The Silence at the Heart of Life

 At times when the collective Jewish vision goes into eclipse - and some might say that the Judaic enactment of compassion, justice and generosity has been in eclipse for many decades now in the so-called ‘Holy Land’ – I find myself reflecting not on politics or nationalism or even the vicissitudes of history. I find myself reflecting on Torah. On words of Torah.

Torah : ‘teaching, instruction, direction’ – the Hebrew root of Torah is from the verb ‘to shoot an arrow’. Today’s festival of Shavuot – which celebrates the revelation of Torah within the saga of a people’s journey away from slavery towards distant uncertainties of some far-off ‘promised land’ – offers the opportunity to reflect on one of the core themes of Jewish teaching. What – if anything - happened at Sinai?  

So this blog is a form of ‘D’var Torah’ – the traditional phrase for ‘a piece of teaching’. It literally means ‘a word of Torah’. So I’m going to speak about a word, one word. One word of Torah. We’ll come to it in a moment - but the arrow is now in flight.

I’m sure you know about Zeno’s paradox. Zeno of Elea, the Greek philosopher – a direct contemporary of the prophet Malachi, 5^th century BCE – came up with a puzzle about an arrow shot at its target. From one perspective, he realised that the arrow can never reach its destination. Because before it reaches its target it has to travel half the way there. When it reaches that point, it still has half the distance to go. Once it travels through half that remaining distance, it still has half that new distance to travel. And so on, to infinity. So from one point of view – that of strict logic - arrows can never reach their targets. This paradox of course didn’t help King Harold, shot through the eye in 1066.

But I wonder if Zeno’s paradox can help us illuminate something about our arrow in flight. We are en route towards Torah, a ‘word of Torah’. Torah is the direction of travel, a destination.  The texts are always in front of us, we aim to reach them, get hold of them - ‘understand’ them, as we so blithely say.

But if we are aiming to understand the revelation at Sinai how can we ever reach it, grasp it? Zeno rules. The text speaks about God speaking. The people are gathered, waiting. And then: Vayedaber Elohim et kol ha’dvarim ha’ele“ : “And God spoke all these words…” (Exodus 20:1). But what did the people hear? There are different traditions about this, different imaginative pictures.

Of course from the point of view of logic, rationality, there were no words to hear. The event is mythic not historical. It’s a literary construct. The writers are creating a foundational event for a faith community. There was in actuality no Voice, no speaker. So there’s nothing to hear.  And yet we live inside their construct – and we still listen out for what was heard, and what we can hear. Vayedaber Elohim et kol ha’dvarim ha’ele: Anochi Adonai Elohecha: “And God spoke all these words: ‘I am the Eternal your God…’” (Exodus 20:1-2).

A thousand years ago the rabbis created a word picture of how revelation happened. Here’s one midrash:  

 

Said Rabbi Abbahu in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: When the Holy One gave the Torah, no bird screeched, no fowl flew, no ox mooed, none of the ophanim (angels) flapped a wing, nor did the seraphim (fiery celestial beings) chant "Kadosh (Holy, Holy, Holy!)" The sea did not roar, and no creatures uttered a sound. Throughout the entire world there was only a deafening silence as the Divine Voice went forth speaking: Anochi Adonai Elohecha (I am the Lord your God) אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ

 

אָמַר רַבִּי אַבָּהוּ בְּשֵׁם רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן, כְּשֶׁנָּתַן הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא אֶת הַתּוֹרָה, צִפּוֹר לֹא צָוַח, עוֹף לֹא פָּרַח, שׁוֹר לֹא גָּעָה, אוֹפַנִּים לֹא עָפוּ, שְׂרָפִים לֹא אָמְרוּ קָדוֹשׁ קָדוֹשׁ, הַיָּם לֹא נִזְדַּעֲזָע, הַבְּרִיּוֹת לֹא דִּבְּרוּ, אֶלָּא הָעוֹלָם שׁוֹתֵק וּמַחֲרִישׁ, וְיָצָא הַקּוֹל: אָנֹכִי ה' אֱלֹהֶיךָ

(Exodus Rabbah 29:9)

They imagined all life on earth, and in the heavens, becoming silent. And into the profound silence - a silence that paradoxically can deafen (in other words a silence that deafens the listener to everything else that habitually goes on) – into this silence the words of the divine enter human consciousness.

And what is heard? The arrow is reaching its target.

One rabbinic tradition says that it was the 10 Commandments, assert dabrirot, the ten ‘sayings’, the ten sets of words, the foundational vision of religious and moral life. This is what was heard at Sinai.

Another tradition says, no it was only the first two commandments.

And a third tradition homes in even further: what was heard was only one word, the first word of the first commandment: our very own d’var Torah, the word anochi :‘I – I am’

In this tradition, everything that follows about Torah flows out of that single word – anochi. That’s all the people heard. That’s all anyone can ever take in: the Spirit that animates the universe with its ‘I am’. So the revelation was – is – that the people were not alone. They were accompanied by, are accompanied by, anochi: I am.

Has the arrow reached the target? Is the target ‘I am’? But isn’t there always further to go? Zeno’s paradox. And, yes, the Jewish mystical tradition went further. What did the people hear at Sinai? Not even the first word. Just the first letter of the first word. The letter ‘Aleph’. They heard the mystery of the sound of that silent letter. An intake of breath. They heard the silence which is the origin of everything. The beginning of revelation was, is, silence.

When we can hear that soundless first letter, of the first word, of the first commandment at Sinai, we stand in the presence of the mystery of being.

So from one point of view there was - is - nothing to hear. But from another point of view everything pours forth from the silence at the heart of being. We just have to attune our ears to listen in. 

                                                                       

[based on a Shavuot ‘D’var Torah’ given on Zoom at Finchley Reform Synagogue, May 17^th, 2021]

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Coda: George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch offers us a finely-tuned spiritual and humanist vision along similar lines.

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence”.