Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev teach us about the experience of instantaneity by distinction between the ways in which Chaza”l describe the chazzan
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Whoever has experienced the instantaneity and irreplicability of a moment can, in that moment, say something instantaneous and irreproducible. A quote, a text, a publication – none of these forms can access that moment. Think of old books lying yellowed and aged in a book cabinet; how many hands and minds have touched them! But in the end, they are sourced from pronouncements created in some kind of instantaneity. Rav Zaddok of Lublin writes that the reason for the Talmud’s special status lies in the following: the Sages’ sayings come not from logical explications but instantaneous insights, a revelation that appears in the heart and illuminates a halacha. Even day-to-day mitzvahs – the blessing over bread serves as the specific case for Rav Zaddok here – are revealed to have as their source a spiritual insight, like a momentary flash of lightning which illuminates the way to a psak halacha. The Torah is an ongoing, constantly renewed revelation, and the words are only its expression; we must always keep the source, the spirit, the infinitude, before us.
During one of my visits to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev’s grave, I learned a drasha of his on Parashat Vayelech that expresses the experience above in a particularly bold manner:
“‘And Moses went, and spoke all of these things” (Deut. 31:1)’ – It can be understood according to Chaza”l sometimes saying, ‘He who descends before the Ark’ (היורד לפני התיבה) and at others times saying ‘He who passes before the Ark (העובר לפני התיבה). For the tzaddik, in his time of prayer before the Holy One Blessed Be He, must cleave to the words (התיבות) in the prayer, and those holy words are the very ones that lead him [giving him guidance]. And there are great tzaddikim who are at a level that is even greater than this, who lead the word [and give it greater meaning]. And this is the level of Moses, who is the husband of the Matronita (בעלה דמטרוניתא), as it says in the holy Zohar. And this is ‘He who descends before the teyva (תיבה)’ – the word leads him, and he is lower than the word. And there is the tzaddik who passes before the word, who leads the word, and is above it, and this is ‘He who passes before the teyva.’ And here, at the end of Moses’ lifetime, the wellspring of wisdom was shut off from him (as explained by the midrash), and it was of the first element, of a word that leads him. So this is ‘And Moses went, and spoke…”: he went to the speech, for the word was above him. And with this, you shall understand a wondrous thing: why, in the song of Haazinu, Moshe Rabbenu’s prophecy is very opaque in its allusions, in a way that we do not find anywhere else in the Torah.”
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak draws attention to the ways in which Chaza”l describe the chazzan: sometimes as “יורד לפני התיבה” (descending/going down in front of the teyva-the Ark), and sometimes as “עובר לפני התיבה” (passing in front of the Ark). Rabbi Levi Yitzchak interprets the word תיבה as meaning ‘a word’ (instead of as the prayer platform), and in doing so makes a distinction between two types of speech and prayer. There is a kind of person who is above the words he speaks – he is not in the words but rather leads them, uses them for a purpose that is beyond them; it is his spirit that births the words. On the other hand, there is the kind of person who is held trapped within the teyva – the word rules over him and he can only attach himself to it, follow its path wherever it might lead him. Here Rabbi Levi Yitzchak says a marvelous thing: at the end of his days, Moses is unable to ‘pass before the teyva’: the words take him over, his speech becomes more obstructed, unrefined, dimmed. Indeed, though Parashat Haazinu is a portion of the Torah, we find within it a speech that has descended, a speech ‘dressed’ in metaphors and riddles. Here, again, we are reminded of Rav Kook’s call not to become enslaved to words – whether spoken or learned – but rather to learn to ‘pass before’ them, in front of them, even as we use them: to recognize and to illuminate the light within them that spreads in the conceivable (המתפלש בנתפס).
With this in mind, it is possible to understand Rav Nachman’s turn to stories. In his book Likkutei Mohara”n, Rav Nachman describes the Sippurei Ma’asiyos as a method for awakening a person from his slumber. This type of awakening is not possible in direct speech; it must be ‘robed’ in different ways, of which the ‘garments’ of the ‘Sippurei Ma’asiyos of the early years’ (סיפורי מעשיות של שנים קדמוניות) are the highest. Rav Nachman insists upon the need to not become entrenched in a form of expression. Oftentimes, saying the truth to one’s face provokes opposition, and as such cannot successfully create the deep, rousing effect that Rav Nachman hopes to achieve. For this reason, there is a need for an indirect form of speech, one that surprises the listener and conveys something beyond what is said – through the wink of an eye, the sense of a hint that comes along with the words. Rav Nachman calls this “dressing up the face” (“להלביש את הפנים”): the story is a kind of costume, a game, that has the power to bring about a permanent change in self-image. Through the mediums of imagination, pleasure and irony, a story seeks to go beyond the literal, to create an awakening that breaks the linear structure of language and touches upon the chaotic layers of the body. Beyond the content of the message itself, the surprise in its expression is what allows for an encounter with places that cannot be accessed through direct approach. The turn towards the story, then, is actually the first stage in a process of separating from words.
