Torah in Israel: Surround sound, Sensurround

When I was younger, and movies were an event people enjoyed going to — “Come on, let’s go, I don’t want to come in late after the movie has started!” — I remember the introduction of multi-sensory technologies that theaters and moviemakers were developing to enhance the visual and auditory experience. The most prominent were surround sound and Sensurround, which gave a distinctive sound and feel to the action on the screen.

These were eventually incorporated into attractions in amusement parks such as Disney World and Universal Studios. Audiences could then experience high-fidelity audio, along with tactile and visual effects, such as the rumble of an earthquake, the heat of a fire or even a splash of liquid. (Please don’t even mention “Smell-O-Vision,” a short-lived olfactory experience from the 1960s that never really worked.)

When I trained to become a neurologist, one of the disciplines we studied was the understanding of different sensory experiences — visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and taste — and how their disruption could affect patients. Some were associated with specific diseases such as stroke, diabetes, multiple sclerosis or brain tumors.

It was then that I became aware of a neurological curiosity known as synesthesia. This is the condition whereby the stimulation of one sense automatically and involuntarily stimulates another.

For example, certain affected individuals can hear music and see distinct colors or see a number or read a word and associate it with a particular color, taste or feel. It is a genetically determined curiosity, relatively rare, occurring in 2 to 5 percent of the population and not associated with any specific diseases or disorders.

At the time, it occurred to me that I’d heard of this before my medical training, which leads us unpredictably to Chag Shavuot. For as has often been said, “Everything is in the Torah,” and synesthesia is no exception.

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Turning to Shemot 20:15, part of the Torah reading on Shavuot — after the extraordinary experience of hearing the delivery of the Aseret HaDibrot (at least the first two from G-d Himself) the Torah recounts, “V’chol ha’am roim et hakolot v’et halapidim v’et kol ha-shofar v’et ha-har ashein — the entire people saw the thunder and the flames, the sound of the shofar and the smoking mountain.”

They saw the thunder. They saw the sound of the shofar. That’s synesthesia. You don’t see sound, you hear it.

As Rashi says, as a result of Gilui Shechina (Divine Revelation), Hashem raised Am Yisrael to such a level that they were able to see what is normally heard.

Living in Israel, this extraordinary, all-encompassing, multi-sensory Torah experience has been brought home to me on an even more profound level.

I wake up in the morning in my Jerusalem apartment on Gidon Street. That’s Gidon, the famous biblical judge mentioned in Judges, Shoftim 6-8. An unlikely hero, he was ultimately so righteous and successful that he was begged by the people to become their king, but turned it down, like an ancient George Washington, stating, “Hashem Yimshol Bachem (Hashem will rule over you).”

• • •

As I proceed, I turn down Naftali and then Asher streets, named for two of Yaakov’s sons. Sometimes I take a shortcut through Ben Azzai Street, named after the Talmudic scholar, the Tanna Shimon Ben Azzai. He was both extremely pious and brilliant, including both megillot, Shir Hashirim and Kohelet, to complete the final canon of Tanach.

Tragically, he was one of the four who entered Pardes, the unfathomable study of Kabbalah and the mysteries of the Divine, which only Rabbi Akiva was able to enter and emerge from unscathed.

Ben Azzai died, but not before he, as the Midrash tells us, was able to connect Torah to Neviim and to Ketuvim in his understanding of Maaseh Merkavah, the Divine Chariot, “with flames dancing around him and his words of Torah rejoicing, as the words in the Torah rejoiced on the day the Torah was given in the flames of Har Sinai.”

This connects him to Shavuot, the day of Matan Torah, with Maaseh Merkavah being the haftara for the first day of Shavuot.

I have touched on Torah, Navi, Ketuvim, Mishnah, Gemara, Aggadata and Zohar, just by encountering some street signs, in under five minutes, and I haven’t even gotten to shul yet.

• • •

In Israel, Torah learning surrounds you, envelops you, seeks you out. You just have to let it in. As the Kotzker Rebbe famously answered, when asked, “Where is G-d?”: Wherever you let Him in.”

It can happen at the most unlikely places and times, sometimes quite humorously. For example, at Shabbat Kiddush they served a delicacy that can best be described as a small hot dog in filo dough, what in the States are commonly called “franks in a blanket,” or what non-Jews call “pigs in a blanket.” In Israel, they are called Moshe ba’Teva (Moses in the basket), recalling the biblical story of Moshe Rabenu as a baby placed by his mother in the basket to save him from the murderous designs of the evil Pharaoh.

Years ago, while viewing television in my Israel apartment, I watched some American sitcoms with Hebrew subtitles so I could learn Hebrew expressions, bituyim.

On the sitcom “Frasier,” one character says to the other, “What’s that got to do with it?” and the Hebrew subtitle is “ma inyan shmita etzel Har Sinai” (literally, what’s shmita got to do with Mount Sinai, a Jewish version of “What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China”)?

But what’s most striking is that this is a quote from the first Rashi in Parshat Behar. I’m watching a silly sitcom in Jerusalem and I’m learning Torah with Rashi. I laughed, and then I literally cried tears of joy.

You can learn Torah anywhere, anytime, easily in Israel. Just walking down the street or watching television. You’ve just got to let it in.

Chag Shavuot Sameach v’Shabbat Shalom!

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com