The Fire That Waits for Israel to Sing First

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The Descender Braces Before the Chariot

He stands with all his strength, because a body that goes slack in that place is a body that falls. Rabbi Akiva has come to the edge of the Chariot, and the air here is not air. It is the pressure of the Throne. He does not close his eyes. He was told that the happy man is the one who keeps them open, who gazes and does not turn away, who watches everything done before the Throne of Glory and lives to carry the report back down. So he sets his feet against the trembling and looks.

Seven palaces open in front of him, one inside the other like halls of a house too large for the world. In the first, the chariots are made of fire.

Fire Passes the Song From Palace to Palace

The chariots of the first palace open their mouths and the words come out burning. "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory." When the last word leaves them their flames come apart. They scatter like a thrown handful of sparks, gather again, and the gathered fire runs forward into the second palace, carrying the sentence up with it.

In the second palace new chariots take the fire and answer, "Blessed be the glory of the LORD from His place," and again the flames break and re-form and climb. Palace by palace the praise changes and rises. "Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom." "Blessed be the LORD, mighty over all the Chariot." The fire never stops moving. Each hall hands the burning words to the hall above it, until in the seventh palace the chariots cry the whole of it: "Who is like God, living and enduring? His praise is in the highest heavens." They speak a Name that Akiva cannot hold in his mouth, and they seal it, "the LORD God of Israel."

He watches the song reach the top of the seventh hall. There it stops. It does not go through the last door on the strength of angels.

The Command That Silences the Host

Rabbi Ishmael learned why. Around the Throne of Glory stand thousands upon thousands and myriads upon myriads, the living creatures and the wheels and the seraphim, ranked to the right of the Throne and to the left, and their whole purpose is to sing. When the hour of song arrives they open their mouths.

And rivers of fire come. Hills of flame rise up and stand between the host and the Throne, and out of the fire comes a voice, and the voice belongs to the Holy One. "Be silent before Me. Every angel, every living creature, every wheel, every seraph that I made, be silent, until I have first heard the voice of the song of Israel My children."

So the burning host waits. Ten thousand mouths hold their praise unspoken. The whole ranked army of heaven, wheel aligned against wheel and wing against wing, stands still and listens downward.

Shemaiel at the Window of the Lower Firmament

One prince does not wait with the others. Shemaiel, great and honored and terrible, goes down to the windows of the lowest firmament and presses himself against them to listen. He is listening for a sound that rises from the earth, from the synagogues and the houses of study, where men who do not know he is there are singing. Israel opens. Only when Israel has opened does anyone above have permission to answer.

Shemaiel catches the song and turns and makes it heard through every firmament, before the living creatures and the wheels and the seraphim and the stars. Now the answer is allowed. Now, and not before, every angel of every firmament opens above and says, "Holy, holy, holy."

But they cannot sing as they are. They have spent the day down in the labors of the world, walking among human beings, and the smell of mortal bodies clings to them. So they throw themselves into the rivers of fire. They go under a hundred times. They scour themselves three hundred and sixty-five times, once for every day of the sun's year, until the human odor is burned off and they shine like the angels of Aravot again. Then they climb, each waiting on the permission of the one beside him, up a ladder made of the rivers of fire, into the presence of the Throne.

The Ones Who Sing Too Soon Are Burned

At the top they stand in a terror that shows on them. They sweat. They cover their faces with their own wings so their eyes will not fall on the likeness in the Chariot, and the Holy One turns His face from them. The living creatures crown themselves with a thousand thousand lights and wrap themselves in garments of fire, and even they are not spared the trembling.

There is one law here, and it has no mercy. No angel may come a breath early and none a breath late. They are one measure and one strength for exactly this reason, so the song leaves every mouth in the same instant. Any one of them who runs ahead of his fellow, any one who lags behind, falls into the River of Fire and is burned, and thousands upon thousands fall. Heaven sings in one voice or it does not sing at all.

The Song That Unmakes the Decree

Below all of it, unaware that he has silenced the seraphim, a man in a house of study sings first.

This is what Akiva watches when he stands with all his strength and does not turn away. He watches whose voice heaven holds its fire to hear. He gazes into the Chariot and sees what is decided at the Throne, the commandments and the powers and the good decrees, and he sees the good decrees go out and cancel the harsh ones, sees a sentence already written against the world struck through before it can fall. The song that started in a low room, that Shemaiel carried up through the windows, that the whole burning host waited in silence to follow, comes back down as a verdict lifted.

He holds his footing a moment longer. Then he goes down to tell it.