Interruption or Harmonization

Discourse or song?

That was the question of the week. Or maybe it’s the question of life. Am I speaking or am I singing? What difference does it make?

A lot.

Yom Kippur and this mother of little children knows that she’s not going to shul and she’s fine with that because that is her stage in life. The little ones are playing quietly and she opens her machzor (prayer book) to pray. She’s “interrupted”, not by the little ones who don’t know any better, but a bigger one who seems to be craving (negative) attention.

She stops in the middle, at the part where one isn’t supposed to stop and she asks herself, “What is my avodah (job) right now in this situation? She realizes it’s not to pray. Is she frustrated? Upset? Honestly, yes, but thank God she heard that talk right before Yom Kippur, the one that she was supposed to hear. The teaching of a chassidish Rebbe who taught in the name of Rabbi Nachman that in life there are people who sing and there are people who talk.

So she sits down with this teaching in her mind and she closes her machzor. She looks at the big one, into his mischievous vibrant eyes and she talks to him. Asking him what he thinks she should do. Not yelling or being condescending, but talking or maybe it’s called harmonizing.

The difference between the two?

Your definition of interruption. Interruption is for someone who talks, but in a song when someone interrupts it’s has a different name, a different purpose. It’s not an interruption, but harmonization.

And of course, when you are trying to cook and prepare for the holiday the children, they, conveniently for the teachers don’t have school, and yes, they are bored and hungry. You still need to do laundry and take this one to speech and need to cut hair. You are trying to bake, but that one wants to read a story. The standstill traffic and lack of chickens in Jerusalem. A phone call that stops you in your tracks, the broken washing machine. You feel like you can’t get anything done, but come on, really you are doing! And I ask you, I ask myself are these interruptions or do we call them parts of life’s harmony?

Hours before Yom Kippur I went to pay a shiva call to a beautiful friend who just lost her dear father. She described the humbleness and greatness of her father. He passed away with a smile on his lips. I didn’t have the privilege of meeting him, but I can assure you that his life, with all of its many challenges and difficulties, was a song. And as I thought about him and reflected on the act of passing from one stage of life to the next I made a promise to myself that I too would try to do whatever I could to see each obstacle in life, each difficulty, no matter how big or small not as an interruption, but as a crescendo or as part of a song. (Not that we should ever, ever be tested. But isn’t that the reality of life?)

As I think all these thoughts it’s not a coincidence that we open Torah and we see Moshe in this week’s parsha singing. What does he sing? He sings a song of his teachings. I love the word used for teachings…

My lesson [Torah (לִקְחִי)] will drip like rain; my word will flow like dew; like storm winds on vegetation and like raindrops on grass (Devarim 32:2).

My lesson will drip like rain: This is the testimony that you shall testify, that in your presence, I declare, "The Torah (לִקְחִי), which I gave to Israel, which provides life to the world, is just like this rain, which provides life to the world, [i.e.,] when the heavens drip down dew and rain." — [Sifrei 32:2-Rashi]

He uses the verb to take for teachings. The lesson? Life is a song if you can take from each part (the smooth and the rocky) of it, learn from it, grow from it.

I could barely concentrate, let alone pray this Yom Kippur, but something special happened to me at the moment when the synagogues were full of people praying the last prayer, neila. I nursed my baby to sleep and I looked at her and I was filled with gratitude. Filled with gratitude for all the “interruptions” of my life and at last I prayed. Prayed from my heart with total longing and total sincerity. It felt good.

I sigh. I sing.

Here I am, with a million things to do, but a million things that will or won’t, according to Gods plans, get done. I ask myself as so many things come up, “Elana are you talking or are you singing? Are they interrupting or harmonizing?”

May we live in harmony and spend our time singing.

Shabbat Shalom, Chag Sameach. Many blessings,

Elana