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Writer's pictureLeann Shamash

Devarim: The Book of Words


אֵ֣לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר דִּבֶּ֤ר מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶל־כּל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל בְּעֵ֖בֶר הַיַּרְדֵּ֑ן בַּמִּדְבָּ֡ר בָּֽעֲרָבָה֩ מ֨וֹל ס֜וּף בֵּֽין־פָּארָ֧ן וּבֵֽין־תֹּ֛פֶל וְלָבָ֥ן וַחֲצֵרֹ֖ת וְדִ֥י זָהָֽב׃

These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan.—Through the wilderness, in the Arabah near Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahab,


Devarim 1:1


And so begins Sefer Devarim- A book of words written in the first person by a person who hated to speak.


******


We met our teacher when he was young and we quickly learned he had difficulties with speech and wasn't comfortable speaking publicly. Where were the words of our future teacher, a person destined to lead a stiff necked people out of slavery? Were the words jumbled as they exited his unwilling mouth or were the words held captive until the moment was right?


I'd like to imagine where those words were held. Let's imagine the space for a moment. This space, this room of the unsaid words, is the staging area for the unarticulated, thoughts conjured but not expressed.

What is this room? I imagined it as the green room, the room used for celebrity guests before they go on stage. Now you try to imagine where these words were held inside of the teacher, or perhaps elsewhere, a place we cannot imagine?


Time passed and forty years of words accumulated in this space. Maybe the teacher, the one who found it hard to speak, the one who was modest in every way, grew weary of saying so little and the coffers filled. Words entered tentatively at first, perhaps reluctantly, but once the door was opened, word after word crowded into this sacred space, eager to escape and to find their place in the teaching.


The room grew crowded. Verbs squeezed into corners, adjectives vied for space with adverbs. Past participles exchanged opinions with gerunds. Exclamation points picked fights with question marks. Subjects pled their case to objects. Nouns, assembled in a pile which went from floor to ceiling, were almost overrun by marauding commas. Monosyllabic words made peace with multisyllabic contemporaries, while prepositions stood alone. Infinitives mixed things up with conjunctions. Exclamation points stood guard  while commas napped and periods built up stockpiles for the teachings to begin.


The time was right. The dear teacher's life neared completion and he was ready to speak, and speak he did, so the doors to the room opened and the words poured out, tripping over one another on their way out to freedom. The words gathered strength and like a waterfall they poured out of his mouth. The words of the teacher were like a drink of water to those who thirsted. On the other side of the door were many students who awaited these words. They drank them in. The words were so strong that even now, to this very day, we remain the students and the words of the teacher still echo in our ears.



Image created by Ai


 


Other posts from Words Have Wings on Parshat Devarim






 

דְּבָרִ֗ים


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