Let my teaching fall like rain
In the glorious song with which Moses addresses the congregation, he invites the people to think of the Torah – their covenant with God – as if it were the rain that waters the earth so that it produces its fruits.
God's word is like rain on a parched land. It brings life. It makes things grow. We can do much of our own initiative: we can plow the land and plant seeds. But ultimately, our success depends on something beyond our control. If it doesn't rain, there will be no harvest, no matter how much preparation we make. So it is with Israel.
The Sages, however, saw something more in this analogy.
There is only one Torah, yet it has multiple effects. It gives rise to different types of teaching, different types of virtue. The Torah is sometimes seen by its critics as overly prescriptive, as if it sought to make everyone the same. The Midrash argues the opposite. The Torah is compared to rain precisely to emphasize that its most important effect is to help each of us grow into what we could be. We are not all the same, nor does the Torah seek uniformity.
This emphasis on difference is a recurring theme in Judaism. For example, when Moses asks God to name his successor, he uses an unusual phrase: "The Lord, the God of the spirits of all mankind."«Appoint a man to be the leader of the community» (Numbers 27:16).
One of the fundamental requirements for a leader in Judaism is the ability to respect uman differences .
The political problem, according to Maimonides, consists in regulating human affairs in a way that respects their individuality without creating chaos.
A crowd is a group large enough that the individuality of faces is lost. Yet the blessing emphasizes the opposite: that each member of a crowd is still an individual with distinctive thoughts, hopes, fears, and aspirations.
The same was true of the relationship between the Sages.
There was no single model of a Sage. Each had their own distinctive merits, their own unique contribution to the collective heritage. In this sense, the Sages merely continued the tradition of the Torah itself. There is no single model of a religious hero or heroine in the Tanakh. The patriarchs and matriarchs each had an unmistakable character. Moses, Aaron, and Miriam emerge as different types of personalities. Kings, priests, and prophets had different roles to play in Israelite society. Even among the prophets, "No one prophesies alike," said the Sages (Sanhedrin 89a). Elijah was zealous, Elisha meek. Hosea spoke of love, Amos of justice. Isaiah's visions were simpler and less obscure than Ezekiel's.
The same is true of the Apocalypse of Sinai. Each individual heard, in the same words, a different inflection.
According to Maharsha, there are 600,000 interpretations of the Torah. Each individual is theoretically capable of arriving at a unique understanding of its meaning.
In short, Judaism emphasizes the other side of the maxim E pluribus unum ("Out of many, one"). Indeed, Judaism states, "Out of One, many."
The miracle of creation is that unity in heaven produces diversity on earth. The Torah is the rain that nourishes this diversity, allowing each of us to become what only we can be.