We say it every year on two occasions. Sometimes, I find it hard to wrap my head around the true depth of the words. But there is so much underlying meaning, both in the brocha that we make, which contains those special, magical, and very spiritual words, and the tefillos that contain them as well. The words? Bayomim haheim bazeman hazeh.
We are celebrating miracles that happened, “In those days, at this time.” We say it on Chanukah and Purim. We say it when we lain the Megillah. We say it when we light neiros Chanukah. We say it when we daven, and we say it when we bentch.
What does it mean?
We know that there were great miracles thousands of years ago. Yes, they happened to have occurred on the very same dates that are passing through the spheres of time centuries later. But how do we connect to them?
Why can’t we just make a brocha at any time of the year thanking Hakadosh Boruch Hu for the miracles He performed thousands of years ago—just two months later? What’s wrong with celebrating it in Shevat? We must make it at the right time. The time is now.
Most recently, I was driving my almost weekly drive to Lakewood, another experience that makes the three-train Philly trip I reminisced about last week seem like a short drive from Woodmere to Cedarhurst. A car radio is almost a relic from the past. With Bob Grant and Rush Limbaugh both dead, and traffic more accurately available on a Waze or GPS system, there is really no reason to tune in to 880 anymore. (Actually, they threw in the towel.)
Even though CD slots are no longer included in newer cars, there is a way to play audio by projecting it via something called Bluetooth, a technology that has accompanied me on many long standstills on the Staten Island Expressway and Belt Parkway. On this last particular trip, there were two competing devices trying to latch on to the car’s audio system. I was listening to Reb Sruly’s (Bornstein, for those of you still putting cassettes into a recorder) recording of daf 173 in Bava Basra, when suddenly his vibrant voice relating a “moiridiker Chasam Sofer,” which, of course, was “hafla v’fela,” was overridden by the sweet high-pitched sound of the voice of a 9-year-old child singing the words “Shema Hashem v’choneini” coming from a different Bluetooth connection from a passenger in the back seat of the car.
It was not a shiur, per se, but a shir, per sing.
I got the chills. It was a powerful young voice. It was a voice that I suddenly remembered vividly from the days when I was a little boy. The words “Shema Hashem v’choneini” were being sung at the highest notes humanly possible. And they were as sweet as ever. The sound, which was about 60 years old, was resonating from all the speakers in the car, resounding as if it was being sung right now by the person in the passenger seat. And it was chilling. At first, I thought that someone had obtained a copy of a 1960s Pirchei album and they were playing, through their phone, the iconic Pirchei tune of Eilecha. The soloist, and child musical prodigy Yussi Sonnenblick, was belting out the high part in a way that was hardly humanly fathomable.
A few moments later, I realized that it was not the album of 1964. It could not be. Because suddenly, the musical gears shifted, and the voice of 70-year-old Yussie Sonnenblick, the veteran chazzan and zaidy of many of our talmidim at Yeshiva of South Shore, harmonized and then overpowered the sounds of his own 60-year-old alter ego.
Suddenly, the current Yussi, now 70 years old, magically melded in harmony with his voice from 60 years ago. It was an experience that brought memories to my heart and, yes, a tear to my eye.
Under the creative musical magic of Yisroel Lamm, a new album called Then and Now was released, which blended Yussi’s voice of, as the album states, “then and now.” I am no music critic, and as much as I appreciate the chesed and amazing selflessness of many of the singers of the modern era, I just don’t “understand” (for lack of a nicer word) their music.
Under the tutelage of the iconic music teacher Reb Velvel Pasternak, Yussi was the pride of the choir at Yeshiva of South Shore, and there was no greater moment for my father than seeing him sing in front of Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, Rav Moshe Feinstein, and Rav Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman at the podium of an Agudah Convention. (For those of you staring in disbelief, things were different back then.) The knowledge of the facts and circumstances often helps you put the world in perspective to appreciate and understand an evolving Torah world.
The olden memories, or the golden memories, come in handy quite often, not only to evoke a certain sense of balance and perspective, but sometimes to throw out a bit of knowledge that often stymies the younger or less literate folks.
But that is not what I was thinking about at the moment. I was thinking on a higher plane. Suddenly, I was being transported to those days in these times. I began to realize that it is possible to transport your essence into a world that was and relive it through an intangible medium of sanctity. You close your eyes, and you hear the words crying, “Shema Hashem v’choneini, or hear the plea of “Keili Keili lomah azavtoni” the way you heard it in the purity of your childhood. You envision a young boy standing in front of gedolei hador, who were already considered giants in Europe, as he inspires the crowd of hundreds in the audience at the 1964 Agudah Convention, and you wonder: How can I not live in that moment?
Then you light your menorah. Close your eyes and think of children hiding in a cave to learn Torah. Think of aggressors trying to destroy the Jewish people—some via rockets, some via propaganda and hate, and some via frontal attacks on bnei Torah day in and day out. It’s not so hard to live in the present while experiencing the past. We may not have Yehudah HaMaccabi fighting for us these days, but we indeed have fighters. We can transport ourselves to a time and place where we would have to choose a side. We can hear the 2,189-year-old cry of mi laHashem eilai come through the Bluetooth speakers of our minds and imagination, as the winter’s chill embraces us and gives us every reason to say, “I’m staying home and not joining the battle, be it in the bais medrash or the bais haknesses.”
It is not easy, but there is a certain spiritual booster that comes with what I call the “tube of time,” the chute that transports you back through time during the period of the month in which miracles once occurred. There is a siyata diShmaya of zeman, as the days of yore are recreated in the very time period over and over again. But only if your mind lives it.
Indeed, the very words of Dovid Hamelech in Tehillim, or the Anshei Knesses Hagedolah that were sung thou sands of years ago, or even the words of Shokah Chamoh composed by Rav Avrohom Elya Kaplan, can re-resonate with current relevance as if we are singing them in their originality. And more so can the reading of the Megillah and the kindling of the menorah.
If we put our minds, emotions, and innate collective Klal Yisroel memories to it, then, indeed, we can relive the “then.” We can relive the then right now.
