Before Shabbat

We are finite and small and limited. Einstein redefined time and space and gravity, but give him two knitting needles and some yarn, and he’s helpless. Give Joe Lovano a tenor sax, and he will shock you with his dynamic virtuosity. Ask him to define an aggadic Midrash, and he will ask you to hum a few bars…

In other words, we know only the most infinitesimal bit about the world. When I do the New York Times Saturday crossword – which I can NEVER complete without my wife – I am acutely aware of this truism. No matter how many things I Google, there are a thousand more unknowns that fly past me at the speed of light, and all I can do is bravely smile and wonder how I didn’t know what just blew by me.

From time to time I learn something that I didn’t even know I didn’t know, something really big and life altering. For instance, I recently learned that there were no standardized times or time zones anywhere in the world until the late 1800s. The increasingly large, complex and rich railroads demanded some sort of synchronization so that when it was 10 am at Penn Station, it was 10 am at South Station.

My understanding of time dramatically changed when I learned about the establishment of time zones. A few new facts and the world looks different. Amazing…

Below is a piece from an article in last December’s Scientific American. I reprint it here for you to read because it is so mind-blowing. Once you read it, you’ll never be the same…

Imagine visiting a far distant galaxy and addressing a postcard to your loved ones back home. You might begin with your house on your street in your hometown, somewhere on Earth, the third planet from our sun. From there the address could list the sun’s location in the Orion Spur, a segment of a spiral arm in the Milky Way’s suburbs, followed by the Milky Way’s residence in the Local Group, a gathering of more than 50 nearby galaxies spanning some seven million light-years of space. The Local Group, in turn, exists at the outskirts of the Virgo Cluster, a 50-million-light-year-distant cluster of more than 1,000 galaxies that is itself a small part of the Local Supercluster, a collection of hundreds of galaxy groups sprawled across more than 100 million light-years. Such superclusters are believed to be the biggest components of the universe’s largest-scale structures, forming great filaments and sheets of galaxies surrounding voids where scarcely any galaxies exist at all.

Until recently, the Local Supercluster would have marked the end of your cosmic address. Beyond this scale, it was thought, further directions would become meaningless as the boundary between the crisp, supercluster-laced structure of galactic sheets and voids gave way to a homogeneous realm of the universe with no larger discernible features. But in 2014 one of us (Tully) led a team that discovered we are part of a structure so immense that it shattered this view. The Local Supercluster, it turns out, is but one lobe of a much larger supercluster, a collection of 100,000 large galaxies stretching across 400 million light-years. The team that discovered this gargantuan supercluster named it Laniakea-Hawaiian for “immeasurable heaven”-in honor of the early Polynesians who navigated the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean by the stars. The Milky Way sits far from Laniakea’s center, in its outermost hinterlands.

Laniakea is more than just a new line on our cosmic address. By studying the architecture and dynamics of this immense structure, we can learn more about the universe’s past and future. Charting its constituent galaxies and how they behave can help us better understand how galaxies form and grow while telling us more about the nature of dark matter-the invisible substance that astronomers believe accounts for about 80 percent of the stuff in the universe.

Does this blow your mind?? Read the phrases like “galactic sheets,” or “great filaments,” or read that the Universe is 80 percent dark matter. What? Laniakea? A collection of 100,000 galaxies “stretching across 400 million light years”?

Why do I get so excited about this stuff? It illustrates that we live in an extraordinary place. The sheer size of Laniakea dwarfs anything I can imagine. That we can find ourselves even in the middle of this gigantic system is remarkable.

We are a part of something so vast, so beyond comprehension. And we didn’t even know it! I am so thankful to have learned this, to have my home recontextualized to include the utter vastness of space.

In an uneasy time of constriction and anxiety, I hope this story will provide you with some spiritually uplifting language and images. It’s thrilling to still feel awe and wonder.

Shabbat Shalom.

rebhayim

Elie Wiesel talked about Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism. He described Herzl, a Viennese Jew, taking his constitutional along the Ringstrasse, thinking about the future of the Jewish people. One day, Herzl decides that a land for the Jewish people is the only way forward. And as impossible as it may sound, he said, “If you will it, it is no dream.”

Another Viennese Jew walked along the Ringstrasse contemporaneously with Herzl: Sigmund Freud. Imagine, said Wiesel, if Herzl uttered his famous declaration out loud as Freud walked by. Perhaps Freud would have stopped and said, “Dream? Did you say ‘dream’?” They might have engaged in conversation. And then, who knows? Perhaps the Jewish State would never have been founded!

