Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig: Listening In, Reading Out? What the Bible Says Out Loud
Why is podcasting growing in popularity? (IsraelSeen has loads of them: https://israelseen.com/category/podcasts/) Meanwhile, to take the other side of the coin, why is time spent reading books and other types of long-form print declining, especially among the younger generation? This week’s Torah portion provides an answer.
As with every Jewish conundrum, the way to start solving the mystery is to ask another question: why do Sabbath synagogue attendees listen to the Torah portion being spoken/sung out loud – when it would be far more time efficient for every person to sit and read it by themselves? After all, we can read words about THREE to FOUR times faster than we can hear them.
Here’s what this week’s Torah portion Re’eh has to say, indirectly relating to this question:
Deut. 11: 26 – Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; 27 – The blessing, if ye shall LISTEN (tish’mi’u) to the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you this day…
Note the Torah’s use here of the word “listen.” True, it could also mean “abide by” – but a few verses later we get this:
Deut. 11: 32 – And ye shall OBSERVE (u’shmartem) to do all the statutes and the ordinances which I set before you this day.
In other words (literally!), there would be no need to repeat the commandment of obeying God’s commandments here if the original word (tish’mi’u) meant “obey.” Simply put, God (through Moses) is telling the Israelites that they must HEAR the commandments to be able to fulfill them – and if they don’t HEAR them, then disaster awaits:
Deut. 11: 28 – And the curse, if ye shall NOT LISTEN to the commandments of the Lord your God but turn out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not known.
So, the question we have to ask is this: what’s so important about HEARING the commandments? There are two aspects to answering this question – both having to do with the world of communications.
First, the act of hearing is better in a group setting – not just one-on-one. That’s why we also have this following verse:
Deut. 11: 29 – And it shall come to pass, when the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land where you go to possess it, that thou shall set the blessing upon mount Gerizim, and the curse upon mount Ebal.
Hearing the commandments on a hill is a collective experience – leading to the next question: why is it important that we hear the Torah collectively? Two reasons. First, because we can’t claim “I didn’t know about that commandment” – everyone sees everyone else who’s there together. There’s not only a collective hearing, but also a collective responsibility for being there. Second, if there’s something that we hear in this setting that isn’t clear to any of us, we can ask someone around us. In other words, we don’t have the excuse “I didn’t understand.” Really? Then simply turn to your neighbors and ask them!
If the first aspect of “hearing” has a sociological basis, the second is more related to sensory psychology: we remember things better when we HEAR them than when we READ them. Why? I already provided the answer: because we read much, much faster than we hear, our brain cannot easily recall all the written words that we read. The slower speaking/hearing pace enables us to better recollect what was transmitted.
There’s another factor here that influences “recall”: the real human voice vs. the disembodied author we cannot see behind the written page. This brings us full circle back to my original question. Think about our media world today: fewer people are reading – but increasingly more are listening to podcasts, TED talks, lectures, etc. And progressively those podcasts are being accompanied by a visual component; even radio stations have started televising their DJs/radio personalities talking their stuff! They understand the human need: when we combine human sound with sight i.e., seeing the person doing the talking, memory becomes even stronger. The greatest memory transmission system, of course, is the in-person lecture (and I’m not saying that because it’s my profession).
Indeed, one can add to this the very first word in this week’s Torah portion: Behold/See (Re’eh)! The best form of deep learning where we need to remember well what was communicated is when we can see the person who’s talking to us. And that’s precisely what happens when one is sitting in synagogue following the weekly Torah portion being read out loud.
