48 Ways - 002 Real Listening

Listening Attentively

The second kinyan (acquirement) of the 48 kinyanim necessary to acquire the Torah that is listed by the Mishnah is “shemiyas ha’ozen”, “listening with the ears”.

Why is it necessary for the Mishnah to mention that we must listen with our “ears”? Isn’t it enough just say “to listen”?

The Tiferes Yisrael explains that listening with the “ears” means to “listen attentively.” Let us try to understand what it means to listen “attentively”.

There is a concept that each of the 48 kinyanim actually includes all of the others; they are not just separate and random aspects from each other. A kinyan makes you acquire something; any of the 48 kinyanim are all-inclusive. Somehow, the quality of listening includes all the other qualities of the Torah; it is a kinyan that helps one acquire the Torah.

Listening At Har Sinai

These 48 kinyanim were also at Har Sinai, where the Torah was first acquired. Where do we find listening by Har Sinai? There were voices and thunder; the Sages say there were five kinds of sounds. The Aseres Hadibros (the Ten Commandments) were the voice of Hashem, and it could be heard from end of the world to the other. The voice of Hashem “did not stop”, as the possuk says.

If this voice did not stop, why don’t people hear it? The Baal Shem Tov said that it is because people aren’t on the level they were at Har Sinai, and this is why they don’t hear it.

The Jewish people said “Naaseh” (We will do) before they said “Nishma” (We will hear). They were ready to “do” before they “heard”. They were ready to do the will of Hashem – and that was why they were able to hear the endless voice of Hashem. But when someone isn’t ready to do the will of Hashem, he doesn’t “do”, so he doesn’t come to “hear” either.

The mitzvah of remembering Har Sinai thus is not about remembering the past. It means to remember now what standing at Har Sinai was like – it must affect you now.

If a person accepts the mitzvos first – he has “Naaseh”, and then he can come to “Nishma”, to hear.

Thus, in order to receive the Torah, a person has to first accept the yoke of the mitzvos – to be ready to do what Hashem wants and be able to “hear” Hashem’s will.

Accepting The Mitzvos Enables You To Hear Hashem’s Voice

Let us explain this even more clearly.

Why did Hashem make it that His voice was heard to the other one of the world? Why didn’t it suffice that just the Jewish people would hear His voice? The reason was to show that a person needs to always hear Hashem, wherever he is in the world, in every generation. It is a voice that resonates throughout all of history. Hashem’s voice can be found everywhere. If a person hears Hashem’s voice, everything is different.

When a person accepts the Torah – meaning, if he first accepts the mitzvos – he has the tools to be able to hear Hashem’s voice.

Why doesn’t a person hear Hashem’s voice? It is only because he isn’t at the inner state of hearing His voice. Hashem is always speaking to us, but we don’t always hear Him. All of Creation is His word; He spoke to us through the Aseres Hadibros.

Each thing in Creation is known in Hebrew as “dovor”, a “thing.” The word “dovor” is from the word “medaber” – speech. This shows us that everything speaks to us – the voice of Hashem speaks to us in everything, if we hear it.

Hearing Hashem’s Voice In Everything

The kinyan of “shemiyas ha’ozen”, listening, does not simply mean that a student has to listen to his Rebbi (teacher). It is to be able to listen to the “word of Hashem” - hearing Hashem in the words of the Torah.

A person finds something in the street; what does he do? If it has a siman (sign of identification), the halachah is that he must return it. Does he hear Hashem talking to him as well through the lost object? Does he hear Hashem’s voice in the object, telling him to return it? Everything has in it the word of Hashem, and we can hear Hashem talking to us in something. The question is, if we hear this voice.

That is why Torah requires “attentive listening,” as the Tiferes Yisrael writes. The Torah only speaks to someone who hears Hashem in everything.

All of Creation Is Saying Something

We will try to understand this even more.

How should we view our life? We know that anything we encounter in our life is not happenstance; everything is Divinely ordained.

Let’s take look at our conversations, which is our dibbur (speech). Our force of dibbur is essentially what connects us to others. Can two people be friends with each other if they never talk to each other? No, they cannot. Only through talking can we connect to others.

Hashem created many people. Does He want us all to remain separate, or does He want us to connect with each other?

Hashem created people, who can talk, but He also created plants and rocks, inanimate objects. We know that Hashem created everything from the Torah. Why was it necessary for these things to come from the Torah? It is because really, everything in Creation is all one unit.

