Rebbetzin Tziporah — Song of the Heart

 Dear Friends

It’s hard to translate your 2024 reality to the person you would be over 4,000 years ago. You would still be you. You would be wearing different clothes, speak another language, and not be defined by your current job or profession, but you would still be you. Now try asking yourself what standing at the edge of the Yam Suf after witnessing everything would be like for you.

The difference between who you would have been at that moment, and who you were the day before, Sfas Emmes says, is that the latent emunah that you have would be strong enough for you to feel it with such passion that it would lead you to song. 

Everything in existence has a potential to experience something of Hashem’s glory. This is what you can call, “its song”. Some of you may be familiar with Pirkei Shirah, an amazing masterpiece of a ballad composed jointly by Dovid and Shlomo in which each subchapter begins with revealing the “song” on of 86 selected creations. “What does the earth say?” and “What does a duck say?” are not telling you what you will hear if you happen to pass a duck pond. It’s telling you the statement and song articulated by a duck by its specific nature, and it gives you a verse to help you “hear “it. 

At the Yam Suf, all of us, the Jewish people, found our song. This discovery was great enough to touch all of creation – everything in the world was part of the experience that you would have had if you were standing there. The song is called “Truth”.

The truth is that Hashem renews reality moment by moment. Nothing is here just because it was here a moment ago. Being able to experience this truth is up to you. What you do and what you choose lifts the veil that conceals this from you by blocking it out.

In Pirkei Avot it says that there is no person who doesn’t have “his hour”, a moment in his life when the curtain disappears. When you have a moment like that, its purpose is to stay with you, to let you feel Hashem’s presence and creativity when you are busy having ice cream at Katzefet or feeling martyred by your employer, husband, or parents, or The Fates, depending on where you happen to be in life at the time. It can take a miracle to awaken the part of you that knows your song.  There are people like king Chizkiyahu (who was so great that he potentially could have been Moshiach), who never sing this kind of song in response to a miracle because, a person like that experiences every moment as a miracle. If you aren’t the Chizkiyahu type (such things have happened), and you are too dulled by life to notice the concealed miracles that surround you, shabbos can provide this sort of opening. 

What do you do to preserve this sort of moment? He (still Sfas Emmes) says to hear your inner outcry, hear it in your heart, and then give it outer expression thro ugh tefillah, through deeds, through actual song. You may think that this will never happen to you. It may never be within your reach – you may have a less passionate nature, you may have a life in which you developed deep seated fear of vulnerability even to Hashem – but don’t worry. It’s not up to you, it’s up to Him. 

[Yalkut Shimoni, end of Psalms:] The Sages said concerning King David that when he completed the book of Psalms, he became proud. He said before the blessed Holy One, “Is there any creature you have created in your world that says more songs and praises than I?” At that moment a frog happened across his path, and it said to him: “David! Do not become proud, for I recite more songs and praises than you. Furthermore, every song I say contains three thousand parables, as it says, ‘And he spoke three thousand parables, and his songs were one thousand five hundred.'  And furthermore, I am busy with a great mitzvah, and this is the mitzvah with which I am busy: there is a certain type of creature by the edge of the sea whose sustenance is entirely from [creatures living in] the water, and when it is hungry, it takes me and eats me, such that I fulfill that which it says, ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for you shall heap coals of fire on his head, and Hashem shall reward you'; do not read ‘shall reward you’ but instead ‘shall make him complete you.’”

The word for frog in Hebrew is “tzfardea” which means, “proclaim-know!” This is what he told Dovid Hamelech, the author of Tehillim. Each of us has what to proclaim. Each of us preserves the world, and is consumed by it. Each of us can face her enemies and emerge stronger, and take the encounter that you had and bring it over to the side of positive achievement and new shirah.

I received my electric bill today. The envelope that it came in had an interesting history and future. It was printed by the printing press from Kibbutz Be’eri, which as you recall was destroyed on October 7. It was rebuilt by people who returned, and is now operating. In small letters it said, “We can win together”, as Jews. That too is a song.
 
Know that
each and every shepherd
has his own tune.
Know that
each and every blade of grass
has its own song,
And from the song of the grasses
is born the shepherd’s melody.
How beautiful,
how lovely and fitting
it is to hear their music.
Good indeed
it is to pray among them,
serving God in joy
As the heart,
awakened with the grasses’ song,
fills with yearning.
Then, when the song-filled heart yearns
for the Land of Israel,
A great light
from the holiness of the land
is drawn toward it:
Thus from the song of the grasses
is born the song of the heart.
 
...is how Rebbe Nachman expressed it.
Have a wonderful Shabbos Shirah,
 
Love,
Tziporah