Come and Listen, Come and See
by tillerofthesoil
“Our Rabbis taught: שְׁמַע (Shema), Hear, O Israel! YHWH our God, YHWH is One (Deuteronomy 6:4): this was Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi’s recitation of Shema. Rav said once to Rabbi Ḥiyya: I do not see Rabbi accept upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven. In the moment when he passes his hand over his eyes, he accepts upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven” (BT Berakhot 13b).
שְׂאוּ-מָרוֹם עֵינֵיכֶם (Se’u marom eineikhem), Raise your eyes on high (Isaiah 40:26).
Unveil my eyes that I may look upon the wonders of Your teaching (Psalms 119:18).
“Rabbi Abba said, ‘It is written: All the people were seeing הַקּוֹלֹת (ha-qolot), the thunderings (Exodus 20:15). Were seeing—the verse should read were hearing. However, we have learned as follows: Those הַקּוֹלֹת (ha-qolot), voices, were engraved in that darkness, cloud, and dense fog, and were visible in them as a body is visible, and they saw what they saw and heard what they heard from within that darkness, dense fog, and cloud. From within the vision they saw, they were illumined by the supernal radiance and knew what later generations coming after them would not know. They all saw face-to-face, as is written: Face-to-face YHWH spoke [with you…] (Deuteronomy 5:4)” (Zohar 2:81a-b).
Sight and sound are linked in prophetic/ecstatic experience:
שְׂאוּ-מָרוֹם עֵינֵיכֶם (Se’u marom eineikhem), Raise your eyes on high (Isaiah 40:26)—שְׁמַע (Shema), Hear.
Isaiah 40:1-26 is the Haftarah (a portion from the Prophets read after the reading from the Torah on Sabbaths, festivals, and fast days) for parasha Va-etḥannan which contains the declaration of Shema Yisra’el (Deuteronomy 6:4).
“You will find that the Hebrew language substitutes the apprehension made by one sense for that made by another” (Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed 51a).
The Talmud Bavli, compiled in exile, employs the phrase “come and listen,” when beginning a teaching. The Talmud Yerushalmi, and the Midrash Rabbah, of the Land of Israel, however, employs “come and see.”
שְׁמַעתִּי (Shmatti), I have heard, כָּל-מִצְוֹת יְהוָה (Kal mitsvot Adonai), all the commands of YHWH [spelled out fully: כף למד מם צדי וו תו יוד הא וו הא] (Numbers 15:39), וְקִדַּשְׁתִּי (ve-qiddashtti), and I will sanctify (Ezekiel 36:23), are each numerically equivalent.
“This is the mystery: Close your eye and turn your eyeball, and those shining, glowing colors are revealed. Permission to see is granted only with eyes shut and concealed, for they are supernally concealed, standing above those colors that are seen and do not glow” (Zohar 2:23b).