Holy power of word and vibration

I often think about the studies we had with the Chevra around power and magic of word. We have learned before that G’d created this World with the words, but in our class we also learned that each one of us has a power of creating and destroying our own world using “magic” of words. Every one of you probably experienced your world destroyed by ugly, cruel words spoken carelessly by someone who is/was important in your life. All of us were uplifted by inspirational words of great, enlightened souls, and by just simple, kind words offered to us by our friends or just by-passers. Personally I know these were not by-passers at all, it was Elijah, but I digress.

In a spirit of “The Evolution meets Tradition”, motto articulated to me by Maggid Shir’az, I would like to pose a question – What is a word? from a perspective of the world of matter.

word �� (w�rd) KEY �
NOUN:

1. A sound or a combination of sounds, or its representation in writing or printing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of a single morpheme or of a combination of morphemes.

and then Sound?

sound ¹ �� (sound) KEY �
NOUN:

1. Vibrations transmitted through an elastic solid or a liquid or gas, with frequencies in the approximate range of 20 to 20,000 hertz, capable of being detected by human organs of hearing.
2. Transmitted vibrations of any frequency.
3. The sensation stimulated in the organs of hearing by such vibrations in the air or other medium.

Now we are up to something – Sound, Vibration. Modern physics teaches us that all known matter is a vibration, and that includes the matter of my body. So when the sounds of a right music combine with a sounds of right words and resonate with vibration of my body, it can create a magic phenomena of harmonic resonance, and these words just give me chills:

There’s a blaze of light in every word.
It doesn’t matter which you heard.
The holy or the broken Hallelujah.

I did my best, it wasn’t much.
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch.
I told the truth. I didn’t come to fool ya.
And even though it all went wrong,
I’ll stand before the lord of song
with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.

Now try them with the music – The video.

 

פּושׁקנצא- the she-raven

B”H

Don’t bother looking up pushkantza in your Hebrew dictionary. It ain’t there. You can tell by the spelling (the final alef) that this is not a native Hebrew word. The modern Hebrew term for raven is orev shachor עור שׁחור, literally, a black crow. I wondered if pushkantza might be of Aramaic origin, or possibly even Polish. But a quick look in the Aramaic/Hebrew/English dictionary answered the question. It’s Aramaic.

There are three ways to spell (and say) this word:

1. As it appears in our text: פּוּשְׁקָנְצא pushkantza
2. פִּישְׁקָצא pishkatza
3. פֻּשְׁקְצא pushk’tza

Likutei Moharan 3:1 quotes the agadah of Rabbah bar bar Chanah in Bava Basra 73b. There’s an interesting daf yomi on Bava Basra 73 that not only has an explanation of how we might frame the agados of Rabbah bar bar Chanah, but also speaks to the meaning of the story itself, with interpretations by the Vilna Ga’on and Marharsha.

IN DEFENSE OF THE RAVEN — I must say these folks did not have a very good understanding of the corvids. Ravens are very social birds. They maintain familial ties and young birds stay with their parents for up to two years before setting off on their own. Not only is it untrue that ravens don’t feed their young, but in fact, juvenile ravens stay with their parents and help raise their younger siblings. The young ones not only have parents to feed them but brothers and sisters also. So… while the analogies in the agadic interpretations are interesting, they not based on any real understanding of corvid behavior.

shir ‘Az