There’s a scene in the Joseph story where Jacob sends his favorite son to check on his brothers out in the fields with the flocks. Joseph doesn’t know where his brothers have gone. When he reached Shechem, 36:15 a man came upon him wandering in the fields. The man asked him, “What are you looking for?” 16 He answered, “I am looking for my brothers. Could you tell me where they are pasturing?” 17 The man said, “They have gone from here, for I heard them say: Let us go to Dothan.” So Joseph followed his brothers and found them at Dothan.

If it weren’t for that chance meeting with a nameless stranger, perhaps Joseph would have never found his brothers. Instead, he would’ve packed up and gone home. Had THAT happened, the Jewish people would’ve never come to be. We’d have died out in Egypt.

When I was in 4th grade and offered with a limitless choice of what musical instrument to play, I chose the oboe. I don’t mind saying that it was a bad choice. With all due respect to oboists everywhere – even on Mozart In the Jungle – it’s just not a cool instrument. Had my parents or some stranger intervened and said, “No dude. Pick up the alto sax!”, I may never have ended up as a rabbi.

Some people say that there’s no such thing as coincidences. They say God’s hand is in all such things. That man in the Joseph story who literally appears out of nowhere, without context or explanation, must have been strategically placed there by God. And perhaps it was God who led my music teacher to say that the oboe was a good idea, to keep me away from another path that would lead me away from what I was meant to do, which was not to be a jazz musician, but rather to be a rabbi.

I’d like to believe that God’s hand is in much of what we do or don’t do. I’d like to think that coincidences are holy encounters, the nearest thing to a proof of God’s existence. I’d like to believe that those people who appear briefly in our life stories and change everything are placed there, even if they have no idea. I’d like to believe that everything happens for a reason.

But alas! I do not. I am glad no one handed me a horn in 1963. I am thankful the first professor I spoke to in college became my mentor and friend. Because of him, I was drawn to the rabbinate. I don’t think God made that happen. I’m just glad it worked out as it did.

The world is filled with random events careening off of each other like atoms in a particle accelerator. And we careen right along with them. To get some balance, we find others who share common concerns and hopes. We build a community that provides lasting stability. That is not coincidence. That’s hard work. That’s commitment.

God’s presence is not in chance encounters. It is, rather, in every moment we decide to open our hearts and our minds. God’s presence is in the gesture of humanity. That’s no coincidence.

I’ve often wondered the extent to which Abram is either out of his mind or deeply pious or a visionary or a mix of all three traits and maybe more. How could he so resolutely step into the great wide open?

Oh, I know. If almost anyone got a direct message from God it would be hard to say no. Still and all, there’s no side bar, no analysis of the offer; that’s striking. I want Abram to get out a piece of papyrus and a pen and do a pros/cons comparison chart. I want him to ask at least a few questions. I want him to be at least vaguely curious about his final destination. But Abram hears God and obeys. He “just went forth as the Holy One had commanded him”.

In the end, it just may be that Abram’s determination to move forward is pragmatic. What else is he supposed to do? Why not dare to do something? It’s not as if you get to live a longer or better life by standing still. In fact, health experts insist that standing still is bad for our health. This means that there’s some physiological imperative that wants to drive us forward. So why not listen to that body truth?

I’ve been hearing the lech lecha imperative in my head since election day. So here we are.  Nothing happens in the past. The action is in the next step. We’re moving on.

God’s promise to Abram is loud and clear. If you go, if you trust in me and follow my lead, you will become a great nation that will teach the world what it means to be  faithful. You will teach the world what it means to be just and compassionate. You will take all the curses and abuse heaped upon you and you will not become embittered and vengeful. You will not resort to nihilistic acts of wanton savagery and terror. You will not use the name of God to justify killing children.  You will feel the pain of hatred and antisemitism and you will take that pain and it will inspire you to empathize with others who feel the lash of hate speech and prejudice and violence and death. You will stand with those who, like you, have been oppressed and beaten and humiliated.

This is our imperative. And it hasn’t changed. We keep following Abram’s lead. We keep stepping into tomorrow, not knowing what we’ll face. All we can know is that we go forth with confidence in who we are and what we’re willing to do for others who need us. We bring with us our tools: a belief in justice and equality, courage to do the right thing, and a clear notion that what matters in the end of the day, no matter where we end up, is to be a mensch.

So if and when someone asks you, “What’s going to happen now in this major transitional period in American life?”, you can tell them that, from a Jewish point of view, we follow Abram. It worked for him.

Lech lecha! And Shabbat Shalom

rebhayim