torah

The path to eloquence

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Many years ago, I explored a new yeshiva at a transition point in my life. I was barely 19 years old, and I was trying to decide whether I would pursue an exclusively Talmudic education or combine my studies with college courses. I decided to spend the spring semester in an elite institution devoted only to Talmud, to determine whether this approach suited me.

I quickly learned that the senior students were organized in a kind of hierarchy that reflected their respective erudition and their relationship to the world-famous dean of the school. I was somewhat impressed by all of them, but one in particular stood out for me. I do not recall his name, but I can close my eyes and easily conjure up an image of him.

He was about 25 years old, of medium height, thin and wiry. He had a precision to him resulting from his carefully measured movements. When he walked, he seemed to take each step intentionally. When he moved his hands, there was deliberateness to his movements. The words that came out of his mouth were few, his comments short and to the point.

I remember being impressed by how he sat down, first brushing the dust off of his desk and chair, then opening his book cautiously, and then taking from his pocket a plastic six-inch ruler. He placed the ruler under the line of text that was his focus, as if he intended to literally measure the words on the page.

I was fascinated by him and began to inquire about his background. I soon learned that he was the wunderkind of the school. His scholarly achievements impressed everyone.

In early adolescence, he had found his studies frustrating. Had this occurred a decade or two later, he would probably have been diagnosed as learning disabled. He was not as bright as his peers, had great difficulties following the give and take of Talmudic passages, and couldn’t handle the bilingual curriculum.

At the suggestion of his high school’s guidance counselor, he made a trip to Israel to study there, something uncommon in those days. While there, still frustrated, he sought the blessing and counsel of the famous sage Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, better known as the Chazon Ish.

This great man, then in his waning years, encouraged the young lad to persist in his studies, but to limit his daily efforts to small, “bite-sized chunks” of text. He concluded the interview with a blessing, quoting a passage in Psalms that asserts that Torah study can make even a dullard wise.

I befriended the young man, five or six years my senior, and attempted to enlist him as my study partner. But his keen intelligence and the broad scope of his knowledge were too advanced for me. The advice and blessing of the Chazon Ish, coupled with years of toil and commitment, had the desired effect. He may indeed have once been a dullard, but he was one no longer. He was now an intellectual giant.

Although I did not learn much Talmud from this fellow, I did learn an important life lesson. I learned that one can overcome his limitations if he persists. I learned that one can undo his natural challenges with wise counsel, spiritual inspiration, and diligence and dedication to the task.

It was much later in life that I realized I could have learned the same important life lesson from this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Devarim, and from no less a personage than Moshe himself.

This week, we begin the book of Devarim. Almost all of it consists of the major address that Moshe gave the Jewish people before he took his final leave from them. “These are the words that Moshe addressed to all of Israel” (Devarim 1:1).

Although it is now the long, hot summer, we all remember the cold wintry day six months ago when we first encountered Moshe, back in Shemot. We then read how Moshe addressed the Al-mighty and expressed his inability to accept the divine mission. He said, “Please, O L-rd, I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You have spoken to Your servant; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue…” (Shemot 4:10). Moses stammered and stuttered. He suffered from a genuine speech defect.

How surprising it is, then, that in this week’s Torah portion, forty years later, he is capable of delivering the lengthy and eloquent address we will read every week for the next several months! How did he overcome his limitations? What are the secrets of his path to eloquence?

These questions are asked in the Midrash Tanchuma. There, the rabbis speak of the astounding power of sincere and sustained Torah study. They speak too of the effects of years of practice. And they emphasize the healing that comes about from a connection with the One Above.

The rabbis could have cited G-d’s own response to Moshe’s initial complaint: “Who gives a man speech? Who makes him dumb or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the L-rd?”

But they chose another proof text entirely to illustrate that man, with G-d’s help, can overcome his handicaps. They quote instead a beautiful passage in the book of Yeshaya: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb shall shout aloud; for waters shall burst forth in the desert, streams in the wilderness” (35:5-6).

We seldom contemplate the development, nay transformation, of the man who was Moshe. But it is important that we do so, because, although we each have our unique challenges and personal handicaps, we are capable of coping with them, and often of overcoming them. We all can develop, and we all can potentially transform ourselves.

This week, and in all of the weeks ahead, as we read Moshe’s masterful valedictory and are impressed with the beauty of his language, we must strive to remember that he was not always a skilled orator. Quite the contrary, he was once an aral sfatayim, a man of impeded speech, who grew to achieve the divine blessing of shedding his impediments and addressing his people with the inspiring and eminent long speech that is the book of Deuteronomy.

 

He can be a role model for us all.