number seven billion

                We are on the eve of the seven billionth birth. The number seven billion is big.  My second grade teacher had a computer program that had an old Apple flash numbers across the screen as it counted to a million.  As the school day ended, the computer continued at a breakneck pace still caught in the hundreds of thousands.  We were told the next day that it took till five o’clock in the afternoon until the computer final reached its target.  How long would it have taken the computer to reach seven billion? Each billion contains five hundred of these days, or in other words, the computer would have continued to count from second grade, through junior high, and through part of high school.  It’s hard to feel important in such a big world.  That is until we turn to Noah. 

                What brought the deluge?  Strange to think that the final mistake of mankind was stealing.  Sexual immorality and idolatry were bad, but stealing did it as it says, God said to Noah, ‘The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with robbery through them, and behold I am about to destroy them from the earth’[1] .   Why did G-d mention robbery when the other two transgressions are at least as wrong and more difficult to rationalize? After all, we all steal a little bit.  Every time we are at work and surf the net a little, or make a short call, or wake somebody by accident, or even if we don’t smile to people on the street we’ve technically stolen (our face is not ours since we don’t see it, therefore, as it is public property we have a responsibility to keep it presentable. If not, we have 'stolen' a smile from a person). 

                The second mishna of Pirkei Avos answers the question, ‘Shimon the Tzaddik was from the remnants of the great assembly.  He would always say, ‘The world stands on the three things: Torah, service (prayer), and good deeds’.  There are two fundamental ideas in the Mishnah that are difficult for the mind.  Hence, Rabbi Shimon needed to say these ideas constantly so that people would internalize the idea.  Two  impediments to spiritual growth are that people don’t realize the manifold degrees of greatness and, more relevant to our discussion of the seven billionth birth, that our actions impact the world at large. 

                A complete life does not require that we only need to be nice to our friends or that we only need to be wise or that we only need to be meditative.   All three important and they represent the three relationships a person needs for fulfillment.  A person needs a relationship with other people, and needs a relationship with himself, and needs a relationship with G-d.  When these relationships are missing, the world can no longer stand, and this is why G-d tells Noah, we need to start over- the world had run amuk with idolatry, sexual immorality, theivery.  Idolatry is an easy one.  Idolatry is a corrupted version of man’s relationship with G-d. Instead of connection to G-d, idolatry reinforces a person’s relationship to himself.  He worships those forces that can help him.  Promiscuity is the antithesis of wisdom, or of connecting to yourself properly.  Why?   Because instead of nourishing one’s essential self, the soul, through wisdom, a person connects to ones non-essential self- the body.  And finally, robbery is the opposite of loving kindness, rather than give , a person takes for free and annihilates his relationship with other people.  Now we can understand why even robbery can destroy the world.  It was the last pillar left, and once it fell, everything came crashing down around it.

                The other idea of the Mishnah is that our actions stand up the world.  Up until now, people thought that scientific law and the sun’s rays kept the world afloat.  But, the idea that is hard to grasp, especially now in this giant world, is that our actions are what cause tsunami, earthquakes, and floods and they are what prevent them.  Even though I seem to be one in seven billion, a blip on the radar, my actions reverberate not just in our world, but also in spiritual ones. The realization that our actions are important, not only in a practical sense, but in a global sense can be what refines them.                      

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[1] Genesis  6:13

Happy as me

                        Of the seven major Jewish Holidays, Pesach continues to impress.  A vast majority of Jews attend a Seder even if the rest of the year there is scant a trace of obvious Jewish behavior.   Next, there are the two heavy weights, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.  Whether it is Jewish guilt at work, or a genuine desire to connect through prayer at least once a year, Jews participate in droves.  Then, we have some light fun with Purim and Channukah.  Drinking and fire, who wouldn’t want to be part of the fun; well, actually, many Jews miss out on these oldies but goodies.   And finally, there is Shavuot and Sukkot, two out of the three major pilgrimages to Jerusalem.   They lag far behind in participation and have been nearly blotted out of the secular Jewish psyche.  What has been lost?         