When a person walks by a mountain, does he ever think that he is connected to the mountain? Does he ever see himself as connected to the rest of Creation? Usually not. But really, all of Creation is one, and it all connects.

“Shemiyas Ha’ozen”, to listen attentively, is to listen to everything that’s going on in Creation. All of Creation speaks one thing alone: the word of Hashem. “From the word of Hashem the heavens were made.”

But just like every musical instrument sounds different, so does each thing in Creation sound different. Yet they are all saying one thing: the word of Hashem.

Listening Enables You To Connect

Why is “listening” listed as one of the 48 kinyanim of Torah? What is special about listening that you need it to acquire the Torah? You have to listen to anything if you want to learn about it; if you want to know science, you also have to listen to a science teacher. So what is the special quality of “listening” that you need for Torah?

‘Shemiyas ha’ozen’ is not just to listen better because you don’t know something. It is to connect to a matter, through “listening” to it.

Chazal say that if a person has a worry in his heart, he should tell it to others. Imagine if we would tell a person to tell over his worries to a tape recorder, and the tape recorder will listen to him and record everything; would that satisfy him? No one would want this, because we need others to listen to us. Why do we want people to listen to us? Because we want connection with others. We want others to listen to us and connect to our feelings.

When a person really listens to others, he can really feel what they feel. Others’ joy is his joy, and others’ pain is his own.

Therefore, to “listen” does not just mean superficially to “listen”.  The deeper implication of “listening” is toconnect to what we are hearing. People want their friends to listen to them because they want connection, not just because they want someone to listen.

Why did Hashem have to tell us the Aseres Hadibros? Don’t we already see it written in the Torah? It is clearly because it is not enough to know what He wants. For that, we can just see His words written in the Torah. We needed to hear His voice, so we could connect to what Hashem said.

In order to really connect to someone else, you have to hear him talking. If two people read each other’s writing, will that cause a connection? Writing to each other and reading each other’s words doesn’t form a connection! Only by listening to each other can people have a relationship.

(That is also the deep reason why a man is not allowed to hear a woman singing, because by hearing her voice in this pleasant way, he connects to her, which is forbidden.)

If we think about it, there is nothing inanimate in creation. Everything speaks to us! Everything says the word of Hashem. Thus, the concept that we must become connected to all of Creation is not a connection to bland, inanimate objects --because everything is really very alive. Everything speaks to us.

Understanding What A Relationship Is

What is the kinyan of “shemiyas ha’ozen” which we must acquire for the Torah? It means to connect to the Torah, out of a love to hear Hashem’s word.

What connects a husband and wife to each other? Their physical desire for each other…or the chibbah (fondness) they have for each other? If their connection to each other is based on their physical desire for each other, this is not a real connection. But if they are connected to each other out of love for each other, this is connection.

The same can be applied to all other relationships as well (though it is not as intense as the husband and wife relationship). In all our connections we have people, we are either connected to others out of real love for them, or it is because we have some element of ‘desire’ for them, some kind of physical element of attraction, which is not a real love for another, and it is based on superficial circumstances.

These are two completely different forces in the soul: love, and desire. Only through real love can we cherish our relationship with another. When our relationship with another is coming from some desire for other person, and not out of a sense of love for him, it is not love, but desire.

Think about the following. When two people become friends, are they friends with each other because they have a ‘desire’ for each other’s company (which is what many people would say), or is it because they really have a love for each other?

Connecting To The Torah Out of Love

Connecting to the Torah is only through love for it, not through a mere desire for it. We will explain why.

Why does a person listen to his child? He doesn’t listen to his child because he loves to hear about what his child is talking about. If that would be the case, if his child doesn’t keep him interested, he wouldn’t care to listen. But a person loves to listen to his child talking, even if his child is saying nothing smart or noteworthy. Why? For one simple reason: because he loves to listen to his child. It is chibbah, fondness, a real love - it is not merely a desire.

Listening From Love Vs. Listening From Desire

All of us have two kinds of listening: listening to what we like to hear, and listening to the voice of the person talking to us.

The first kind of listening is coming from a place of desire in ourselves. We are listening to another because we are enjoying what he is saying; he is saying something interesting or enjoyable, so we listen. But the second kind of listening is a deeper kind of listening. It is to listen to another simply because we enjoy hearing his voice.

In the first ability of listening, a person is only interested in hearing what he likes listening to; if he doesn’t like the topic, he doesn’t listen. But there is another kind of listening a person can access: to listen to another’s voice, for the sake of just hearing someone else’s voice.

