Rabbi's Derasha

Every month corresponds to a bodily function.  The month of Tamuz is about seeing.  Even the Parashiot normally associated with the month deal with seeing.  Because these are harrowing Parashiot, they are mostly about failures in seeing.  But from the failures one can learn what the proper sense of seeing is supposed to be.  This is part of the preparation for the Three Weeks.  

The Meshech Chochma has a fascinating take on “seeing” in the episode of Mei Meriva, the waters of strife.  He points out that at Har Sinai, among the awesome events was the introduction of what is called synesthesia.  This sounds like an illness but it’s not; it is, however, weird.  It means a person experiences phenomena with several senses.  They hear flowers, or see music.  After the pronouncing of the 10 statements, the Torah says that the Jewish people “Ro’im et HaKolot,” they see the sounds.  

Just as it occurred in the first of the 40 years in the desert, so the Meshech Chochma says that this experience comes up at the beginning of the 40th year too.  He gives it an important role in the sad episode of Mei Meriva.  We know that Moshe Rabenu was told to speak to the rock and he ends up hitting the rock.  But when he is told to speak to the rock, the verse says that he was supposed to do so “L’Eineihem,” for their eyes.  The literal sense is that the people should witness what is happening.  But when people are witnessing a speech act, they are hearing it, listening to it.  Hashem is trying to reproduce the synesthesia of Sinai.

The advantage of seeing over hearing is that it takes in many details at once.  Hearing cannot do that, except in a very controlled musical setting.  Otherwise, the sounds come as cacophonous -- confusing, meaningless noise.  Sounds are understood only in isolation, and in sequence.  Sights, however, can be taken in together; sense can be of many disparate details together.  

The “seeing of the 10 statements at Har Sinai was an attempt to impress on the Jews that these laws are not just important in themselves -- they are conveying a bigger picture of what the Torah is trying to communicate.  There are those that see the 10 statements as embodying all of the commandments.  Or it conveys a bigger picture of how one is supposed to relate to others.  Hashem wanted them to see the voices of Sinai because He wanted them to put it into a grand picture.  Only sight can do that.  

We are supposed to be “seeing” people.  Instead, we get caught up in the details, in the fragments.  This is the failure, over and over, in these Parashiot.  

We have sensory overload as it is.  But we must try to see the larger context.  Of course, even if we emphasize the looking instead of the hearing, we might not see a picture that explains the many puzzling details of the world.  We are not urged to see because the mysteries give themselves up.  We are urged to see because that’s the only mode of operation which can sustain us, especially through difficulties.  But if we can correct this, if we can see instead of getting caught up in the noise, then we can turn the Three Weeks into salvation, Bimheira Viyameinu.