Dew

Nine times out of ten, there is a direct correlation between cantorial bravura and theological stakes on the table. The liturgical highlights of the synagogue year, when the vocal talents of our cantor are showcased, when we retrieve the finest arrangements of composers past or debut new ones – at these moments, inevitably, there is a big theological “ask” on the table. Kol Nidre – the audacity to think that our vows from one year to the next may be annulled. Hineni – the humble supplicant begging to be accepted before God. And of course, Unetaneh Tokef, the theological drama of “who will live and who will die,” who will be written (or not) into the Book of Life. With the stakes so high, the cantor pleads our case, and we pray that the sound of his or her voice combined with the artistry of great composers past and present provides a worthy expression of our deepest anxieties and highest hopes.

According to industry standards, one of the most famous arrangements of the cantorial year is Tal, the prayer for dew that our cantor will chant momentarily. Rosenblatt, Glanz, Kirschner, Finkelstein – the greatest composers of our people have set this piyyut, this poetry of Eliezer Kallir, to music. The top cantor rankings are won and lost over Tal. Rabbis are warned ahead of time to keep their sermons brief and Jews and even non-Jews know that this morning is the time to let the crown jewel of the cantorial repertoire shine brightly.

And so before the cantor begins, on this holiday of questions, let me ask just one: Really?

Are you really going to tell me that a prayer for tal, for dew, has the same theological import as personal redemption, the same weightiness as the penitent soul, is of equal consequence with the divine decree? Dew, the water that condenses overnight to appear on the morning grass? Dew, which last time I checked is there anyway and stays for only a short while before it evaporates? Dew, a substance whose very ubiquity would seem to render it totally unremarkable? Fine, if you want to add a shtickele verse about dew – geh gezunt, but a whole prayer? Am I really to believe that Tal is on par with Kol Nidre, Hineni and Unetaneh Tokef?

Which is why, this year, I made it my mission to pause to reflect on Tal. What is it about praying for dew that prompted Kallir to write a poem about it, composers to set it to music, cantors to sing it, and most of all, generations of Jews to let it capture our hearts and imagination?

One year we will study its poetry in depth, but this year I would ask you to consider that in order to understand Tal, you need to appreciate three things about it. First, where Tal stands in the context of the siddur. Second, where Tal stands in the context of the Jewish year. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, where Tal stands in the context of this festival of Passover.

First, the context in the Siddur. The Amidah covers a range of God’s attributes, qualities for which God is deserving of praise, qualities that we ourselves aspire towards as a humanity created in the divine image. Tal appears in the paragraph of the Amidah called gevurot, which means strength, specifically God’s strength. Tal, technically speaking, is not a petition, it is a kerovah, a specific kind of piyyut or liturgical poem, one that notes the appearance of dew to be an expression of God’s might or strength.

Second, Tal’s seasonal placement. The poles of the Jewish year are Passover and the Fall holidays. At the conclusion of Sukkot we recite Geshem, rain, and now, some six months later we begin the harvest cycle – culminating with Shavuot – and shift our prayers to dew. The point is that it is not an either/or proposition, Geshem or Tal. Each has its time and place. Rain and dew, expressions of divine presence and attributes that we seek and seek to establish in this world.

Third, and perhaps most important, is its placement this morning. If we were in Israel, our sedarim would be concluded, but here in the diaspora, we sit sandwiched between the matzah of last night and that of this evening. What is striking and worthy of comment is that with the plagues, splitting of the sea, mighty hand and outstretched arm of the Lord so fresh in our minds, when given the opportunity to identify God’s power in this world and within us, our focus is not on those miracles but on one of God’s most modest ecological feats – dew. The juxtaposition is unexpected and sharp, but it goes deeper. Because we know that the cycle of these twenty-four hours is meant to encapsulate the events of the Exodus itself. Last night we made the passage from slavery to freedom and this evening we begin to count the Omer. Dew is a reminder of the very first post sea-crossing miracle – the manna. Tradition teaches that every time we set the Shabbat table, the two challot represent the double portion of manna that appeared at dawn in the desert – protected below and above by a layer of dew, a miracle memorialized every week with the Shabbat table cloth, the challah cover and the two challot between them. Dew reminds us that the divine presence asserts itself in different ways – mightily and modestly, with the cracking of the sea and with the appearance of dew. The recitation of Tal today, embedded in a stanza about God’s strength, serves as a powerful theological correction to one-dimensional notions of the presence and use of power. Tal makes a very specific and important theological statement. There are times for rain and times for dew, times for the assertion of power and time for restraint – for God and certainly for us.

Maybe it is because I am the parent of soon-to-be-teenage girls, maybe it is because I am at a new stage of my rabbinate, maybe I am just tired at this time of year, or maybe I am maturing as a person – I don’t know. What I do know is that I am increasingly of the opinion that leadership can be measured – whether as a parent, a pastor or in any role – by the ability to discern when life calls for tal and when for geshem, when the moment requires splitting seas and when our strongest and best move is to gently provide a layer of dew to sustain life for another day.

Often – far too often and mistakenly so – strength is understood as a binary proposition. You either express it, or not; you either have it, or you don’t. The assumption is that if you had it, you would have used it. But what we all know, as parents, as colleagues or as a community of volunteers is that sometimes the time is not right, conditions are not yet ripe for action, and the consequences of an ill-conceived assertion of power are actually far worse than the consequences of inaction. There are times, as the Haggadah teaches, when we must rap the teeth of a child, just as there are times when we must gently help a child formulate a question. We are one and the same person, but depending on the circumstance, we are called on to respond in a variety of ways.

Think about the President’s recent trip to the Middle East. Anyone with eyes to see understood that with the newly-established Israeli government, the dysfunctional Palestinian leadership, the situation in Syria at the boiling point, now was not the time to overreach. And so the President, wisely, chose to lay down some dew, to moisten the topsoil, plant some seeds and invest towards dividends in the years to come. I recently read an article about the lost art of deterrence – saying that for whatever reason, we have forgotten that sometimes the task at hand is merely to prevent a bubbling pot from boiling over. We are so solution oriented, thinking we can walk into any room, hand out instructions, orders or ultimatums and achieve the desired results. But nations, institutions and certainly people don’t work that way. Sometimes, the most creative, thoughtful and powerful arrow in our quiver is to gently coax parties forward with the hope that they will one day see and seize upon a course of action that is ultimately only theirs to take. Sometimes conditions just need to be managed and we go home at night with nothing to show, but with the knowledge that a disaster was averted, one that nobody will ever know almost happened. Sometimes the most important thing we can do is just keep a conversation going until conditions ripen on another day. And sometimes, the most important thing you can do is play good defense and avoid a turnover that will cost the game. Dew’s constancy, ubiquity and gentleness may not rank up there with the plagues, but it should, because it was dew, not the splitting of the sea, that sustained our people in their decades-long journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, and it will be dew that will sustain the journeys of our own lives.

According to the Talmud in Hagigah, future redemption, t’hiyat ha-metim, will occur by way of the life-giving qualities of tal. (Hagigah 12b) The pragmatic implications of this mystical insight are worth considering. Just as this world is a vestibule for the world-to-come, so too each stage of our lives may be understood as a prologue for a chapter that has yet to be written. This being so, we come to be grateful for the dew of the present, because that dew is what will provide life for the future. It is not a mark of innocence, nor of resignation and certainly not of weakness to allow for the possibility that our season is one of dew. Seasons change and so do we; it is the mark of great wisdom to be able to discern in which moment we find ourselves. The mood of this moment is both sublime and sacred, reflective and uplifting – which is of course, what tefilat Tal, the prayer for dew, is all about.