Go Wild About Hashem
What does Hallel mean?
The Excitement of Hallel
The most important word in the entire subject of Hallel is of course the word ‘hallel’ and therefore it pays to understand what that word means exactly. Because even though some people translate it as ‘praise’, actually it’s not so—the word הַ לֵ ל specifically means something more than just ‘praise’.
How do I know? Because the word הוֹלֵל means ‘wild’. אָמַרְתִּי לַהוֹלְלִים אַל תָּהוֹלּוּ – I said to those who are wild, ’don’t be wild’. (Tehillim 75:5). The most basic, literal translation of hollel is ‘wild excitement’. It comes from the word ho: 'הוֹ הוֹ וְנֻסוּ מֵאֶרֶץ צָפוֹן נְאֻם ה – “Ho! Ho! Flee from the land of the north,” says Hashem (Zecharyah 2:10). So ho means to make a noise. The word is what you call onomatopoeic—it’s a word that expresses itself through the sound of the word itself. And so ho is a word of excitement and hallel means to be wild with your enthusiasm. ‘Hallel!’—it’s a word of shouting! And that’s the difference between hallel and all the other words of praise: לְהוֹדוֹת, לְשַׁבֵּחַ, לְפָאֵר, לְרוֹמֵם, לְהַדֵּר, לְבָרֵךְ, לְעַלֵּה, וּלְקַלֵּס. Each one means something else, but hallel specifically means to be excited, to be shouting in your excitement.
And so “Hallelukah”, that’s the summoning of the people, ourselves and those around us, to the function of being excited. “My friends,” says Dovid Hamelech, “throw off your slothfulness, your laziness, and wake up! It’s time to go wild now with excitement!”
And so we’re ready now to begin, only that we have a question. The sixty thousand dollar question is, what are we supposed to be excited about? And that’s what Dovid begins with: Hallelu-Kah – Go wild about Kah, about Hashem!
The Two Letter Name
Now, if we’re going to follow along with Dovid we have to first understand what does Yud-Kei mean? We have to study it because it's a remarkable word. It comes from the word הָ יָ ה – to be, and it actually would be proper to consider it an abbreviation of הָיָה, הֹוֶה, וְיִהְיֶה – He was, He is, and He will be. It means He is the One Who is around always because He is the only One with true existence. And so י-ה means “Being; the One that has true existence.”
We don’t have any true existence—we’re only a dream that Hashem dreamed up into existence. כִּי הוּא אָמַר וַיֶּהִי – He said “I want things to come into existence,” and so because He desired it, it came into existence. And only because He is wishing everything into existence right now, that’s why it exists. If He would stop desiring, it would all collapse into nothing; not into dust, not into atoms—into nothing.
And so actually we are only the imagination of Hashem. Of course, we like living in His imagination. Because it’s very real; Hashem’s imagination makes it very real and we want Him to keep up this imagination for a long time! It’s fun to be alive in His imagination! But we shouldn’t ever forget that He is the only One that has true being. ה’ אֱלוֹקִים אֱמֶת, the Rambam says, means הוּא לְבַדּוֹ אֱמֶת – He is the only One Who is really true; nothing else is true in this world.
The Real Refrigerator
Not only people; everything! You’ll laugh but it means that as you walk to the refrigerator and you feel thankful for that contraption—a refrigerator is a big benefactor after all; it keeps your food fresh, you think. No, it doesn’t keep your food fresh! It’s Yud-Kei Who is keeping your food fresh. Forget about the refrigerator. It’s only a dream.
You have a gas range and it cooks tasty meals, and you think what a good thing it is to have such a stove. In the olden days when they wanted to cook something they had to build a fire of wood and put over it some bricks. And now, look, you press a button and the flame springs out and it starts cooking efficiently. No, that's just a deception. Nothing is being done by the gas range. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is doing everything!
And that’s what Yud-Kei means — He is the One that IS. Nobody and nothing else IS. He's the One that always was, is right now, and is going to be forever and anything else is only going to exist as long as He decides it should exist. And so as we begin our song of praise and gratitude to Hakadosh Baruch Hu for another month of life, we recognize now that our existence, our being, our body, is from Him and only Him.