Pesach is the holiday that tells us there is a supreme being.  That works for most people.  The idea of a G-d gives the world meaning and order.  And how else can we explain a consciousness and our ‘soulful’ values, a G-d makes serious sense.  The problem starts around Shavuot.  There is an alleged transmission of a script from this force that has likely given us consciousness.   Aside from the innate disdain for having to live according to a script that is not our own, this script has lots of ‘chutzpa’ as well- it carries with it a plethora of demands.                         

After this comes Sukkot, the holiday of immense Joy.  What is it about Sukkot that makes us so happy?  We get to be our true self again.  The Jewish word for repentance is ‘teshuva’, to return, and that return is to ourselves.  Now, that we are back to being ourselves we can express it through Sukkos, and this is why it is called the time of our greatest Joy!   Each sukkah is decorated uniquely, and everyone finds that Esrog that is most beautiful to their eye’s and budget.  There is nothing more joyful than being your true self and expressing it creatively. 

                                

Back to Life

There are few things that get on my nerves.  However, one thing that always bothered me is when people would say that watching tennis is a bore.  And if they’d humor me and watch some of the game with me, they‘d want to talk during points or get up right before a crucial juncture in the match. The gall of such people! Can’t they appreciate the unique form that each players uses? Can’t they appreciate the shot selections, angles, and movement of each player?  It can be a thing of beauty.

                 Obviously, from my perspective, their lack of- we’ll call it respect- stems from a lack of appreciation for the details.  What they are watching and what I am watching are two entirely different games.  I see variety, where they see sameness.  I see genius, where they see luck.  And consequently, the way I treat watching the game- with rapt attention and respect- is vastly different than the way they treat watching the game.  This prosaic example can be applied to any field and its experts.  A curator sees a Mona Lisa vary differently than I do, and a cosmologist sees a very different sky than I do.  The difference?  Details- they know how to appreciate how every detail is important and plays a crucial function in creating the brilliant sui generis of the form. 

                Whenever there is a lack of sensitivity, the term we use is quite appropriate.  We say we are ‘deadened’ to the thing. If standing in front of a Van Gogh, I say in front of a curator,’ why are these globs of paint worth so much’, she would likely turn red with anger, pucker her lips in disgust, and say, ‘you fool, you have to be dead not to be appreciate this’.  In a certain sense, she’d be exactly right.  Her whole vitality resides in the angry brush strokes of Van Gogh:  their angles, shades, and texture ignite a passion within her.  On the contrary, for the pedestrian art viewer, it is globs of paint and, after a few of them at a museum, the inclination is to take a seat and a nap.  With this in mind we can begin to understand what are job is on Yom Kippur.

                In general, we didn’t ‘mess up’ in a big way this past year.  We didn’t scam the world out of billions like Madoof, and we probably didn’t violently abuse anyone this year, and we probably may have never  been furiously mad at anyone this year.  Everything we did wrong was vastly more subtle, and to our sensibility, even largely out of our control. How can you not wake up late once in a while if you’re tired?  How can you not get a little agitated when somebody shows up ten minutes late to a meeting?  The reason why many of the little transgressions in our lives show up is because of our sensitivities.  We are not gauged to think that a little anger, a little late is a problem unless we really stop and think about it long enough to realize that, yea, could’ve done better there if I really tried.  However, this is where repentance comes in.  Repentance is the realization that every aspect of life is important.  Why?  Because G-d is one or, to put it differently, all is an aspect of G-d. 

In other words, the more we become connoisseurs of life, the more those little details are treated with a touch more sensitivity, rendering them a big detail, and then we treat them properly - we become curators to our own existence.  It is becoming alive in a real way through an increase in sensitivity to the spiritual side of life which is rapt with detail.  Life and death in Judaism are not defined by a failing body; they are defined by a soul that is alive or dead.  Does our soul pick up all the greatness and detail around us (As the 'rituals' of Judaism beg of us)?  After all, why else would repentance have been created before the world?  Did G-d expect us to sin?  Maybe.  But more than that, the real idea of repentance is not to bang our chest and read out a laundry list of sins.  It is to realize there is always another level of sensitivity I can reach, another level of life.  The fact that G-d created repentance before the world means that G-d made a world where we can always grow and develop to no end- and He expects us to.  So this Yom Kippur, it is time to enter the book of a good life and start to appreciate the details of our actions, for that is exactly where a passionate life is.  Enjoy the service and lay out a blank canvas for the new Year.