Parshas Haazinu: The Power of Music
Akiva doesn’t use a pacifier. He just doesn’t like it, and I don’t blame him. It doesn’t exactly have anything yummy coming from it like when he sucks on a bottle, so what’s the point? But I know a lot of babies do like them. A friend recently asked me how I get him to settle to sleep if I don’t give him a pacifier. I told her I sing to him.
You see, Akiva loves music. He loves it if Rabbi Ben sings, he loves it if there’s music playing anywhere, and he even loves it when I sing. (Well, there’s no accounting for taste!) Music just speaks to him, as I think it does for most of us.
Which is exactly why the Torah ends with a song. Music lifts and inspires us. Music can change our mood. It has the power to transcend, to lift our souls closer to G-d. G-d understood that even if we had trouble connecting with His Torah, we could, at least, connect to a song. So He gave us a song, to end the Torah and to help bring us closer to Him.
As for Akiva, well, he’s already singing. Because I sing to him, he has started to sing himself to sleep now. Not only does it make it easy to put him to sleep, since I can just walk away and let him sing himself to sleep, but it’s also achingly cute. Here, have a listen:
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“>Akiva Singing
Shabbat Shalom!
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