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!

Read more about Parshas Haazinu: Past, Present, and Future Are All One