Parshat Yitro:
Synesthesia is a condition where the stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People with synesthesia may experience colors when listening to music, see shapes when smelling certain scents, or perceive tastes when looking at words. It is estimated that about 4% of the population are ‘synesthetes’, some of whom ‘see’ sounds.
Many years ago I had a learning session with someone who was pitch perfect. He was a synesthete and he tried to describe to me what shape he sees for each different note he hears. He was a professional musician in both the classic and modern music arena and the patterns that chords made were stunning if they were consonant, but ugly when dissonant. He explained that there is nothing better than moving from dissonance to consonance musically for him as the tension he feels when he sees disorder is released when it rearranges itself into pattern and beauty.
While this is a rarity in humans, there are animals where this is the way they see. Echolocation in bats, where they use sonar in real time based on hearing the echoes of the noises they themselves emit, is believed to be so good that their brain builds a picture of the scene around them that they can ‘see’, in the same way as our brain builds a picture based on the information we get from our retinal cells.
In this week’s parsha, we are told that at Mount Sinai, when they received the Torah, ‘All the people saw the sounds’. How are we supposed to understand this? Does it mean that they all became synesthetes? Did they suddenly achieve bat-like navigation skills, and if yes, what would the purpose of that be?
Rashi explains that they saw the sounds in a way that would not normally be possible, and which specific sounds? The words that were being spoken by Hashem. In fact, according to many commentaries, what is being described here is that as Hashem spoke the first two of the Ten Commandments, the letters of the words appeared in fire, floating in front of them!
But perhaps there is a deeper concept here. When we consider the senses of sight and sound, we tend to trust what we see more than what we hear. “I’ll believe it when I see it” and “Seeing is believing” are common expressions, and if someone tells us that something happened we immediately say, “Show me, I want to see!” Results from repeatable scientific studies imply that around 80% of all our perceptions come via the sense of sight.
When the Torah describes the Israelites as ‘seeing’ Hashem’s words, perhaps it means that the truth of those words was so clear to them that it was comparable to seeing it. The so called reality of the physical world faded into insignificance as they witnessed the brilliance and veracity of the spiritual dimension. And all the difficulties and questions and concealment of this physical existence faded in the face of the certainty of G-d’s realm. So perhaps in some way they did become ‘synesthetes’ as the disordered dissonance transitioned into beautiful consonance before their eyes.
Nevertheless, as Rashi explained, this ability to have absolute clarity from what we hear was a one time event. We must be aware that when we are told things about people, especially something negative, there is an excellent chance that it is far from the truth. Often the information has been distorted by personal bias, through ‘broken telephone’, and sometimes even by willful menace.
If we all, instead of rushing to judge, took a pause when receiving information about somebody else, our world would be a significantly more delightful place to be.