Lent Day Thirty


Still on Exodus 6:12 "How then shall Pharoah listen to me, poor speaker that I am?"

From Zornberg (Particulars of Rapture) p 123

'R. Levi reads the essential story of Moses as one of language aquisition. All the evidences from Proverbs, from Ezekiel, that the Torah cures the problem of the tongue become unnecessary, in his view, if we study this one single case history.His is the archetypal case, asserts R. Levi: when he merited Torah, the words began to flow. But, of course, the converse is also true: by exploring the complex readings about language, we are better able to understand Moses' particular problem.'
...

'...Torah, the tree of life, its very language, its tongue, rubs against the human tongue, polishes it this way and that, loosening it for expressive use. The extraordinary play on the word lashon - tongue - yields a language on which the human tongue learns to glisten; human language becomes liquid and clear. There is an abrasive meeting of tongue and tongue, which multiplies meanings and refurbishes language with complex sources, "from this side and that." '

and then there is an explosive release: (Zornberg page 124)

'...the midrashic idea that the words, the tongue of Torah, has the power to release the human tongue - and, with it, all the pent-up energies of sexuality - is a similarly experiential idea. In his [Rabbi Nachman's] text, muscles and nerves are the ultimate infrastructure of his mapping of body and spirit. Some event must happen to this paralyzed organism: in his idiom, the event is the narrative that seizes the imagination, that invites the telling of narratives. The burden of this redemptive narrative is "hope for God"; it's effect is a therapeutic generation of endless stories, creating and procreating.