Beth Shalom
Oceanside Jewish Center

Hello "hello" Can you hear me now" Can you hear me now?

I'm certain that many of you are familiar with that well known Verizon commercial which has filled the airways recently. In it, a technician walks around with a cell phone asking "Can you hear me now?"

This statement has secured a place in advertising history along with "Where's the beef" and "I can't believe I ate the whole thing!" We remember the words "Can you hear me now," for one simple reason. Anyone who has ever used a cell phone knows the frustration of trying to be heard (or trying to listen to someone) and not having a good connection. Whether or not we actually use the words, we're constantly asking "Can you hear me?" or saying "I can't hear you!" Cell phones can be a handy tool or source of frustration.

"Can you hear me now?" is not only a good commercial but also a great summary for Sefer Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy. The fifth book of Torah is about hearing, listening and paying close attention. It calls on us to use of our auditory skills more than any other sense in perceiving the presence of God. We cannot see God but we can hear him if we know how.

Best known, of course, are those six simple words that every Jew learns: Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai Ehad, Hear Israel the Lord our God the Lord is One! These words have become our Jewish pledge of allegiance. They open with a call to attention that is a Deuteronomic leitmotif: "Sh'ma Yisrael." Moses, speaking to the children of Israel for what may be the last time, exhorts the people to pay attention, and to listen to what he has to say:

V'ata Yisrael Sh'ma el hakhukim v'hamishpatim asher Anochi milamed etchem laasot.

Now Israel: Listen to the laws and rules I am instructing you to observe.

Sh'ma Yisrael atta ovayr hayom et hayarden lavo lareshet goyim gedolim

Listen, Israel: You're crossing the Jordan to inherit this land from mighty nations "

In describing the theophany at Sinai, Moses tells the people that, "the Lord spoke to you out of a fire; you heard the sound of words but perceived no shape, nothing but a voice" According to this passage the revelation at Sinai was an auditory experience. There was nothing to see. There was something to hear.

Yet how do we hear God? What does God sound like?

Hearing is at the heart of the opening chapters of Devarim. The root "Sh'ma, to hear or to listen" appears sixty eight times in the book of Deuteronomy, far more than it appears the other books of the Torah.

But most interesting of all is the way this word is used at the beginning of today's Parshah, Ekev. Moses tells the people, "Vahaya ekev tish'miu et hamishpatim haeleh ushmartem vaseetem otam. "If you listen to these rules and carefully observe them ""

The language in this verse is strange. Why is it so important for the people to listen to the commandments? How does one go about hearing them? Shouldn't them emphasis be on doing them and not merely hearing them? Why is this so important? Moses could be referring to his own rendition of the commandments when he tells the children of Israel to listen. He wants the people to pay close attention to what he has to say. But I think Moses who is basically a modest man is trying to say something else here. He wants the commandments to speak for themselves. Moses tells Israel that the only way to truly hear the commandments have is to live by them.

In effect he is saying, "People! Pay close attention to what you're doing. If you live by these commandments you will hear the voice of God in them. God does not speak to the people; He speaks through the people's observance of the commandments. Just as you could not see God at Mount Sinai but could only hear God's words, you cannot hear or see God's commandments either. Yet in living by the Mitzvot you have an opportunity to discover the voice of God. By faithfully observing the commandments you can transform them from folkways to powerful spiritual experiences in which God is present."

This is what the children of Israel meant when they told Moses, "Na'aseh Vinishma," literally "we will do and we will listen (not we will obey)." Traditionally the rabbis understood this statement as a sign of Israel's faithfulness: Israel was willing to observe the commandments even before they fully understood them fully. I believe that our ancestors were more sophisticated than that: they understood that hearing the voice of God was a product of the doing.
Once they began observing the Mitzvot they would begin to hear God's voice and feel God's presence.

We're not always prepared to take what Abraham Joshua Heschel called that "leap of action." We want to understand the meaning of what we do before we do it. We want things to make sense. But often action precedes complete understanding. The word, "Sh'ma," in Deuteronomy teaches us is that hearing is a product of action. It is almost always combined with action. We can only hear what we are prepared to experience.

The rabbis have a lovely parable to illustrate this point. Explaining that the word Ekev means not only "because" but also "heel," they point out that Ekev refers to the minor and insignificant commandments upon which we tread beneath our heel; even these commandments deserve to be faithfully observed.

To what is to be compared? To a king who commissioned someone to plant a garden and offered to purchase his produce. The king refused to tell the gardener which vegetables he would pay a high price for and which would be sold cheaply. "If I told him," said the king "he would only grow the costly vegetables and fruits and ignore the more modest ones. This way he grows all of them for me."

Our tradition does not distinguish between Kalot, the light weight Mitzvot, and Hamuot, the so-called heavier commandments, lest we focus on the heavier ones and ignore the others. Both are instruments of God's voice. Of course, it is important to believe in one God and to be a good person but it is equally important to say a berachah, to place a mezuzah on other doors beside the front door of one's house, to wear a kippah when studying torah. Each commandment is precious in the eyes of God; each carries the voice of God with it.

We err when we are literalists about hearing the voice of God. Out actions allow us to hear what God is saying to us.

As we approach another new year it is not too early to think about small ways of increasing the presence of God in our lives. Often we get bogged down by "the big Mitzvot" because we can't do them completely we give up trying to do anything new. We are challenged to consider how God speaks to us through the Ekev Mitzvot - the small commandments and the every day actions. God can speak to us through them as well. All we need to do is to listen.

Next weeks Parshah begins with the word Re'eh - Look! It's no accident that hearing precedes seeing. We cannot see until we are willing to focus our attention and listen to the voice of God in our everyday actions. Listening must begin with living and learning. Maybe if we try we can truly hear the sacred voice of God in our daily actions.

Shabbat Shalom