| Van Gogh: Wheat Field Under Clouded Sky |
By Rabbi Yehuda Hausman
If each spoken word was a droplet of water, then each voice
that utters is a wind that brings forth rain.
Though, the wind has no shape. Though, water comes in all
shapes and sizes. Though, no mortal power can divine the weather even a few
days hence, words turn patterns as surely as the wind turns seasons about the
globe.
We have familiar words, torrents of them, some smother us
with wholesome joy, others shatter glass and hearts as easily as any tornado.
We recognize the peal of anger, the lightening-quick lashes of a fiery tongue. We know frost as hard and cold as any frozen
lake when we share—windpipe constricted—the bitterest of news.
Oh yes, there are times when the tongue and head rock
from gales of laughter, that warm pleasure which dispels the rainiest of days. There
are times when we befriend a stranger and wonder, akin snowfall in autumn, will
it stick or melt away? We wonder at the
mystery of loving words. Love is a mist that occludes everything except the
ones who we love. Who can say what the restless wind whispers in secret to the branches
of those rooted trees?
We know the love of chirping toddlers who take to their
mothers like young grass to dew. Blink once and it is all gone. We know
windless days as well, the humbling summer of silence. Ignored, avoided, the
words wish to form, but the throat is as parched as a salted desert.
Yet, of all the many words that shower the earth, that
flood our lives with meaning — which take root and which take flight? Which
words are as ephemeral as a seedless watermelon, giving enjoyment now, but condemned
never to bear fruit? And which words rain sustenance to trees that shall offer
fruit even to the thousandth generation?
Nearing the very end of Deuteronomy, as Moses’ last
breath draws near, Israel’s greatest prophet composes a song of farewell. Written in couplets, it begins like this:
Give ear, o heavens, that I will speak,
Hear, o earth, these words of my mouth,
May my doctrine drip as rain,
May my words distill as dew.
As mist to fresh blades of grass,
As mighty showers to herbs’ green leaves.
(Deut. 32:1-2)
The song goes on with variety of images and metaphors, however,
this first remarkable image of water remains to saturate the mind. For Moses,
Torah is the fountainhead, the spring of life. This is not the salted
water of the sea, nor is it the deluge left by a hurricane, or even the light snow
flurries that dust the sky but never quite kiss the earth. It is living water, the
water which sustains, which collects on leaves, which seeps deep into the soil.
It is the dew that bathes the grass and the mighty waters that nourishes new
grain. It is water that cultivates one generation so it can cultivate another.
It is rather fitting that the Song of Moses is read just
before Sukkot—the festival that marks the end of Israel’s harvest and the
beginning of autumnal rain. For if we can sing with the same gusto with
which Moses sang, at the end of the year, at the end of the harvest, at the end
of his life, beseeching heaven and earth to heed the song of Torah.... Undoubtedly,
the lyrics will remain, the words will linger into the New Year long
after we have put our backs to planting afresh and irrigating anew.
Words are water, our voices the wind that carries the
rain.
Shabbat Shalom
