BlogElul 8: Hear and BlogElul 9: See

I fell a bit behind on blogging this week because I was in New York, so I'm going to combine BlogElul  8 and 9 into one.

We can deeply appreciate our ability to hear and see by learning from the immortal words of Helen Keller, who could do neither. 

"I am just as deaf as I am blind. The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus-- the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir, and keeps us in the intellectual company of man."

"Blindness separates us from things but deafness separates us from people."

"Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others’ lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare."

From this we learn about the importance of our actions, our words, our tone, and our language. In a day and age where so much of our communication takes place over e-mail and text, we are often deaf to true intention. We can see the words, but we can't hear how they are meant.

It is important to think about this as we prepare to forgive and be forgiven this High Holy Day season.