This week's Torah content has been sponsored by Sol and Chummie Azose, in honor of the upcoming 81st birthday of the Rosh ha'Yeshiva, Rabbi Yisroel Chait, and the 91st birthday of Sol's father, Hazzan Isaac Azose. If you're interested in sponsoring a day's or a week's worth of Torah content, you can contact me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com.
Click here for a printer-friendly version of this article, and click here for an audio version.
 |
| a haiku by 12th grade Matt Schneeweiss |
Help! I've Fallen Into Sufi Poetry and I Have No Idea What I'm Doing!
Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I hated poetry. I hated reading it, I hated discussing it, I hated writing it. I recently stumbled upon a trove of poetry assignments that I was “forced” to write in high school, and this haiku (or “haiku”) perfectly captures my stubbornly resentful attitude at the time:
“I hate poetry,”
he said. “No, you really don’t.”
“Yes, I really do.”
This attitude remained staunchly in place for many years after high school. Then I discovered Thoreau. This was the first time I encountered a thinker writing in poetry in prose. That blew my mind. I was reading ideas, but they weren’t expressed in the way I thought ideas had to be expressed. At first, I thought this was just Thoreau, but after seeing examples of this in Bruce Lee, Emerson, Rav Soloveitchik, and others, I identified the quality I enjoyed: being immersed in the world of ideas as perceived by the mind of a poet.
Fast forward to May 2021, when I started reading Tara Brach’s books, and June 2021 when I started listening to her lectures and meditations – all of which are interwoven with excerpts of poetry. Of the several poets whose works are quoted more frequently than others, one has stood out to me: Rumi.
Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī (1207 – 1273 C.E.) was a Persian Islamic teacher, scholar, and philosopher-poet. He was also a Sufi mystic. What does that mean? I have very little idea, other than what I’ve gleaned from the internet (against my own better judgment). But as the Rambam said, “accept the truth from whoever says it,” and I have found truths in these poems. There’s a lot of other stuff in these poems as well – non-truths, mystical flights of fancy, lexical paroxysms – but it’s the truths which interest me.
I am fascinated by Rumi’s cryptic style. Take, for example, such stanzas as “Be empty of worrying. Think of Who created thought!” “Why do you stay in prison when the door is wide open?” “Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.” “Your old life was a frantic running from silence.” Such lines strike me in an entirely different way than the prose I typically read. They stay with me throughout the day, repeatedly calling back my thoughts. The feeling is akin to what Morpheus said to Neo:
What you know, you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life … You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.
What do I hope to get out of my Rumi reading other than truth? Well, for years I’ve learned and taught Tehilim (Psalms), Kinnos (liturgical lamentations), and Selichos (supplicatory penitential prayers). I’ve become more and more in touch with the poetry of these texts, but I often feel like I’m missing something essential. But when I read Rumi’s poetry, I feel like I’m expanding my intellectual imagination. I’m not entirely sure what I mean by that, but that’s what it feels like. My hope is that reading such poetry not in the context of learning will help me unlock the poetry in learning.
I also sense that by exploring these new and unusual forms of thought-in-language, I am familiarizing myself with the boundaries and limitations of language as a medium of thought. Rumi would conclude his poems with statements like: “Let that musician finish this poem.” David ha’Melech ended Tehilim with a chapter about praising Hashem with musical instruments, alluding to the inadequacy of praising Hashem with words. Language is limited, but perhaps by recognizing and striving to transcend these limitations through poetry, we can catch just a fleeting glimpse of the sublime. "Your boundaries are your quest."
______________________________
If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/
If you would like to sponsor an article, shiur, or podcast episode, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone.
Be sure to check out my YouTube channel and my podcasts: "The Mishlei Podcast", "The Stoic Jew" Podcast, "Rambam Bekius" Podcast, "Machshavah Lab" Podcast, "The Tefilah Podcast" For the full guide to all of my Torah content, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment