Thread by @rabbisacks

Here is a thread from my Covenant & Conversation essay on #Haazinu called "Let My Teaching Drop as Rain". You can read it at bit.ly/2AYPyBX, listen to it at bit.ly/2M4mT4I, or download the accompanying Family Edition at bit.ly/326ztpF. #ShabbatShalom

In the glorious song with which Moses addresses the congregation, he invites the people to think of the #Torah – their covenant with #God – as if it were like the rain that waters the ground so that it brings forth its produce.

God’s word is like rain in a dry land. It brings life. It makes things grow. There is much we can do of our own accord: we can plough the earth and plant the seeds.

But in the end our success depends on something beyond our control. If no rain falls, there will be no harvest, whatever preparations we make.

There is only one Torah, yet it has multiple effects. It gives rise to different kinds of teaching, different sorts of virtue. Torah is sometimes seen by its critics as overly prescriptive, as if it sought to make everyone the same. The Midrash argues otherwise.

The Torah is compared to rain precisely to emphasise that its most important effect is to make each of us grow into what we could become. We are not all the same, nor does Torah seek uniformity.

As a famous Mishnah puts it: “When a human being makes many coins from the same mint, they are all the same. God makes everyone in the same image – His image – yet none is the same as another” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5).