Enjoying The Sweetness of Another’s Voice

It is written (in Shir HaShirim), “Let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet.” There is a kind of deep listening in which we don’t listen because of the words being said, but because the voice we are hearing is sweet to our ears.

With the first kind of listening, a person only listens to what he’s interested in listening to. If it’s not interesting, he doesn’t listen. This kind of person, when he likes the topics being discussed in the page of Gemara in front of him, will learn it, but when he gets to a part in the Gemara that’s uninteresting to him, he doesn’t bother to exert himself in it. He only pays attention to what he’s interested in…

If a person only likes to hear “words” that are interesting, he will not be able to raise children either. Such a person only likes to listen when there’s something interesting to listen to; if his children don’t interest him with what they like to talk about, he doesn’t listen to them. In order to be able to raise children, a person needs to listen to his children simply because he loves to hear their voices; it’s not about what they say.

If a person learns how to enjoy listening to just the voice of someone else, he will find that is able to really connect to others. If a person only connects to people when he likes what they say, he won’t be able to connect and form relationships.

In marriage, if a husband and wife only listen to each other when there’s something interesting to talk about, they will not be able to live together in harmony. In order to have a happy marriage, a husband and wife have to listen to each other just to enjoy the sweetness of the other’s voice. Real listening is not to listen only when it’s interesting to hear, but to listen to the other’s voice, to find the voice of the other to be sweet to listen to. “Let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet.”

This is a subtle point about our soul. Sometimes you hear things that aren’t correct; not all the time do you hear things you like to hear about. Your friend or your wife says something that you know is wrong, or you disagree, or you hear something unpleasant. Does that mean that now you can’t connect to them?! Listening to others is not about what you like about or not. It is about listening to someone else’s voice and to enjoy the sweetness of it!

“Shemiyas Ha’ozen” thus includes two things: the ability to hear someone’s words, and the ability to listen to someone’s voice. We must be able to the “word of Hashem”, as well as the “voice” of Hashem. The same applies for relationships – we should listen to other’s words, and we should also listen to another’s voice.

If a person only hears the words, but not the voice – he is missing a chibbah for the matter. He only hears the body of the words, not the soul of the words.

Sometimes we know what Hashem is telling us, and sometimes we don’t know what He is telling us. But even when we don’t know what He is telling us, we can still know what He wants – just by listening to His voice…

An Overhaul On Relationships

If a person lives this way, he will find himself making many friends. He will live in a world of achdus (unity).

Instead of being friends with one person and not with another kind of person, he’ll find himself making friends with even the loneliest and most anti-social kind of person. Instead of being so picky about who his friends are, he won’t differentiate between personalities, because he has uncovered the ability of the soul to connect to others out of a true sense of achdus. He isn’t going after his personal tastes – he wants to connect to everyone, because every voice is sweet for him to hear: “Let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet.”

A person can go his whole life living in a cold, lonely world – or he can live in a world full of friendship and connection with others.

There are many lonely people in the world - and many of them did it to themselves. They don’t know how to listen to others just for the sake of listening to another person’s voice; they never learned how. They only listened to someone who is saying something enjoyable or interesting to listen to, so they never really connected to others; and that is why end up lonely and with no friends.

Unifying With The Jewish People

All 600,000 souls said at once “Naaseh v’nishmah”. How could they say it all at once? It was because they were all connected in unity. This is how you prepare for accepting the Torah at Har Sinai – it is all about unity.

The words here should first be heard on an intellectual level - and then they should become internalized into your life.

Inner Advice On How To Make Friends

If you learn how to really listen to others as we explained here, you are able to take even your greatest enemy in your life and turn him into your friend! That is the power of real listening.

This is a tried, tested, and proven method to form real friendships. With real listening, you can change another’s heart from hating you into loving you! And an even greater gain than this is, that when you truly listen to others, you will find that if you had hated someone previously, through listening to other’s voices and enjoying the sweetness of another’s voice as you listen, your own heart can be changed from hatred to love, towards that other person whom you once hated!

So the advice is to get used to listening to others just for the sake of hearing another person’s voice. It is not about enjoying the words that the other person is saying and the topics that other people are discussing in their conversations. Just listen to another’s voice as he is talking, and allow yourself to enjoy a sweetness in hearing the voice of another, to find his voice sweet in your ears – as it is written, “Let me hear you voice, for your voice is sweet.”