A Little Bee Says- Parshat Vayigash

Have you ever misheard the lyrics of a song and gone around singing it completely wrong?
 
When I was about four years old, the song “I Believe in Music” by Mack Davis was popular. There was some PBS children’s show I used to watch that put the song with some animation, so I heard it all the time.
 
Only I didn’t really hear it, I misheard it.
 
The song actually went-
 
“Oh I… believe in music… Oh I… believe in love!”
 
But in my mind, the song went like this-
 
“Oh-ah! A little bee says… Oh-ah! A little bee!”
 
I have fond memories of my father shaving in the bathroom, singing, “Oh-ah! A little bee says…”
 
A few years ago there was some animated Disney movie- I think it was Shark Tale. I was watching it with my four year old son, when suddenly that rap about “big butts” comes on. I sat there, incredulous. Oh no! Corruption!
 
Luckily, he thought the lyrics were, “I like… big… birds in the cats!”
 
Then, I got to shave in the bathroom and sing, “I like big birds in the cats!” 
 
When a child hears some catchy music but doesn’t understand the meaning of the words, the child’s mind fills in the meaning spontaneously (and cutely). I was reminded of this when I was leading a Shabbat service a few years back, and I saw a man singing his heart out with the Hebrew prayers. After the service, I spoke with him.
 
“Wow you were so into davening that prayer!” I said. “You know the meaning of those words is interesting…”
 
“Don’t tell me what the words mean!” he yelled. “I don’t want to know! If I know the real meaning of the Hebrew, it will ruin it for me!”
 
Just like children who create their own versions of songs, he had created his own meaning for that prayer, and was davening so passionately. He didn’t want to know the “real” meaning because it wasn’t his meaning, and would probably contain off-putting religious ideas besides.
 
I think this is true for many American spiritual seekers and practitioners- not just in the Jewish scene, but in many traditions.
 
Americans chant Sanskrit in yoga classes. They chant Turkish and Arabic in Sufi gatherings. They chant Japanese and Tibetan in Buddhist zendos and temples.
 
For many of these seekers and practitioners, a lack of understanding the language is freedom. The exotic and foreign sounds can easily accommodate the true prayers of the heart, because they are not locked into any precise linguistic meaning.
 
And yet, for many people, the opposite is true:
 
For some who know how to say the words but don’t understand them, the prayers can feel rote and meaningless. Others, who neither know nor understand the words, end up feeling alienated, like outsiders.
 
In response to that type of reaction, the Second Vatican Council changed the Catholic Mass from Latin to the local vernacular languages in the early 1960s. For some, this made the Mass more meaningful. But for others, getting rid of the Latin destroyed its mystery and power.
 
You can’t please them all!
 
No rabbi, no priest, no guru or shaykh or roshi or lama can ever come up with the formula that will “work” for everyone- it’s impossible. 
 
The real question is not how to make it work for everyone. The real question is: How can you make it work for you?
 
And the question is even broader. It’s not just a question of how to connect with the external language of a traditional practice, but how to connect with any practice whatsoever.
 
I remember several years ago when I was teaching a workshop on prayer and meditation. There was a guy in the class who raised his hand at the end and said, “I’m trying to do the practices you’re teaching me, but every time I try, it just feels so fake, so forced.”
 
Whether traditional practices feel foreign and alienating because they’re so new to you, or whether you know them so well that they’re boring and tedious, it’s really the same question: How can I connect deeply to an external practice? How can it become authentic? How can it be transformative?
 
This week’s reading begins after last week’s cliffhanger.
 
Joseph’s brothers stand around him, not knowing his true identity, seeing him only as a foreign ruler from whom they must beg for sustenance due to the famine. Joseph has been toying with them, threatening to take the youngest brother, Benjamin, as a slave.  
 
Judah steps forward to plead with Joseph:
 
“Vayigash eilav Yehudah-
-And Judah approached him-
 
“Vayomer, bi adoni y’daber na avdekha…
         And he said, ‘Please my lord, let your servant speak…’”
 
The Hebrew wording in Judah’s plea with Joseph has a strange idiom:  
 “… bi adoni y’daber na avdekha…”
 
The word “bi” is usually left un-translated.  Literally, “bi” means “in me” so a literal rendering would be, “In me, my lord, let your servant please speak…”
 
Or, to say it more clearly, “May my inwardness express itself in speech…”
 
If Judah represents the expression of inwardness and authenticity, Joseph represents externality, superficiality. Joseph is a political leader. For Judah and his brothers, Joseph is (or seems to be) a foreigner, something alien. And, most importantly, Joseph is hiding his inner identity from them. They can only see the most external part of him.
 
But Judah, the internal and authentic self, approaches (yigash) the external and foreign form with three special qualities- humility, honesty and sacrifice.
 
First, he approaches with humility:
 
“And he said, ‘Please my lord, let your servant speak…’”
 
Humility is the opposite of coming in with a lot of judgments and ego. With judgments and ego, you’ve already sabotaged any potential for connection before you even begin the conversation. If you want to connect, leave those at the door.
 
Second, he approaches with honesty:
 
“For how will I go up to my father if the boy is not with me? Let me not see the misery that will befall my father!”
 
Judah brings his true concerns and fears- that’s the way to approach prayer. Whatever is really going on inside you, that’s your korban- your offering, your means to draw close. Just like the fellow who didn’t want to know the meaning of the words, fill the sounds of the words with your own sincere cries.
 
This doesn’t mean you have to be anti-intellectual. If you can understand the words and identify with their meaning, all the better. Then you can take your place in the chain of tradition that brings those words to this moment in history. But whether you understand the words or not, it just means that you fill the words with the energy of your heart.
 
Lastly, he approaches with sacrifice:
 
“So now, please let (me) your servant stay instead of the boy as a slave to my lord, and may the boy go up with his brothers.”
 
On one hand, real prayer has to come from the depths of your own desire. But then, it needs to go beyond that, to be offered for the sake of others. Don’t do it merely for your own experience, but to refine yourself so that you can be of more benefit to others, to bring more light into this world.
 
Then, the externality of Joseph will break down:
 
“Now Joseph could not bear all those standing beside him, and he called out, ‘Take everyone away from me!’ And he wept out loud, and said to his brothers, ‘I am Joseph!’”
 
Bring these three qualities to your daily practice, to your synagogue, to the tradition, and it will open itself to you, revealing itself as your brother, your sister; it isn’t cold or alien underneath.
 
How do you invoke these three qualities in yourself?
 
The secret is in the tune. Music opens the door. Don’t just recite, chant. Don’t just speak, sing. The nervous system relaxes, dopamine is released, and even incomprehensible words can become carrier waves for depths of longing and ecstatic expressions of the heart, drawing you back into connection with yourself, with others and with the present moment.
 
As Psalm 147 says:
 
“Ki tov zamra leiloheinu navah tehillah-
How good it is to sing praises to our God!”
 
The 18th century Hassidic sage, Rabbi Elimelekh of Lizhensk, expounded on this verse like this: “It’s good when a person is able to bring about that God sings within him!”
 
On this Shabbat Vayigash, the Sabbath of Approaching, may everything we approach that appears foreign and alienating open with warmth and connection, revealing the secret brother/sisterhood between all beings. May our words sprout from the fertile soil of melody and rhythm!

Good Shabbos!
love,
b yosef