I am very excited for the opportunity to share words of Torah with you. Each week, in this spot, I look to share an idea I've found that speaks to me and that I think will resonate with you as well. This week, I share an excerpt from an article by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks entitled ‘Emotional Intelligence’, which gives insight into the unique nature of this week's Parsha.
[...] In Ha'azinu, Moses does the unexpected but necessary thing. He teaches the Israelites a song. He moves from prose to poetry, from speech to music, from law to literature, from plain speech to vivid metaphor:
Listen, heavens, and I will speak;
and let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
May my teaching fall like rain,
my speech flow down like dew;
like gentle rain on tender plants,
like showers on the grass. (Deut. 32:1-2)
Why? Because at the very end of his life, the greatest of all the prophets turned to emotional intelligence, knowing that unless he did so, his teachings might enter the minds of the Israelites but not their hearts, their passions, their emotive DNA. It is feelings that move us to act, give us the energy to aspire, and fuel our ability to hand on our commitments to those who come after us.
Without the prophetic passion of an Amos, a Hosea, an Isaiah, a Jeremiah, without the music of the Psalms and the songs of the Levites in the Temple, Judaism would have been a plant without water or sunlight; it would have withered and died. Intellect alone does not inspire in us the passion to change the world. To do that you have to take thought and turn it into song. That is Ha'azinu, Moses' great hymn to God's love for His people and his role in ensuring, as Martin Luther King put it, that "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice." In Ha'azinu, the man of intellect and moral courage becomes the figure of emotional intelligence, allowing himself to be, in Judah Halevi's lovely image, the harp for God's song.
This is a life-changing idea: If you want to change lives, speak to people's feelings, not just to their minds. Enter their fears and calm them. Understand their anxieties and allay them. Kindle their hopes and instruct them. Raise their sights and enlarge them. Humans are more than algorithms. We are emotion-driven beings.
Speak from the heart to the heart, and mind and deed will follow.
Have a Shabbat Shalom and a Chag Sameach,
Rabbi Davies
Rabbi@SOICherryHill.org
