song\u201d (Deut. 31:19). The very last mitzvah in the Torah, too, is to write your own scroll, according to the Sefer Hachinuch. The tension between the two, having something your ancestors had and yet needing to make it your own, is like the tension between the fixity of the text as witness and the fluidity of poetry as song.\u00a0In order for us to feel the power and significance of the Torah, we need to give it space to be both a song that can permeate its hearers as well as a witness who reminds them of all past deeds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

May we all be inscribed in this new year for a year of redemption.<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":43510,"id":43510,"title":"Ex34-PikiWiki_Israel_28226_Or_Torah_Synagogue_in_Acre","filename":"Ex34-PikiWiki_Israel_28226_Or_Torah_Synagogue_in_Acre-e1541535561301.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Ex34-PikiWiki_Israel_28226_Or_Torah_Synagogue_in_Acre-e1541535561301.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/tablets-take-two\/ex34-pikiwiki_israel_28226_or_torah_synagogue_in_acre\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"ex34-pikiwiki_israel_28226_or_torah_synagogue_in_acre","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":43374,"date":"2018-11-06 20:18:56","modified":"2022-10-18 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