A big lie

The Olympic Torch in Sochi was recently extinguished and it is on the way to the next location.  The massive Torch relay is a link to the famous Greek myth of Prometheus.  He was the traitorous titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to human beings thereby giving them a tremendous boast in power.  The gods were not pleased and gave him a viscous punishment.  An eagle would swoop down and eat his liver every day for eternity.  What garnered this extreme wrath from the gods? 

                From the Greek (read: modern) perspective, human achievement is a zero-sum game.  When humans achieve God goes down.  With each new discovery in the genome, with each new robotic device, and with each new form of energy, humans feel more and more intrinsically independent.  But when humans are in strife, suddenly, God is back in the picture.  This is not the Jewish approach and the proof is from the great lie we propagate each Friday night, at least.[1]  

                The root of the lie is contained in the blessing we make over bread. Any time we eat bread, the blessing we make is that God ‘causes bread to come out from the land’.[2]   However, any local bakery is a proof against this; only wheat comes out from the ground. In a stroke of ingenuity, man takes the seeds and smashes them into flour. And then, he adds flour, water, and some yeast- who thought of that one?  After it rises for a while, but not too long lest it ferment, we put it in the oven and get our main staple.  The bread is far from wheat by now and we can ask the bakery workers, who woke up at 4:30 in the morning latest, if it took any effort.  If I worked at a bakery, I would find the blessing downright insulting- I created the bread! 

                At the root of the blessing is the key difference between the Jewish vision and the modern one.  Human creativity is itself viewed as a gift from G-d.  He left the world incomplete on purpose and he gave us the creativity and intelligence to fix it our self.  But that ability is also from God!   Human greatness does not diminish God, but further enhances Him.  The more we accomplish the more we have to realize where all of our talents and intelligence come from.   That changes everything. It is no longer a zero-sum game, we rise and fall together.

               

               

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[1] A Rabbi was with a group of students over Shabbos deep in contentious discussion when his daughter came over and called him a giant liar.  Not a very good PR move. But she explained, every Shabbos he said that bread came out of the ground and that surely is not true. 

[2] המוצאי לחם מן הארץ