Listening to the Corn Grow: Parashat Hayyei Sarah 5770

A friend of mine who is an avid hiker once told me the following story. He was out hiking the famous Appalachian Trail, keeping a brisk pace through the flat cornfields of central Pennsylvania, when he happened upon an unusual sight.

He saw a young man, a fellow hiker, sitting in silence on the side of the trail, staring at the corn. My friend took caution while approaching this man: was he asleep, was he eating, was he hurt, was he crazy? As he grew closer to this corn-gazer, he got a better look at what the young man was doing. He was sitting there in complete silence, eyes closed, facing this field of corn.

My friend made certain to make some noise while approaching, so that he would not startle this man, so with a few well-timed coughs, the silent young man paused and looked up to notice his fellow traveler.
“Everything ok?” my friend asked.
“Absolutely.” said the stranger.
“Do you mind,” my friend hesitated, “if I ask you what
you’re doing sitting on the side of the trail all alone.”
“Not at all friend,” said the stranger, “and I am most certainly
not alone. You see I was just walking along the trail until I
realized that I wasn’t paying attention to the world around
me. So, I decided to stop my hike for a while, find a
comfortable spot and simply listen to the corn grow.”
“Listen to the corn grow?” asked my friend, “And….so….do
you hear it?”
“Oh yes,” said the stranger, “The corn has so much to teach
us.”

Ok, let’s try to unpack this story. I would be willing to make a wager that many here among us, perhaps most here among us would feel confident in saying that this young man was crazy, missing a screw, off his rocker; and maybe you would be right! After all, you do meet some interesting types out on the trail, people we would rush to classify as ‘crunchy, granola, hippie types,’ slightly detached from reality.

But others among us might also be willing to admit a certain level of jealousy when hearing this story. Jealous of his connection to the world around him, his willingness to try and see past convention and dig deeper into life, his desire to keep himself open to the possibility of being “Radically Amazed,” as the philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel calls it; the feeling of being utterly overwhelmed by the “inconceivable surprise of living.”

In fact, if this young man had been Jewish, and if he had been living in 18th century Eastern Europe, we would likely have a very different label to place upon him: we would probably call him a Hasid. Hasidut was a brand of radical Judaism which developed from the teachings of one rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer, also known as the Ba’al Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name. The Ba’al Shem Tov had a reputation as a tzaddik, a pure and righteous man, a faith healer, a story-teller and one who could commune with the Divine through moments of intense prayer. One of the spiritual practices of Hasidut is known as Hitbod’dut, which can best be translated as the powerful potential of being alone, which encourages Hasidim to find some time to be alone; alone with your thoughts, alone with nature and alone with the Holy One. In the light of Hasidic Judaism, all of a sudden this young man who was listening to the corn grow, may not seem so strange after all.

The Ba’al Shem Tov’s closest disciple was a man called Dov Bear, who was better known as the Maggid of Mezerich. A story is told that when the Maggid of Mezrich died, his students discussed one of his more confusing practices: each morning the Rebbe would awake in order to walk alone down by the edge of the lake. Why did he do this his students wondered? Why was he not davening in the minyan with his students each morning, why did the power of his prayer increase with solitude and not with community? The story concludes with a simple answer: The Maggid of Mezrich walked down by the lake each morning because he was trying to learn the song of the frog. He believed that in the simple song of the frog, pure prayer could be found. Instead of looking in the Psalms of David or in the words of our siddur, the Maggid was looking for the simplest, purest expression of prayer in this world; and he found it in a single word: ribbit.

In this morning’s parasha, Hayyei Sarah, we learn of the betrothal of Abraham’s son Isaac, to Rebecca the daughter of B’tuel. Abraham’s servant returns from his long journey to Aram and back and brings with him the successful result of his mission: the woman Rebecca, who is to become the bride of his young master Isaac. As their caravan approached the home of Abraham the Torah tells us that:
וַיֵּצֵא יִצְחָק לָשׂוּחַ בַּשָּׂדֶה לִפְנוֹת עָרֶב, וַיִּשָּׂא עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה גְמַלִּים בָּאִֽים:
Which our NJPS translation renders as:
“And Isaac went out walking in the field toward evening and, looking up, he saw camels approaching.”

The problematic word here for the translators is לָשׂוּחַ which can have a number of viable meanings including: to talk, to muse, to meditate, or to wander about aimlessly. So which is it? Was our forefather Isaac simply out for an evening stroll, or was he having a quiet moment of meditation, perhaps contemplating the events of the Akedah, or grieving over the passing of his mother Sarah.

As you might imagine, the commentators go to town on this ambiguous verb. Rashi quotes the Rabbinic Midrash which explains that this verb Lasuach, can only mean the language of T’fillah, of prayer; as it says in the opening line of Psalm 102:
וְלִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה יִשְׁפֹּךְ שִׂיחֽוֹ:
“He pours out his plea before the LORD.”

The Talmud takes this midrash even further, claiming that not only was Yitzhak praying while he was out in the field, but in fact he was davening the world’s first Minchah, the Afternoon Prayer Service! Why Minchah you ask? Easy, the rabbis explain, because the verse says that Isaac went out into the field “towards evening,” meaning at dusk, so of course he must have been davening the Minchah service.

The commentator Abraham Ibn Ezra, always the realist, maintains that this simply means he went out walking in the field, among the sichim, the shrubs and bushes.

Finally, the Italian medieval commentator S’forno attempts to blend these two approaches saying that Isaac left the beaten path and went walking amongst the bushes of the field in order to clear his mind from distraction, and so that no one would disturb him as poured out his prayers to God.

But as always, there is at least one more meaningful possibility to explore, this one comes through the lens of the Hasidic master Rabbi Nahman of Breslov. Rebbe Nachman comments as follows:

When the text teaches us that Isaac went out “Lasuach BaSadeh,” this verb Lasuach clearly means to pray, as it says in Psalm 102. However, the prayer of Isaac did not merely take place out in the field, instead he was praying along with each and every shrub and plant in the field, this is what is meant by Lasuach BaSadeh: not that he prayed out in the field, but that he prayed WITH the field. Rebbe Nahman concludes by explaining that at this moment of deep and personal prayer, from within the warm embrace of nature, each and every plant growing in the ground lent their voice and their strength to his prayer. In other words, the corn was praying with him.

Yes, the great Rebbe Nahman was a corn-listener. In fact, he wrote the following poem, to be recited daily by the hasid who is intent on communing with the entirety of God’s world:

Master of the universe, grant me the ability to be alone;
may it be my custom to go outdoors each day,
among the trees and grasses, among all growing things,
there to be alone and enter into prayer.
……
And may all grasses, trees, and plants awake at my coming.
Send the power of their life into my prayer,
making whole my heart and my speech
through the life and spirit of growing things,
made whole by their transcendent Source.

O that they would enter into my prayer!
Then would I fully open my heart in prayer, supplication, and holy speech;
then, O God, would I pour out the words of my heart before Your presence.



In conclusion, I wish to return for a moment to the idea of that young man who was listening to the corn grow. If we had been the ones to happen upon him on the trail, how would we have judged him? Would we have called him strange? Detached from reality? Crazy? Maybe so, and maybe we would be right. But I also want to leave open the possibility that we can learn, and grow, and evolve spiritually by having the courage to be a little bit crazy now and again: To admit to our desire for spirituality, to confess to our loneliness and our need to commune with the world around us. So I implore you to be a little crazy, to go off the beaten path of prayer and to admit to the possibility, strange as it may seem, that if we listen hard enough, we may yet hear the silent sound of corn growing in a field.