“Listening” for Spiritual Melodies
R. Yaakov Bieler
Parashat VaYera 5770
We all have wondered at one time or another why certain people and not others are attracted to particular ideas and role models. Hillel Zeitlin[1] first quotes and then explains R. Nachman of Breslav’s explanation for such a phenomenon:
“Every intellectual discipline, in accordance with its aspects and level, has a melody that is appropriate and unique to only it, and so it is from level to level, aspects of wisdom on a higher level possess more ethereal melodies, and so it is ever higher until one reaches the beginning of the primordial point of Creation, which is the origin of Divine Emanations. Faith has a melody that is unique to faith, and as we see, even the pagan faiths, as mistaken as they may be, each faith has a particular melody. The discipline of heresy also has a melody that is particular to it, as it was said regarding Acher (Elisha ben Avuya) that Greek melodies never ceased from his mouth.[2] And the “Tzaddik” comprehends the highest level melodies.”[3]
(The author’s, i.e., Zeitlin’s) Explanation: Each wisdom has a special song, a specific beauty, a particular style of expression and by means of all of these qualities, it draws the heart of those who adhere to it and those who dealve into it...
R. Nachman believed that the song of the Tzaddik contains within it the power that originates from looking inwards, something that is inexpressible in actual words, that can have a positive effect upon a heretic and can transform him into a a different person.
While the importance with which Chassidut has always viewed music in general and Nigunim in particular accounts for why R. Nachman was drawn to this type of simile, the secular sociologist and Freud contemporary, Max Weber, expressed a similar idea with respect to religion in general. In a letter written to an acquaintance, he wrote that in order for a person to be religious, he needs “perfect pitch,” and about himself, Weber stated that he was “tone-deaf.” R. Nachman probably would suggest not that such individuals cannot hear any music; rather they are drawn to another tune, in effect marching to a “different” drummer. The conceptual difference between these two perspectives is whether religious devotion in general and a specific religious point of view in particular is the result of something innate within a person—does one have a “musical ear”?—or is it a matter of choice on either a conscious or perhaps an unconscious level, and subject to training and development?
A
Baal Shem Tov story entitled “The Mad Dancers” appears to poetically
follow Weber’s formulation, by describing Mitnagdim, those who opposed the
Chassidic movement, as unable to “hear the music,” because of either a physiological
or cognitive deficiency,[4]
and therefore the opponents reach the harsh conclusion that Chassidim have
figuratively and even literally “lost their minds”:
Once, in a house, there was a wedding festival. The
musicians sat in a corner and played upon their instruments, the guests danced to
the music, and were merry, and the house was filled with joy. But a deaf man
passed outside the house; he looked in through the window and saw the people
whirling about the room, leaping, and throwing about their arms. ‘See how they
fling themselves about!’ he cried, ‘it is a house filled with madmen!’ For
he could not hear the music to which they danced.”[5]
While the Ba’al Shem Tov was specifically trying to rationalize why some were so opposed to the movement that he founded, R. Nachman seems to have extended the image to apply to anything—in my view it would even encompass areas that have no apparent spiritual dimensions—that one person “gets” and another does not.
The great Yiddish and Hebrew author Isaac Leib Peretz, in his story “The Missing Melody”,[6] even applies R. Nachman’s concept to a high-level Dvar Tora:
…And later, before the festive meal, he (the Rebbe, who had earlier said, “I neither make instruments nor mend them, I know how to play them all…They are the vessels, and we are the melody, they the clothes and we the humanity! They are the bodies and we the souls) whispered to me, ‘You’ll see, his words of Tora will fit the spirit of my dancing.”…
Everyone heard, but I alone knew the secret, that he spoke what the Rebbe had danced. They heard the outer meaning but only I knew the essence of the words; my eyes were open to the Rebbe’s dance…
The “music”/Niggunim that these individuals are discussing is not something that necessarily can be heard with one’s ears; it appears to be a sensibility whereby a deep connection is made between the source of the “melody” and the heart and soul of the “listener”. Spiritual songs appear to have more to do with the Kavana and sincerity of the pray-er/dancer/Tora teacher than the actual content and outward appearance of what s/he is doing. Perhaps the connection can only be made when the leader literally bears his soul, which in turn allows another’s soul to connect to both the person as well as the spiritual and artistic message that he is imparting. If only we could consciously “tune in” to such experiences on a regular basis. Then we could truly be able to go from Chayil to Chayil!
[1] Hillel Zeitlin (1871-1942) was a
Yiddish and Hebrew writer who edited the Yiddish newspaper Moment, among
other literary activities. He was born in the Mohilev District of White Russia
to a Chassidic
Chabad
family and already in his childhood he was recognized for his particularly
sharp and analytical mind. When Zeiltin turned 15, his father died and he
decided to become a Hebrew teacher. His exit from the world of the Yeshiva
exposed him to the works of the great scholars of the Enlightenment… During this period in his
life he began questioning his religious beliefs and eventually drifted toward
secularism... After World War I, Zeitlin gradually drifted back toward
tradition and began leading an Orthodox lifestyle… When the Nazis began
liquidating Polish Jewry in 1942, Zeitlin was 71 years old. He was killed by Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto
while holding a book of the Zohar and wrapped in a prayer shawl and phylacteries.
Most of his family was also killed, the only survivor was his elder son Aaron.
His sons Aaron Zeitlin (1898-1973) and Elchonon Zeitlin
(1902-1942) were also Yiddish writers.
–Wikipedia “Hillel Zeitlin”
[2] Chagiga 15b.
[3] Likutai MaHaRaN, quoted in Al Gevul Shnai Olamot, Yavneh, Tel-Aviv, 1965, pp. 302-3.
[4] I remember an alternate version of the story that posited that it was winter, the windows were closed, the passer-by could only stare through the window and watch the gyrations of those within without being able to hear the music to which they are dancing and swaying. Is it possible that a person who knows he is actually deaf, or even only tone-deaf is sooner ready to attribute the shortcoming to himself than a person who can hear, but in fact only hears on a certain incomplete level?
[5] Walter
Roth, “Meyer Levin, Hassidism, and The
[6] The
I.L. Peretz Reader, ed. Ruth Wisse, Schocken Books,