How We Learn, Why We Learn: The Poetic Aim in Talmud Torah

The Past Is the Present

If external action is effete

and rhyme is outmoded,

I shall revert to you,

Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class

the teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse.

He said - and I think I repeat his exact words -

"Hebrew poetry is prose

with a sort of heightened consciousness." Ecstasy affords

the occasion and expediency determines the form.  

                                -Marianne Moore

Biblical poetry: the very juxtaposition of these two words seems to arouse a peculiar excitement in modern students of Judaism.  It’s artful and, well, biblical, so Torah Umadda-esque, and it carries a certain ring.  There are two ways to talk about biblical poetry, each offering its own insight into this intriguing concept.  One may talk about poetry through the prism of the Bible, focusing on the commonality between it and the rest of the biblical narrative.  Yet often, this approach skips basic steps that hinder and even distort our understanding of the text.  Its uniqueness falls to the side, and we lose that certain niftiness that is sensed in its very name.  In order to really talk about what biblical poetry is, we must first talk about what poetry is.

 The process that the poet undergoes is similar in some respects to prophecy, and in that regard, fits well into the biblical framework.  The poet experiences an all-encompassing need to write.  This need seizes the poet, as the word of God seized Jeremiah, burning inside him.  The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, puts it in the form of a question, “whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.”ⁱ  Like a prophet, the poet grapples with the infinite, trying to reveal an inner message.  The poetic effort is a struggle with the eternal, with the hope to humanize it, conquer it—write it.  Like Jacob, the poet must wrestle with the angel all night, and only then, marred, may he or she emerge victorious.  And like the prophet, the poet must choose how to render ecstasy into form, how to transform the divine message into the divine word.  The loftier the message, the holier the writ, and some lofty enough have been canonized as bible-worthy.  William Wordsworth’s description of poetry bears semblance to the prophetic.  He writes, “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility; the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.  In this mood, successful composition generally begins.”ⁱⁱ  In his description, Wordsworth highlights the duality that poetry encompasses: it is immediate and transcendent, passionate and composed, natural and crafted.  Poetry gives a voice to our deepest encounters with the real, and through the written word, gives life to our brushes with the infinite.  It is inspired by urges and notions churning deep within the smithy of the human soul.  And still, its execution comes through logic and precision, “recollected in tranquility” and then crafted into form.  Language choice, form—these elements give the poet coherence.  To write poetry is to create the proper skeleton upon which profound truths can be layered and thereby understood.   It demands a transformation of the internal into external symbols, a translation of the subjective into something more objective. 

This heightened form of language is recognized by the Bible as aesthetically superior, reserved for heightened religious ideas and experiences.  Shirat haYam, Shirat Devorah, Shir haShirim, Tehillim—all these, take hold of ecstatic moments and thoughts and render them, expediently, into meaningful form.  When the biblical narrative intensifies, the characters turn to poetry as their medium of choice.  The religious experiences of poetic biblical heroes are given their proper glory in the Jewish narrative. 

The issue of methodology in Talmud Torah, derekh halimmud, is similar to that of historiography.  In historiography, the question of how to study history is directly effected by the question of what sort of information one hopes to derive from the endeavor.  More pointedly, our approach to studying history is determined by our conception of what history is and what sort of benefit studying it is meant to reap.  Leopold Von Ranke’s event-history, highlights individual people and events in its analysis;ⁱⁱⁱ at its source lies the conviction that these particulars shape history, more significantly than other factors.  In contrast, Fernand Braudel focuses on more general, deeply imbedded themes in human history, the Long Duree, demonstrating the belief that broader, more essential elements of human existence are worthy of our attention^iv.  Each historical approach stems from a specific understanding of the global human experience, what it is coming to say and why that matters.  The methodology employed in study merely supports the particular understanding propelling it.  According to event-history, the human story is creative, ascribing power and meaning to particular events and people.  Man has the ability to fashion history, to determine its direction, and therefore serves as its focal point.  Braudel’s vision however, portrays a more passive view of man, who is effected and directed by deeply embedded elements of nature; in a Braudelian world, man is not the subject, but rather, subject. 

How and what we study reflects and reveals why we study.  The human draw to the written word is natural.  However, different sorts of texts are studied for different reasons; they pull people in through different incentives and foster different experiences. 

When approaching biblical poetry, we must ask ourselves, how and why?

The composite origin of poetry produces the sort of text that succeeds in uniting two different types of learning experiences that, together, engender an experience altogether different from others.  And still, for the purposes of elucidation, these two aspects can be separated and described, each in its own right.  First and foremost, poetry is meant to be understood.  The human being’s inner world is complex, chaotic, and demands intelligibility.  The poem attempts to translate a bit of that world, to offer a piece of the poet’s soul to the eager, or not so eager, public.  The poetic goal is one of knowledge and understanding arrived at through art.  It is calculated, crafted, following rules of poetic form with a rhythmic logic.  The reader must follow the trail that the poet has left—the syntax, symbols and structure—and use them as portals through which to enter into the idea of the poem.  Heightened experience demands heightened expression, and the poetic form is tight and terse for that very reason.  But there is an inner logic that if heeded will breed wisdom and will lend itself to comprehension. 

