[Avodah] Shabbos Shira

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 10:11:57AM -0500, Rich Wolberg wrote:
:   "Sing unto Him, make melody unto Him; Speak of all His marvelous works."
: 
: Interestingly the verse has singing followed by melody prior to "speaking."
: Rav Kook zt"l describes this as three stages. The first stage is shirah
: (song) which is an initial flash of insight not fully developed. The
: second is zimrah (music) expressing our inner emotions and feelings
: of gratitude. And the third is sicha (speech) which is contemplative
: discourse.

Do you know where RAYK says this? It doesn't match my intuition either (any
more than yours).

Shirah refers to poetry as much as song, and therefore I would think has to
do with the lyrics more than the melody, harmony or rhythm. IOW, not only
insight, but insight that was embued with emotion.

Zimrah, I would have thought, refers to the music itself.

And sichah... Well, sichah is a term for tefillah, as when Yitzchaq goes
lasuach basadeh. But chazal use it (admittedly, a different dialect than
Tanakhi Hebrew) to describe flirtation -- "al tarbeh sichah im ha'ishah."
In Ashirah Lashem <http://www.aishdas.org/siddur.shtml> (pg 27) I put
it this way introducing Lekha Dodi:
    As we noted earlier (Ashrei, note 4), Yitzchak is an archetype of
    one who mastered Avodah {Worship [of G-d]}. Yitzchak's name has
    romantic connotations; when he has a quiet moment alone with his wife,
    he was "metzacheiq es Rivqah ishto" (B'reishis 26:8). His encounter
    with G-d pn Moriah was when he went out "lasuach basadeh (ibid. 24:63)
    {to speak in the fields}. The word "lasuach" brings to mind the
    admonition in Avos (1:5) "do not overly engage in sichah with
    a woman". There, Rav Hirsch defines sichah as a light, perhaps
    flirtatious, conversation. Yitzchak prayed to "the Beloved of his
    soul". Flirting with G-d.
    Following in his footsteps, members of the Chassidic movement of
    the Second Temple era would go out in the fields, calling each other
    to come greet the Shabbos Queen together. Based on this custom, the
    Kabbalists of Tzefas instituted Kabbalas Shabbos. They saw Shabbos
    as a bride, and would go out "lasuach basdeh" to be "metzacheiq"
    her with the love song of Shir haShirim, with Tehillim, and with
    this poem. Earlier generations of the current Chassidic movement
    too would go out to the woods to sing their greeting.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It's never too late
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Fax: (270) 514-1507                      - George Elliot