A Witness to the Existence of God: Music in the Work of Abraham J. Heschel

Judaism, Fall, 2000 by Michael Heymel

In Heschel's texts one encounters again and again this way of perceiving reality, whenever the discussion concerns religious life. I offer the following examples from his book, God in Search of Man:

The sense for the "miracles which are daily with us," the sense for the "continual marvels," is the source of prayer. There is no worship, no music, no love, if we take for granted the blessings or defeats of living. (GM 49)

The most precious gifts come to us unawares and remain unnoted. God's grace resounds in our lives like a staccato. Only by retaining the seemingly disconnected notes do we acquire the ability to grasp the theme. (GM 142)

The voice of God is incongruous with the ear of man. Symbolically, it is not said of the people at Sinai, the whole people heard the voice, but rather, the whole people saw the voice. (Exodus 20:18)

The Baal Shem offered a simile. A musician was playing on a very beautiful instrument, and the music so enraptured the people that they were driven to dance ecstatically. Then a deaf man who knew nothing of music passed by, and seeing the enthusiastic dancing of the people he decided they must be insane. Had he been wise he would have sensed their joy and rapture and joined their dancing.

We do not hear the voice. We only see the words in the Bible. Even when we are deaf, we can see the rapture of the words. (GM 249-250)

Only living with its words, only sympathy with its pathos, will open our ear to its voice. Biblical words are like musical signs of a divine harmony which only the finest chords of the soul can utter. It is the sense of the holy that perceives the presence of God in the Bible. (GM 252)

What are we to understand from such similes? Music does not exist without a sense of wonder for the miracles that surround us in all aspects of our lives. Heschel speaks of music in the same breath as worship and love-all of them postures which are themselves transcendent. Common to both is the stance of radical amazement. In contrast to other acts of perception which concern themselves with apart of reality, "radical amazement refers to all of reality" (GM 46). Heschel writes, "Awareness of the divine begins with wonder" (GM 46).

Music requires the sensitivity and aptitude to perceive musical processes and understand them in their interrelatedness. Such a capacity, a spiritual consciousness, is also necessary in order for us to recognize the grace of God in our lives. It requires a special sensibility, with which we allow ourselves to be moved by the words of the Bible. The parable of the Baal Shem Tov illustrates that people "who do not feel and experience the glory of God, and his presence in the world, are in a certain sense in the same condition as the deaf and mute: that they possess no sense for music, because the corresponding organ is absent or disabled." [14]

Yet the very soul of a deaf person can be touched by that which she sees! Just as music can engage people through musicians' visible movements and its physically perceptible vibrations of sound, so can God's presence become perceptible, if only one has cultivated a 'sense of the divine.'