T105 PNC - Azi v'Zimrat Yah — Torah/Da'at/Rachamim/God's Own Prayer (7 segs)

Opening verse: 'My strength and song is God (Yah), and He has become my salvation' (Exodus 15:2, from the Song of the Sea). The teaching begins with a fundamental observation: the entire world stands in need of great divine compassion (rachamim) — both in spiritual matters and in physical matters. Every single person seeks this compassion, yet people do not know where to find it. In truth, rachamim is right before everyone's eyes — it is not hidden far away — but people fail to recognize it because their perception is clouded.

Rachamim is actually rooted in Torah study — specifically in the quality of how one studies Torah. When a person learns Torah with the proper intention and approach — treating the Torah as the ultimate reality to which everything must be referred back — then the da'at (deep knowing/integration) becomes complete. When da'at is complete, rachamim is awakened. This is because da'at is the inner quality that connects and unifies; when it functions, a person perceives the unity underlying all of existence, and from that perception, compassion naturally flows.

When a person learns Torah in this complete manner, he performs a teshuvah (return/rectification) — he connects the letters and letter-combinations that belong to his portion in the totality of the worlds back to their root and their proper place. He becomes a new creation. And then da'at is complete and rachamim is awakened. An analogy: when two compassionate people are present, one can only feel compassion for what the other feels compassion for — a fuller compassion emerges. Similarly, when a person's Torah is complete, his rachamim-capacity expands and deepens. There is no strength except through Torah (Zevachim 116a).

'My strength and song is Yah.' The word 'zimrat' (song/melody) in the verse is understood here as 'zimrat Yah' — the song/prayer of God Himself. What does it mean for God to have a prayer? The Talmud preserves the tradition that God Himself, as it were, prays — 'May it be My will that My compassion overcomes My anger' (Berachot 7a). 'Zimrat Yah' thus points to the inner prayer-quality within the divine itself, the aspect of God seeking to bestow rachamim upon His creation.

The deepest aspect of this teaching: Moses, when his sister Miriam was stricken with tzara'at (Numbers 12:13), prayed with the shortest prayer in the Torah: 'El na refa na la' — 'God, please heal her.' But Rabbeinu explains (heard from his holy mouth directly) that Moses was not only asking God to heal Miriam — he was asking God to pray for her Himself. 'El na' — O God, please — ask Yourself, pray to Yourself, that You should heal her. This is the meaning of zimrat Yah: Moses accessed the level where God's own compassion-prayer is aroused. The 'song of God' = God's self-generated will to bestow rachamim.

This explains the verse: 'My strength and song is Yah, and He has become my salvation.' The 'strength' (ozi) refers to the strength of Torah. The 'song of Yah' refers to God's own compassion-prayer. And 'He has become my salvation' — when these two are united (Torah-strength + God's own prayer-compassion), salvation results. Moses modeled this: his Torah-strength was complete (he had full da'at), and he accessed the zimrat Yah (God's self-generated compassion). The result: Miriam was healed. This is the path for anyone seeking rachamim: build Torah-strength and then access the divine song.

The exile of the Shechinah (Divine Presence) is the root cause why da'at is unsettled in the world. When the Shechinah is in exile, the inner knowledge that unifies everything is fragmented. Because da'at is unsettled, rachamim cannot be properly awakened. Because rachamim is not awakened, the world continues in its brokenness. The path back: teshuvah through Torah. The Torah is described as 'poor in one place and rich in another' — meaning that each verse of Torah that seems obscure finds its explanation elsewhere. By learning with this understanding — that the Torah is always self-completing — one awakens the da'at, completes the Shechinah, and restores rachamim to the world.