Monthly Archives: January 2025

Jan 31 2025
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Turtles

In his extraordinary book, A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking tells this story:  A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

I’ve loved this story since I first read it some 35 years ago. For a long time, I didn’t even know why I liked it so much. I just felt it speaking to me. I didn’t absorb it as a simple tale of two diametrically opposed takes on reality. Instead, I perceived it almost like a Buddhist koan, hiding deep truth in plain sight.

The wisdom of this little story recently emerged in a satori moment. I overheard a preschool child engaged in a discussion with a teacher. It went something like this: Why can’t we go outside today? Because it’s too cold. Why is it too cold? The clouds are covering the sun. Why are the clouds… Ahh, hah! It hit me! Turtles all the way down…

When we want to find out the real truth, we sometimes refer to it as getting to the bottom of the issue. Only what happens if there is no bottom? What if it all doesn’t work out so simply, so neatly? What if it’s turtles all the way down?

Perfection is a philosophical system, not a human state of being. We live with extraordinary complexity in everything from how our brains work to the electric grid to how a violin vibrates to… well, fill in the blanks of your own life.

There could be a fundamental limit to how far matter can be divided, a truly elementary particle or state that cannot be broken down further. We’ve repeatedly discovered smaller constituents when we thought we’d found the bottom layer, so physicists remain open to the possibility of yet undiscovered substructure. While some theories suggest a limit – quarks, strings, or quantum foam – history teaches us humility about claiming we’ve reached the bottom. It may just be turtles all the way down.

As I’ve learned now, Hawking’s story is an example par excellence of infinite regression theory. It essentially poses this point: some questions have no ultimate answers. Is there a God or not? Will the Universe continue to expand? Is there a significant probability, as Nick Bostrom argues, that we’re living in a simulation created by advanced civilizations? Turtles all the way down.

This perspective offers profound healing. Beauty lies not in reaching some ultimate truth but in the endless unfolding of mysteries. Like the old lady’s turtles, there’s wonder and wisdom in accepting that some things go “all the way down.”

This fact of existence is a healing thing. At the end of the day, it’s okay not to know it all; in fact, we can’t know it all! It teaches us to be gentler with ourselves and others, knowing we cannot fully comprehend everything. There is infinite mystery in a world that is evolving and devolving at the same time. Life is not like the peeling of an onion, which makes us cry and leaves us in the middle with nothing. In embracing this infinite regression, we find not emptiness but richness – an endless cascade of questions and possibilities that make life worth exploring. It’s turtles all the way down, and that is beautiful.

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Jan 17 2025
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Bring Them Home

Since October 7th, my heart has grown a protective membrane, shielding me from the unrelenting pain and woe. From the daily tally of IDF soldiers lost fighting a vicious foe to the families of Israeli hostages weeping in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, begging politicians to save their loved ones. From the towns of Gaza that now mirror Europe’s wrecked cities during WWII, to Gazan parents cradling their children’s remains wrapped in cotton muslin, names scrawled in black across makeshift shrouds.

This protective membrane serves its purpose. A voluntary news blackout cannot block everything, but it shields me from the worst stories. It filters out the brutes, the bullies, and the opportunists who see only dollar signs where ethics should reside.

Yet this membrane extracts its price. Cynicism creeps in. Sarcasm becomes a reflex. Everything grows suspect, and nothing good penetrates. Darkness lurks, and life tastes bitter.

I began writing this on Thursday night. On Friday morning, I’m struggling to keep the ceasefire story from breaching my heart’s defenses. I cannot bear to watch it collapse. I imagine the hostage families clustered around their televisions and radios, hanging on every word of Israel’s famous around-the-clock news programs and heated debate shows. Who indeed can argue like a Jewish man convinced of his righteousness and others’ folly?

This ceasefire agreement is undeniably bitter medicine for Israel. Many in the government and their supporters resist swallowing it. They refuse to grant Hamas any concession to acknowledge their existence. Yet according to a recent Israel Democracy Institute survey, more than two-thirds of the public supports a deal to release all or some hostages. The remainder—about a quarter—advocate maintaining military pressure on Hamas, believing it will yield better terms for Israel.

Let’s be clear: no ceasefire, no armistice, arrives without complications. Questions about what remained unaccomplished will persist. The melody of “would’ve, could’ve” plays eternally in the background. This is an imperfect process, as all such processes must be.

As I prepare for Shabbat, I hold fast to one hope: bring them home. I pray: bring them home. Despite the unfinished business and political machinations, I pray this marks the beginning of a long, winding path toward some form of peace.

As Daniel Gordis writes, “A deal can be a huge success and a crushing failure at the very same time. A deal can raise the spirits of a country and leave it shattered at the very same moment—and that, assuming the deal goes through, is almost certainly what will happen. If this deal goes through, what happens to the spirit of the Jewish State? If this deal does not go through, what happens to the spirit of the Jewish state? We do not know.”

What I know from here in the Diaspora is this: As odious as Hamas is and will always be, they remain an unavoidable reality. There’s no one else to negotiate with. The release of these Israelis is beyond overdue. The cost of this hostage exchange is one we must collectively bear. Bring them home.

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Jan 03 2025
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Entering 2025

In the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, a 2nd-century halakhic midrash on the book of Exodus, Rabbi Yishmael writes, “All beginnings are difficult.” This aphorism resonates deeply as I sit down to compose my first Before Shabbat essay of 2025. Where does one begin?

The year opens like a vast river, its banks invisible in the distance. Through the hull of our fragile vessel, we feel its unmistakable rhythm. The current pulls us along – sometimes cradling us in gentle waters, other times tossing us through towering waves that leave us clutching the gunwales, wondering if the storm will ever break.

Yet here’s the paradox: it’s the same water, the same river, the same vessel. As the old saying goes, “Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.” There are moments when we’re prepared – life jackets secured, vigilant, and ready. Then there are times when the squall line appears without warning, and we’re thrown about, battered by forces beyond our control.

Despite our sophisticated technology and careful predictions, we remain uncertain creatures navigating uncharted waters. We craft models and devise plans, yet reality constantly reminds us of our limited foresight. This not-knowing isn’t a flaw – it’s intrinsic to our journey, built into the very design of our fragile vessel.

Maria Popova, the brilliant Bulgarian artist and philosopher behind The Marginalian, recently reflected on this mystery. She wrote: “We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the Universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of our lives. But it is good, every once in a while, to let ourselves be stupefied by gratitude, to cast upon ourselves a spell against indifference by moving through the world with an inner bow at every littlest thing that prevailed over the odds of otherwise in order to exist.”

This is where 2025 begins—in noticing, in wonder, in gratitude, and in awe. We face the world wide-eyed and peeking through trembling fingers. Joy and grief, laughter and despair, mystery and majesty, madness and magnificence—all flow together in the river of life.

Despite the bloodstains and fear already marking this year’s beginning, I feel an unexpected calm. We have each other to share the best and worst of times. Together, we sing and pray, warmed by the currents of history as our vessels drift downstream. We study as one, gaining insights that will guide us through this absurdly infinite Universe. As 2025 pours forward, come let us bless each other as we float. It’s the ride of a lifetime.