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HAGOPIAN
Who's In
Love?
IN-HOME CLEANING
Whether you have 2, 4, 6 or
even 20 rugs, bring them to us
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Parshat Haazinu: Deuteronomy 32:1-
32:52; 11 Samuel 22:1-22:51.
p
eople sometimes ask, "Rabbi,
what's a chasid?"
So I adjust my black hat,
brush a thread off my long black coat,
grab my scraggily beard, and say,
"You're asking me?"
You can buy a chasidic costume at
Party City ($29.99, sidelocks sold sepa-
rately), but being chasidic has little to
do with dress. Simply said, a true cha-
sid is full of what Hebrew calls chesed,
the generosity that flows from love.
Abraham, for example, was a true
chasid, so full of love that he nearly
put the Supernal Attribute
of Kindness out of business
— and he didn't even own
a shtreimel (chasidic-style
fur-trimmed hat).
The father of what today
we call "chasidism" was
the Baal Shem Tov (1698-
1760), the 'Abraham" of his
day. A popular book about
him is called Why the Baal
Shem Toy Laughed. That's
easy: He laughed because
he was happy, and he was happy
because he was in love.
I know a chasidic rabbi in New York
who, if you ask him how he's doing,
looks at the sky with a smile and says,
"I'm in love with the One Above." Not
everyone can pull that off with humil-
ity. He could. And so, I imagine, could
Abraham and the Baal Shem Tov.
We all know that a heart in love
needs to sing like a "songbird," which
brings us to this week's Torah reading,
Haazinu. "Haazinu" is the song that
Moses taught the Jewish people just
before his passing, trying to open their
hearts one last time to an everlasting
love of God. Interestingly, the lyrics are
not so much about God as about life,
the whole sweeping bipolar range of it.
"[A] song," says the commentary to
ArtScroll's Stone Chumash (p. 375),
"is a profound and unusual spiritual
phenomenon ... a flash of insight
that makes people realize how all the
pieces of the puzzle fall into place ...
[W]e can understand how every note,
instrument and participant in God's
symphony of Creation plays its role.
The result is a song ... "
Both Abraham and the Baal Shem
Tov were famed masters of Jewish
mystical thought, which addresses
directly how "all the pieces of the puz-
zle fall into place." Both also promoted
peaceful relationships, essential for
participating in "God's symphony."
"Why is it," the Baal Shem Tov was
once asked, "that chasidim burst into
song and dance at the drop of a hat?
It's not normal." He replied with a par-
able:
A deaf man once hap-
pened upon a large group
of Jews dancing around a
fiddler, though he did not see
the fiddler. Have they gone
meshugenah, he wondered.
Everyone is jumping in cir-
cles, turning somersaults.
"Chasidim," explained the
Baal Shem Tov, 'are moved
by the melody that issues
from God's creation. If this
looks mad to those who can-
not 'hear' it, should they therefore stop
dancing?"
Haazinu falls between the Days
of Awe and the Days of Joy. After
expressing our love for God on Rosh
Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we burst
into song and dance during Sukkot
and Simchat Torah.
It's a time when we can truly say,
We're in love with the One Above.
Boruch Cohen is the rabbi at the
Birmingham-Bloomfield Chai Center.
Conversations
• The High Holidays are indeed
solemn. What indications
are there in the prayers or
elsewhere that they are also
days of joy?
• Have you ever had a spiritual
experience that made you
want to sing and dance?
• Is it true that true happiness
flows out of love?
1-800-HAGOPIAN
(424-6742)
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September 27 * 2012
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