Hallel about Kah
Hallel Only to Kah
And therefore we say Hallelu-Kah! Who are we excited about? To Whom are we going to shout now in excitement? הַלְלוּיָ-הּ! Only to Him. He’s the One to express your gratitude to. He is the Author of your existence and your happiness and therefore He’s the One Who is deserving of our excitement.
And so Hallelu-Kah means ‘be excited about Hashem — to the exclusion of other things.’ And so we begin Hallel with a plan, a commitment: As much as possible we’re going to be excited about Kah and nothing else.
Because the umos ha’olam, you have to know, they also go wild—but they go wild about nothing. When they are dancing, the drunken revelers, and they are dancing and singing ho ho; that's holel over nothing.
Especially today. America is a country of people excited about nothing. I can’t say in public the things they’re excited about but you hear what the music stores are blaring forth all day long. Look into music stores and you see inside how they're jumping up and down to the tune of the music, to words that are worse than meaningless. A meshugene comes to hear the music and jumps up and down. What are you excited about?
The News Not Fit to Print
It’s a very great reproach of the gentiles when you see their newspaper headings. You think, “Maybe the newspapers are reporting important news; I’ll go out and look at the newspaper.” So you pass by and you see the front page, it tells about a certain man who was a top basketball man and now he was captured by another team. Ho! Ho! Big news!
They’re excited about a nobody! When he went to high school, he didn’t attend the classes; every afternoon he stood in the schoolyard and he practiced basketball. A bum, that’s all. This bum is on the front page. He’s a hero, and they’re excited about him.
Another bum who has nothing in his mind at all, no intelligence at all, but he knows holds a stick and he’s able to swing it just right to hit a ball. So when this nobody whacks the ball with a bat and the ball starts flying in the sky way out in the bleachers and everybody goes crazy and screams with enthusiasm, are you going to join in their enthusiasm over nothing? It's one of the biggest errors in life! Whose business is it if people get together in a stadium with sticks and they hit balls covered with horse skin, and then they run? Meshuggene! About nothing!
I came back from Slabodka once, I was walking in the streets, in the busy street. A man was on the steps. He called out to me, “What’s the score?” He said he wants to know the score! From me! The score is important now! Who cares what the score is?
Turn Your Enthusiasm to Kah
A ridiculous world; the outside world is stupid. Nothing at all. Why are you excited? There’s nothing in it. Dovid Hamelech says you're wasting your energies! Turn it to Kah.
And even if a person becomes enthusiastic about his troubles or about his successes, his worst enemies and his best friends, any kind of interest that he invests in anything else, detracts from his excitement about Hakadosh Baruch Hu. You're excited about nature? You're competitive with your neighbors? You're excited about the glory that's being proffered you? If there’s anything in the world about which you should be excited it’s Hakadosh Baruch Hu. We don’t have enough enthusiasm in ourselves to share it with anyone or anything else. And if a person invests his enthusiasm in anything else, it detracts from his excitement about Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
The One-Track Mind
And so, Hallelu-Kah means we have to husband our excitement—we have to be stingy with enthusiasm and keep it only for things connected to Hashem. When we see the sefer Torah, we’re excited about that. We stand up. And not lazily. No! We're enthusiastic about the sefer Torah. “Oooh! Zos HaTorah – this is the same Torah that Hashem gave us at Har Sinai!”
You can be excited about Torah and mitzvos, about chessed, gemilas chassodim. Be excited about your Torah shiur, about mussar, about tzaddikim. Be excited about raising frum children! Be wild on Simchas Torah. Be excited on Shavuos at Matan Torahseinu. Be happy on yomtov; Succos, Zman Simchaseinu. Shout to Hashem!
And especially on Rosh Chodesh when we’re saying Hallel and thanking Hashem for another month of being alive, we have to remember that everything we have is from Kah, the True Existence, and therefore we say with excitement, הַלְלוּיָ-הּ!
