What if,
beneath all the rhetoric,
the mastery,
the midrashic,
the talmudic dialectic
the esoteric readings
the mysticism
even the Bible codes,
What if,
the Biblical text
these letters,
these sacred words,
and sentences,
the spaces between the letters
the paragraph spaces
(the petucha and sʼtuma)
the scribal conventions,
the columns,
the very “black fire on white fire”
hanging from the etched lines of the soferʼs quill
what if,
all this
was not merely a language sign,
a Hebraic convention
an ancient un-deciphered sacred text
conveying semantic and literary meaning
theological underpinnings
mythical yearnings
ethnic history
and narratives of a people
encountering the Divine?
Sacred Texts, the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud
burnt in Paris 1242,
Rovigo 1550,
Warsaw 1941,
Timbuktu 2013,
a bonfire of letters flying away from the crisp charred parchment.
Now pored over once again in the study halls of Lakewood and Mir
as if the Holocaust had never happened,
with an intensity like never before,
the sheer numbers, a historical record
beyond even the academies of Europe and Volozhyn,
such single mindedness and devotion
such selfless commitment.
60,000 non academics working folk attend the Siyum Hashas
a sea of black hats poring over the black lettered text.
What if,
all this scholarship
the analysis of the Biblical text
in the 63 tractates containing some 62000 pages
(taking over 7 years at the rate of one page per day)
focused on the meaning of the text
yet all the while
ignoring
the possibility
that these letters and words
might also represent
the black notes on a musical stave
the pitch recorded over time,
the score of a cacophony of sounda
symphonic score?
And for two thousand years we have been studying
in our yeshivas and seminaries
the notes of a sacred musical text
its harmony and counterpoint
its prosidy and cords
analyzing and probing
even dissecting the archeology of the text
its sources
its numerical values and gematria
its intellectual provence
without ever having played the score?
as if all the professors of musicology gathered annually
to discuss and further the science with learned novellae
as to this masterʼs use of key and pitch
melodies and harmonies,
and that composerʼs interpretation of a musical sequence.
Yet no one had ever played or sung the score!
After two thousand years of learned scholarship
employing the best minds on the order of Leibnitz and Einstein:
A Reb Chaim, The Rogechover, A Rebbe Akiva Eiger, The Avnei Nezer,
does one get more clarity than this?
razor sharp pilpul,
brilliant mind-blowing analysis
no one could disagree of course,
these were our greats!
Yet after all this brilliance,
no one ever sung
no one ever played
no one appreciated the very music of these black notes
all the while thinking they were letters that made words and meanings a
legal system, a Halachah, based on the Biblical text.
Playing the Torah text as a divine musical score
might play to our souls
or even bring the Messiah!
or cause world peace!
like no other musical score previously.
Is this what God has been waiting for so long,
allowing so much suffering all the while?
Did he give us the Torah
and has been waiting patiently for someone to actually play the piece?
Would playing it stop the pain?
Yes King David intimated all this
in his Psalter
and the Levite sang on the Temple steps
and the Apollon Musegetes played in Athens
but who ever played the Hebrew letters
and who would conduct such a Missa Solemnis?
Who would conduct?
Why Reb Shlomo of course!
then who would be the principal? the maestro?
would people attend?
or would they shrug it off
preferring the safety of the silent scroll,
or even chanting the words in the Synagogue,
to avoid the actual experience
feeling the hidden divine in the text
hearing the music of the spheres
fearing the right hemisphere
the consequences of non logical thought
that anything might be possible,
everything might be alive,
that all are connected in the music
all incarnated with the divine
all leveled,
by the delight
facing the joy of the song
penetrating the secret of the universe.
No I fear we wonʼt be hearing that song soon
Shlomo will have to meet King David the Psalmist in the next world
and play for the sweet singer of Israel there not here.
Apollo will play Hermesʼ lyre without the muses.
We are mired in self promotion
and aggrandizement
and false claims
to care for this.
So I trudge daily
to the Daf Yomi
for the next dose,
a page of Talmud
black letters dissecting the Law and the Bible
searching for a way to behave
a ritual to appease the divine
a method to suffer well
the long Exile.
But I know that the texts we analyze
still hide more than they conceal
beyond even the mystical readings
that forced another Lurianic world onto the text
into a Baroque dualism.
Beyond the cute moralistic pietistic renditions of ArtScroll
and the revisionist academic reductionism.
No, I hear a song
a melody
as yet un-played
unchartered
waiting for the brilliant young musician
(Messiah?)
who will one day
open the Torah
and begin to play
naturally and effortlessly
and the world will weep and melt.
And God will say “finally, someone is reading my love letter!”
