My dog’s leash has a knot in it. By the time I realized it was there, it had become too tight to undo, so I just left it. When we walk, she’s an inch or so closer to me than she was before. It’s not much, but we both had to adjust to the change in distance.

As we walked this morning, I thought of a folktale I learned recently from Rabbi Mark Novak. It teaches that each person is connected to God by a string. Every time we make a moral or ethical mistake, the string breaks. But when we make amends – apologize to the wronged person or try to fix the wrong – the Angel Gabriel comes and reties the string.

Every time Gabriel makes a knot, the string becomes shorter. Which means that every time we make amends for something we said or did, we come closer to God. 

We tend to think that when we’ve done damage to someone else, it distances us from our truest selves and from God. As the gap becomes larger, it can feel impossible to bridge the distance. Judaism teaches that God is always within reach, that we are always able to return, again and again. Each time we return, the string becomes both shorter and stronger.

This was the point Moses was trying to make at the end of the Torah. The book of Deuteronomy is a series of long discourses in which he cajoled and begged, pleaded and prodded, trying his best to prepare the Children of Israel for their entry into the promised land. He reminded them of their history and their relationship with God, and renewed the covenant with God. He did everything in his power, knowing he would not be with them.

Finally, he sang to them.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote of Moses’ song, “There is something profoundly spiritual about music. When language aspires to the transcendent, and the soul longs to break free of the gravitational pull of the earth, it modulates into song.”

The Jewish tradition has a long history of song. We don’t simply read the Torah, we chant it. When we pray, we sing. Our services are filled with music, and cantors are held in high regard as Jewish clergy because of the unique role they play in our congregations.

Moses’ final message was filled with imagery and new metaphors for God. The opening verse is lovely poetry:

Give ear, O heavens, let me speak;
Let the earth hear the words I utter!
May my discourse come down as the rain,
My speech distill as the dew,
Like showers on young growth,
Like droplets on the grass.  (Deuteronomy 32:1-2)
 
Robert Frost said, “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought, and the thought has found words.”  And song is when the words have found a spiritual dimension. Perhaps the highest spiritual moments are when our hearts sing and we go beyond words, beyond language, into the realm of love and the realm of God. It is when the string that links us to the Divine vibrates and makes music.

Incidentally, the dog with the now shortened leash is named Zimra, which means song in Hebrew. If you come to my house she will be happy to sing the song of her people to you. You may not understand the language, but you will certainly grasp the message.