Ha'azinu: Rain and Dew

At the beginning of the poem that is Parshat Ha’azinu, Moshe begins with a prayer for the nature of his words. He says:

“יַעֲרֹף כַּמָּטָר לִקְחִי תִּזַּל כַּטַּל אִמְרָתִי כִּשְׂעִירִם עֲלֵי־דֶשֶׁא וְכִרְבִיבִים עֲלֵי־עֵשֶׂב׃"

“May my discourse come down as the rain,

My speech flow like the dew,

Like showers on young growth,

Like droplets on the grass.” 

The metaphors of rain and dew, suggesting an easy-flowing speech. Rain and dew seem to be two parallel images of nourishing water, doubled for poetic emphasis. But Chazal, in Sifrei Devarim, insist that rain and dew carry different meanings from one another — after all, there are no excess words in the Torah. 

Rashi summarizes the midrash, which I had the delight to learn in depth from my friends Yael Jaffe and Hannah Kapnik Ashar, as follows:

תזל כטל: שֶׁהַכֹּל שְׂמֵחִים בּוֹ, לְפִי שֶׁהַמָּטָר יֵשׁ בּוֹ עֲצָבִים לַבְּרִיּוֹת, כְּגוֹן הוֹלְכֵי דְרָכִים וּמִי שֶׁהָיָה בוֹרוֹ מָלֵא יַיִן.

"Flow like dew:”  in which everybody rejoices. Since rain involves distress for [some] people, like travelers and one who has a pit full of wine.

Rain and dew are not the same for everyone. While it seems at first blush that rain is a blessing, helping needed crops grow, for some it is instead distressing: for the traveler who finds herself cold and wet, the vintner carefully tending a pit full of wine which will be diluted or spoiled by the unavoidable water. While Rashi does not include this context, in Sifrei Devarim, this teaching is part of a lengthy passage about the trials and joys of Torah, and it is Torah which can be either like rain or like dew — it can help, or it can cause despair. 

We are about to enter a liturgical season defined by prayers for rain. Though we pray that the rain that comes will be gentle and not harmful, the liturgy nevertheless does request rain. What is it like to be in shul as the traveler or the vintner, hearing those around you beg for rain when your associations with it are being cold and wet, or scrambling against serious material loss? 

Teshuva, too, can be like this. We are currently in the Aseret Yemei Teshuva, the Ten Days of Repentance. This is the marquee season of teshuva — in tefillot and in sermons, we are pushed to examine our deeds, to return to our better selves, and to make right our wrongs. 

The Rambam, in the Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuva 2:1, offers the following definition of teshuva:

אֵי זוֹ הִיא תְּשׁוּבָה גְּמוּרָה? זֶה שֶׁבָּא לְיָדוֹ דָּבָר שֶׁעָבַר בּוֹ וְאֶפְשָׁר בְּיָדוֹ לַעֲשׂוֹתוֹ וּפֵרַשׁ וְלֹא עָשָׂה מִפְּנֵי הַתְּשׁוּבָה, לֹא מִיִּרְאָה וְלֹא מִכִּשְׁלוֹן כֹּחַ. כֵּיצַד? הֲרֵי שֶׁבָּא עַל אִשָּׁה בַּעֲבֵרָה וּלְאַחַר זְמַן נִתְיַחֵד עִמָּהּ וְהוּא עוֹמֵד בְּאַהֲבָתוֹ בָּהּ וּבְכֹחַ גּוּפוֹ וּבַמְּדִינָה שֶׁעָבַר בָּהּ וּפָרַשׁ וְלֹא עָבַר, זֶהוּ בַּעַל תְּשׁוּבָה גְּמוּרָה.

What is complete repentance? He who once more had the opportunity to repeat a sin, but separated himself from it and did not do it because of repentance, not out of fear or lack of strength. How so? One who knew a woman sinfully, and after some time he was secluded with her again, and he still desired her as before, and retained his physical strength, and was in the same place where he had sinned, if he withdrew without sinning, this is one who is completely repentant.

When I had encountered this text during my Jewish education, the example itself was mostly elided. What mattered was that for a person to be a complete “ba’al tshuva,” they needed to find themselves in the identical situation in which they had originally sinned and resist the temptation purely out of their own will and no external factors. The example could just as easily have been “a woman finds herself looking at the same tempting cheeseburger in the same McDonald’s and declined to eat it.” But the example the Rambam offers is not a cheeseburger. It is a woman. 

The woman here is not a religious or moral actor in her own right. She is essentially an object, there only as a blank surface onto which to protect the man’s teshuva. But what would it feel like for that woman to once again find herself in a room with a man who had at very best been a partner with her in wrongdoing and at worst sexually assaulted her? What if she would prefer to not be alone with this person — not least because yichud, seclusion, has its own halakhic weight? 

The Rambam does not imagine the experience of this woman, does not see her as also participating in someone’s teshuva process. And too often, teshuva discourses leave some experiences neglected, thrust to the side or written over in preference for simpler narratives of individual self-improvement. 

Drashot exhorting congregants to focus on the wrongs we have done and liturgy that is designed to stir feelings of guilt can land like harsh, painful rain on the smarting souls of people who find ourselves on the “opposite” end of the teshuva process. For those who have fresh or strong experiences of harm, the ideas that for many are growth-spurring dew can become destructive rain. And in a society that encourages individuals to feel guilty for what they may have done to earn others’ mistreatment, hitting the chest in vidui can strike emotionally like heavy hailstones. 

I don’t have vidui in me this year. I’ve been wandering out of the room toward the end of slichot whenever I attend. My heart is just too raw right now; there is a kind of cracked-open heart that is the ideal of Yom Kippur, but that is not the kind I am feeling. In what is God willing a lifetime of Yom Kippurs and innumerable viduis, this will be a year when I will just sit in shul, and not repent.

Alongside the poetry of Ha’azinu, I am carrying this excerpt from Mary Oliver’s classic “Wild Geese:” 

You do not have to be good. 

You do not have to walk on your knees 

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 

You only have to let the soft animal of your body 

love what it loves. 

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Some years on Yom Kippur, we might only be able to show up in the soft animals of our bodies and tell God about our despair. We might need to shelter from the rain until we can feel the gentle kiss of dew on our skin. The world goes on.