However, the strength of poetry lies not only in its didactic capacity, but also in its ability to preserve an experience.  Poetry does not exhaust its aim in intellectual comprehension alone.  It grabs hold of one’s senses, not only to learn, but to listen, and through aesthetics, it establishes validity and convinces.  Good poetry washes over you and creates a sense, a resonance, a voice.  Good poetry is not only comprehended but apprehended.  The reader may not fully grasp the ideas in their detail, but if successfully crafted, if the voice remains authentic, the poem carries an authority that elicits an experience—the experience of the poet.  The form is meant to hold an inner reality, to reflect an experience, and to bring the reader within close proximity to both.  The full depth of an experience can only be spoken about, described, symbolized, captured in a voice and a poetic form; the inner world of a human being is much more sensed than systematically understood.  But it is sensed.  In order to connect one requires tools, to handle, to contain and to eternalize.

Marc Strand describes poetry in a similar light: “With good poems they have a lyric identity that goes beyond whatever their subject happens to be.  They have a voice and the formation of that voice, the gathering up of imagined sound into utterance, may be the true occasion for their existence.  A poem may be the residue of an inner urgency, one through which the self wishes to register itself, write itself into being, and, finally, to charm another self, the reader, into belief.^v” Through poetry, we can successfully encounter the inner world of the other.  And for this, we need only to listen.  The syntax of Shir haShirim drips with sensitivity, passion and love.  The words have an intimate ring, and their very sound ushers the listener into the lovesick relationship between the Dod and Raayah.  Through listening, we grow to understand the emotional truth that the text is coming to convey; we connect, albeit incoherently, with the inner urge that inspired the poet to write.  Similarly, the chapters in Tehillim are wellsprings of religious sentiment and resources that can be tapped into for generations to come, because they have been preserved in a poem.  God refers to Shirat haAzinu as an eternal witness to his relationship with Israel.  After he commands Moshe to write down the Torah in order to ensure that the people fear Him and keep His commandments, He turns to a poem, “veatah kitvu lakhem et hashira hazot.”^vi  “Va-anokhi haster astir panai,”^vii God hides in the text of the poem, and it in turn serves as a symbol, the “ed” between God and His Ra’ayah. 

The above-cited verse, simply understood within its narrative context, refers to Shirat haAzinu, the shira that follows the verse.  However, in the Talmud, Rabah uses it to extrapolate the mandate incumbent upon each individual to write a sefer Torah.^viii  In this light, the shira that God tells Moshe to write down refers to the entire Torah.  In other words, through his halakhic derivation, Rabah rescues the level of subtext that describes the whole Torah as a poem.  Bearing this in mind, the poetic aim then colors our entire approach to Talmud Torah.^ix  Like a poem, there are two aspects to Torah study: the intellectual and the experiential.  And like a poem, the entire Torah is one great translation of the infinite into the finite, of the divine message into the divine word.  God is at the source of the poetic struggle, of man’s creative gesture; what is muse if not something of the divine? 

The Torah is the quintessential poem because it is a translation of the eternal in the most direct sense.  The text not only teaches us about God through morals and laws, but it brings us in direct contact with His voice.  Like poetry, the experience brings us close, perhaps more than the content, which is refracted through human language.  In the end, we are forced to relinquish our cognitive abilities before the commanding prowess of an elusive God, who we cannot quantify and codify, but perhaps, by listening to His voice, we can sense.  And that incoherent sense is, on a certain level, more real, connected and honest in its resonance than the translated dictum we are presented with.  Poetically, God uses text to write Himself into being, charming all who study and listen into belief. 

Shira Schwartz is a staff writer for Kol Hamevaser

ⁱ Rilke, Ranier Maria.  Letters to a Yong Poet.  W.  W.  Norton and Company, Inc.:  New York, pg.  16.

ⁱⁱ Wordsworth, William.  Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads.

ⁱⁱⁱ Von Ranke, Leopold.  The Theory and Practice of History. Ed:  Georg Iggers and Konrad von Moltke

^iv Braudel, Fernand.  On History.  University of Chicago Press:  1982.

^v Strand, Mark.  On Becoming a Poet.  The Making of a Poem:  A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, Ed.  Mark Strand and Eavan Boland.  W.  W.  Norton and Company:  New York.  pg.  xxiv.

^vi Deuteronomy, 21:19

^vii Deuteronomy, 21:18

^viii B, Sanhedrin 21b

^ix See Olat Ra’ayah, by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Inyanei Tefilah, pg.  11 for a similar understanding of Talmud Torah.