大象传媒

Good morning!聽For the Jewish community our world is defined as much by what we hear as what we see.聽The biblical relationship between God and the Children of Israel is based not on sight but on what is heard. It is spoken, affirmed, declared, heard, heeded, assented to. It belongs to a culture of the ear, not the eye.聽Many of the key Jewish practices are study and prayer, the word addressed by human beings to God, and the word addressed by God to humanity.聽This stands in contrast to a language saturated with visual metaphors for knowledge. We speak of insight, hindsight, foresight; of a view, a perspective, a vision. We call people perceptive. When we understand something, we say, 鈥淚 see.鈥� 聽In Judaism, however, the key metaphors are all auditory.聽In the Talmud, phrases referring to knowledge, understanding, or tradition, are often variants of the verb shema, meaning 鈥渢o hear.鈥� Nor is this accidental. The God of the Hebrew Bible is invisible. All visual representations are forbidden, some idolatrous. Even the texture of biblical narrative is non-visual. We have no idea of what Abraham or Moses looked like. There is little or no description of landscapes. 聽God showed himself to Moses and to the Israelites not in the image but in the call. When the prophet Elijah perceived God, he heard only a still small voice聽This may explain why our most important prayer is the called the Shema, which means 鈥楬ear鈥� and calls on us to listen and to acknowledge the One God:聽Hear O Israel, the Lord is Our God, the Lord is one.聽聽Amen