Welcome to Perek Shira. Today is the song of the hasida.
What is the hasida in modern terms? It's a big discussion. We'll go with
Rashi's translation in Vayikra that it's the Daya Levana,
and he calls it a ציגוינה or in English, ciconia, a group from
the stork family.
What does the hasida say? It says words of comfort from Yeshaya 40,2) that we read in the seven
weeks of Nechama:
דַּבְּרוּ עַל לֵב יְרוּשָׁלִַם וְקִרְאוּ
אֵלֶיהָ כִּי מָלְאָה צְבָאָהּ כִּי נִרְצָה עֲוֹנָהּ כִּי לָקְחָה מִיַּד יי
כִּפְלַיִם בְּכָל חַטֹּאתֶיהָ: (ישעיה מ ב)
Call out to the heart of Yerushalayim, its time has been fulfilled.
Its sins have been appeased by God, it took a double punishment.
What exactly is the
connection between the Hasida and these wonderful positive words?
We'll start with a pasuk
in Yirmiyah (perek ח (where the prophet Yirmiyah is giving the people Musar. He
says, No one is regretting their sins. They're not asking what they did
wrong. They just rush and don't take out time to think.
This is a famous quote from Yirmiyah that's brought down in Mesilat
Yesharim, where he talks about Zehirut/being
careful in thinking. And the next
pasuk, which is not as familiar, says, The stork in the heavens knows its
time. What does that mean? It means the stork knows when it's supposed to
fly away in the cold season and knows when it's time to return. It knows when to migrate without a clock or a watch. It knows what to do naturally.
The Chida says that the Mussar
for us is that the stork naturally and instinctively knows what he's supposed
to do. But the Jewish people, don't
even know what was taught to us.
The Mesudat David makes a similar point about the knowledge
of migrating. It knows when to go, and when to come back. These birds have instinctive
knowledge in the way the world acts. And yet we don't understand how the
world acts. We don't understand that there's reward and punishment. That's the musar
from the hasida.
At the same time, the hasida/stork is also going to be the
one to comfort us. How? Rav Chaim Kanievsky says we can learn another lesson
from the stork, in that it knows its times. Everything has a time. And the
hasida tells us, Learn another
thing from me. There's also a time for the Geula. There's a famous Gemara in
Sanhedrin 98A that says in it's time,
and I'll make it fast. And then it says, If we merit, I'll make it fast,
and if we don't merit, it will come in
it's time.
The hasida, on one hand, is giving us mussar, to know
and learn from the instinctive knowledge of of seasons of migration from the stork.
And if we don't follow that advice, we
can learn another lesson- that everything has its right time.
(There's an interesting folklore that storks deliver babies, and I'm thinking that if the stork is all about times, and babies
have due dates, which is a time to give birth, maybe they connected the stork, who knew the times,
to the due dates, which also is connected the time theory.)
The point is to learn from the nature of the creations. As we've
said more than once, Perek Shira is not just about the little song the creatures
sing, but the lessons that we learn from them. That is their song.
And today was the song of the stork.
