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Orchard of Delights
consider the opening verse of the Torah – “In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth” – an all-encompassing utterance.
Thus, according to the Oral Torah, which was given along with the
Written Torah, the world was created with ten utterances; Divine
speech is quite literally the instrument of creation.
Another permutation of the letters of “bereishit” creates the
formulation “shir ta’av” (a song of desire). This permutation alludes
to an enigmatic Midrashic statement: “God had a passion to have for
Himself a dwelling place in the lower worlds” (Midrash Tanchuma,
Naso 16). The world, the product of Divine song, is mysteriously the
object of God’s desire, for He wishes to dwell in it, in the lower worlds.
Thus, this permutation alludes to one of the reasons God created the
world.
The Rabbis considered writing a Torah the last of the 613
commandments. The Torah and creation begin with “the song of the
father,” “the song of the alef-beit,” “the song of longing,” while the
last commandment is to write the entire Torah, which the Torah
defines as a song. Thus, the circle is complete. This fulfills what is
written in the Sefer Yetzirah (1:7), one of the oldest Kabbalistic
texts: “Their end is embedded in their beginning and their beginning
in their end.”
The Talmud teaches that people who sing the Torah that they
have learned will not forget it. Singing the Torah means to fully
integrate its teachings and wisdom into our hearts and minds. We
must connect the Torah we learn to our most essential selves and not
treat Torah study as an intellectual pastime or pursuit. Singing our
Torah connects its teachings to our deepest selves.
The essential thread connecting the Creator and the Torah (His
Divine instrument of creation) with all of creation is music. God
wrote the musical score – the Torah – and gave it to humanity, so
that human beings could perceive the Divine symphony surrounding
them. Ultimately, we must decide whether we wish to learn the notes,
hear the music, and become partners with God in developing the
harmony, or whether we wish to go about living our lives deaf to the
beautiful symphony we call the universe. (This insight is discussed in
The Mystical Power of Music, pp. 51-54.)
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in conferring the appropriate blessings or curses on the Jewish people
in the future.
The second day of creation describes God’s creation of the firmament
in the midst of the waters and His separation of the upper and lower
waters. In Ha’azinu’s second verse Moses compares his words to
various types of precipitation that descend from the heavens and to
dew which comes from below: “May my teaching drop like the rain,
may my speech flow like the dew; like storm winds on the grass, like
raindrops on the herbs” (Deuteronomy 32:2). Rashi, explaining the
connection between precipitation and Moses’ teachings, notes that
just as rain brings the vegetable kingdom to life, the Torah’s words
imbue human beings with life.
Ha’azinu’s third verse proclaims: “When I call upon the name
of God; give greatness to our God” (Deuteronomy 32:3). This verse
reminds us that our prayers bring the life-giving rains, which are
symbolic of all spiritual and physical bounty. This message echoes
what God taught man by creating vegetation on the third day of
creation but not allowing it to sprout until man was available to work
the soil. Rashi explains that all the vegetation had been created, but
it did not sprout above the earth’s surface until Adam was created.
When Adam realized, as Rashi explains, that nothing would grow
without the rains, he began to pray for rain and God answered his
prayers by causing everything to grow.
Parenthetically, the symbiotic relationship between mankind,
precipitation, and the earth is further emphasized by the following
verses: “And a mist rose up from the earth and watered the face of
the land. And God, God formed the man of dust from the ground.
And He blew into his nostrils the soul of life and man became a living
being” (Genesis 2:6-7). According to Rashi, the aforementioned mist
formed clouds that moistened the earth, creating the right mixture
for man to be created from, much like a baker adds water to flour in
order to knead it into dough.
The Shema’s second paragraph also describes how the reward for
doing God’s will is that the rains will fall in the appropriate season. The
rain’s power to facilitate the earth’s capability to sustain vegetation
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