Literary, musical, and artistic creativity, even when separated from their secular contexts, do not get much attention in the Orthodox world today. Even creative thinking in Torah is often limited to certain narrow areas, so that students interested in hashkafa have to search for special yeshivas.
Yet it is undeniable that many rabbinic luminaries have also been “creative personalities.” To name but a few, Spanish medieval sages Rabbi Yehudah Halevy and Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gabirol were great poets and innovative thinkers, and Safed kabbalists Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz and Rabbi Yisrael Nagara were skillful lyricists and composers of hymns and other songs for the synagogue and Sabbath table.
Some eminent Torah scholars were accomplished musicians; others were skilled woodcarvers and craftsmen. Rabbi Chaim Ibn Attar, the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh, was a fine silversmith, as were many Sephardic scholars. The list of chassidic composers of niggunim, profound melodies designed to express religious feelings and perceptions, is too long to even begin. Many of these creative souls were also great mystics. For them, there was no rift between art or music or literature and the spiritual quest.
One such multifaceted tzaddik and creative personality was Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810). Even when ranked among the many original and inspired teachers in chassidic tradition, Rabbi Nachman was unique. His astounding spiritual vision took many forms: kaleidoscopic Torah discourses, surrealistic stories of kings and lost princesses, trenchant aphorisms, enigmatic dreams and visions, and haunting, profound melodies.
Even his dancing, an activity that he praised as a form of sublime wisdom, was said to have been of incomparable beauty. Therefore, it should not surprise us that Rabbi Nachman also spoke of poetry, and even composed it.
The one poem by Rabbi Nachman that has come down to us is the Shir Na’im (“Song of Delight”), which Rabbi Noson Sternhartz (1780-1844), his foremost student, placed at the beginning of the master’s magnum opus, Likkutei Moharan. Thus, Rabbi Nachman demonstrated that the art of verse-craft, so prized by the anti-religious maskilim of his day, deserves a place of honor in the religious sphere as well.
In his mystical “Tale of the Burgher and the Pauper,” he describes the Emperor’s daughter as skilled in the art of poetry. The test the beautiful young maiden puts before each suitor for her hand is that he recite a poem expressing his feelings, to which she responds with a poem of her own. From this, we see that Rabbi Nachman affirms that poetry is bound up with the love relationship. It is a vehicle for the expression of the heart.
The maskilim surely would have no problem with this. However, like other mystics, Rabbi Nachman saw romantic love as a fallen aspect of the love of God. Thus, the exchange of lyrics by the princess and her suitors alludes to poetry as an expression of the soul’s desire for God. In this light, Rabbi Nachman praised the Akdamut poem recited in the synagogue on Shavuos prior to the Torah reading, which describes the “marriage” of God and Israel at Mount Sinai, calling it a “song of desire.” This exemplifies the elevation of poetry to its proper place.
Rabbi Nachman’s “Tale of the Master of Prayer” describes a royal court that includes a bard, or melitz in Hebrew, who is a master poet and orator. The story tells how a storm wind once wreaked havoc in the world, separating the members of the royal court and leaving them to wander the world in search of one another. Particularly tragic is the loss of the infant son of the queen’s daughter. In the aftermath, the royal bard seeks to console the king and queen, and then the queen’s daughter. His words produce a sea of wine – the third sea in the story’s account of the world after the storm wind, the other two being a sea of blood produced by the queen’s tears and a sea of milk produced by the queen’s daughter.