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.
Yoni thanks so timely-I will :take you to Seattle with me for a D'var as we are discussing the lens of B'Tzelem and what that looks like when alive and well/integrated in leadership and organizations
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