Before Shabbat

When I was five or six I came into the possession of a spyglass..  It wasn’t the real thing, just a plastic toy with plastic lenses. It may have come from a Halloween pirate costume, but its origin is ultimately wrapped in the vicissitudes of time. I do remember looking through it and being amazed. The magnification was laughably low, but it did work.  I could see things up close that were far away. What a concept!

With that spyglass, I could peer more deeply into my world. I could look out the window at the trees and the front yard. I could use it to stare at the tv screen and wonder why it looked so strange (now I know I was looking at pixels…). I couldn’t get enough of the thing.

One day, I picked up the spyglass and inadvertently looked through the wrong end. What? Everything looked so far away! I remember being utterly confounded. The same device that pulled things closer now pushed them so far away. I now know that wasn’t magic, just physics. But at the time, it laid out an existential dilemma: how can one thing offer two opposite perspectives in the same form?

Maybe I didn’t phrase it that way, but the confrontation with reality was real: I remember holding that spyglass and thinking – hard! – about this tangible example of duality. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that I – or anyone – could hold multiple truths, contradictory emotions, and values.

Recalling this moment in my young life, it occurred to me that being Jewish is like owning a spyglass. Sometimes, we look through the small lens, and we immediately see what must be done. We Jews are a people of the present tense. We see what needs to get done, so we rise up and do it. In such times we understand that life mandates we focus on the here and now.

But then sometimes we look through the larger objective lens, and everything is miniaturized, distant, and vast. In that moment, we are not seeing anything up close. Instead, we have an utterly aspirational vision. We look into the distance and imagine what is yet possible. It is a messianic perspective.

Our tradition is like a spiritual spyglass through which to espy the world. And what I’m seeing through the small lens is overwhelming. This country that I love is abandoning the poor and hungry of the world who depend on us. Policy decisions are being made that endanger the health of us all. Our allies are being cast out the service entrance as undesirables while an enemy is being greeted at the front door.

I am feeling overcome and undone. I cast my eyes to the mountain through the spyglass, and I don’t see where my help will come from.  It feels confusing and overwhelming. I don’t have the ability to respond in a meaningful way. The darkness and fear I feel, as do so many immigrants and federal workers is almost incapacitating.  

These concerns are not liberal or conservative, left or right. They are legitimate Jewish responses to the world today. I don’t think it is possible to contribute to the present moment in any meaningful way while being wholly engulfed by it. We need to take some time to regain our perspective. We need to take a moment and look through the larger end of the spyglass with a Jewish eye and regain our sense of perspective that in the larger world, a bigger promise awaits us.

And then—with renewed clarity and purpose—we turn the spyglass again. We cast our Jewish eye upon the immediate world, bringing into sharp focus what must be done here and now. We see the hands that need holding, the voices that need amplifying, the wrongs that need righting. And then, grounded in both eternal vision and present duty, we get to work.

We are surrounded by extraordinary phenomena. Miles beneath our feet lies Earth’s core, whose exact composition, temperature, and gravitational intensity are still shrouded in mystery. Above us stretches a sky that opens to the cosmos, filled with remarkable celestial objects. And all of it—all of us—is permeated by dark matter, a mysterious force that physicists deem essential to understanding the Universe, though we haven’t yet proven its existence.

These massive forces that push us into realms of the unfathomable captivate me. My love for cosmology, astronomy, and astrophysics, coupled with an equal fascination for paleoanthropology and neurology, connects to a deep appreciation for the divine and endless gratitude for both my individual life and Life itself.

This brings me to today’s holiday, Tu Bishvat, the birthday of the trees. Those who grew up with even a tangential relationship to a synagogue remember Tu Bishvat – receiving that little blue pushke to fill with coins for the JNF, perhaps participating in a Tu Bishvat seder with its traditional fruits from Israel, like figs, dates, grapes, olives, and pomegranates, along with fruits we haven’t tasted in a long time.

But there’s something profound about this day, which began as a simple agricultural marker for dating when tree fruits could be eaten. It’s about the trees themselves – their essence and meaning. As Richard Powers writes in The Overstory, “No one sees trees. We see fruit, we see nuts, we see wood, we see shade. We see ornaments or pretty fall foliage. Obstacles blocking the road or wrecking the ski slope. Dark, threatening places that must be cleared. We see branches about to crush our roof. We see a cash crop. But trees – trees are invisible.”

Even now, in the depths of winter, these seemingly lifeless giants are carrying out remarkable processes. New England’s trees have evolved sophisticated survival strategies. Deciduous trees begin winter preparation as autumn approaches, gradually halting photosynthesis. The breakdown of chlorophyll reveals the hidden yellows and reds we call fall foliage. At a cellular level, they’re performing complex chemical transformations, producing natural antifreeze compounds that protect their cells from freezing damage.

What appears to be a bare, dormant maple is actually a thriving organism, temporarily conserving energy by living off stored reserves in its roots and inner bark. But perhaps most remarkable is our deep connection to these ancient beings. As Powers notes, “You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes…”

Today, on Tu Bishvat, take a moment to truly see a tree. Look beyond its role as shade provider or landscape feature. Notice how its branches reach toward the sky in fractals, how its bark protects it from harsh elements, and how its roots spread unseen beneath the soil in complex networks. Consider how it’s part of a larger system—providing oxygen, storing carbon, creating soil, and sheltering countless organisms.

This is a day to acknowledge trees as resources and fellow travelers on Earth’s evolutionary journey. In a universe with mysteries stretching from the quantum to the cosmic scale, trees are a testament to life’s resilience and interconnectedness. This is a day to give thanks for this Universe, filled with so much hurt and sorrow, filled with infinite beauty and intimate connections.