It’s All in Your Frame of Reference

It’s All In Your Frame of Reference

Kol Nidrei Eve, Yom Kippur 5786, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ

One of my favorite stories is about an old rabbi and his faithful student, Mendel, who are traveling from one shtetl to another in the Old Country.  It’s a long journey, so they stop for the night, say their evening prayers, eat their dinner, and bed down.  In the middle of the night the old rabbi wakes his student.

“Mendel, wake up.  Look up; what do you see?”

His student, bleary eyed, looks up and says, “Oy, rabbi, I see so many stars!”

His teacher says, “And what do we learn from that?”

Mendel answers, “That the Ribono Shel Olam has created an amazing universe, all according to God’s will!”

“That’s true,” says the rabbi.  “What else do we learn?”

“Oy, rebbe,” Mendel answers, “We learn that the Compassionate One has given us an infinite capacity for wonder, for appreciating the incredible workings of the heavens, and we should say a brocho!”

“That’s also true,” says the rabbi.  “What else do we learn, Mendel?”

The student answers, “By looking at the position of the moon and stars we can see that dawn is just a couple of hours away, and we will soon rise and say Shachris prayers, thanking der Aibishter for the great goodness we have received.”

The old rabbi is silent for a few moments, and then he says, “Mendel, you idiot.  Someone stole our tent.” 

You see, it’s a matter of perspective.

When I began working as a rabbi I was particularly enthusiastic about the importance of my work cultivating and encouraging Jewish life.  That excitement communicated itself to my congregation, no doubt, perhaps to a bit too extreme a degree.  One of my teenage students sent me a postcard while on a trip; it was a picture of the solar system, quite large, with a tiny arrow pointed at a very small point on the card.  The wording read: “This is the universe.  This is your job (tiny dot).”

The brilliant, Jewish astronomer, Carl Sagan, expanded greatly on this idea.  “What made me want to be an astronomer, and a scientist was a photograph.  We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space] of earth, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives.

“The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

“The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

There is something so powerful about seeing that reality, getting things back into perspective.  It’s easy—much too easy—to believe that what is happening right now is all that matters.  It is easy—much too easy—to arrive at the conclusion that the latest stresses in our lives are overwhelming.  It is easy—much too easy—to think that our most recent accomplishments, our most recent failures, our medical problems, our issue with our children or grandchildren, our house problems and car problems and job problems, our newest purchase or upcoming travel—are centrally important to the fate of the universe as we see it.

Yom Kippur is here to remind us that’s simply not true.  It’s a day to shut off the outside world, to understand who we really are and what really matters.  Can we do that?  Well, it simply depends on each of us, on you, on me.  And on our ability to achieve perspective.

I remember when cellphones suddenly became smartphones, and everyone was connected all the time.  It was Rosh HaShanah, some years ago, and I was walking in from the back of the sanctuary chanting the Hineni prayer, as I did on Rosh HaShanah here and will do again tomorrow morning.  It is always a powerful moment spiritually, a statement of true humility by the leader of the service, praying for the lives of the congregation.

As I walked in, I noticed for the first time that most of the congregants—frankly, near all of them—were looking not at me, or at the Machzor, their prayerbooks, or even up at the bimah.  They were looking at their little screens.  Even though they had come to services on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, the Day of Atonement, they were focused on their email, or texts, or the stock market, or their news feed, or God only knows what else.

I mentioned this the next week on Kol Nidrei Eve, got a laugh, and the next morning, on Yom Kippur, as I walked in for Hineni, I noticed—well, pretty much the same thing, only this time the people who were on their cellphones were mostly hiding them in their prayerbooks…

It’s hard to shut it all off, isn’t it?  Even on the great Sabbath of Sabbaths, Yom HaKippurim, the great day of Atonement and return.  It’s hard to change perspective.

But that’s truly what we are doing here tonight and tomorrow.  Changing our viewpoint.  Breaking the pattern.  Seeking a new way to see who and what we are and what we can become.

Which Sagan’s tiny dot can help with. 

Now, I will differ with Sagan, who wrote so magnificently and eloquently about our very existence, on one or two points.  The first is perhaps best demonstrated by a couple of jokes…

Comedian Jeff Allen says, “I believe teenagers are God’s revenge on humankind.  One day the good Lord was looking down on creation and said, “Let’s create someone in their image who denies their existence.”  

Unlike Sagan, I do think help is available to us.  No, not from alien beings or the supreme power of artificial intelligence, and not from divine intervention breaking the laws of the physical universe for our personal benefit.  I believe that knowing that there is a God, that God exists in whatever form we conceive of God, can give us moral and emotional strength to grow and change, to accept things as they are and to seek to change them to the way we believe they can and should be.

That sense of faith can give us courage to seek to right the many wrongs in our society.  The sense of the presence of God in our world, in the divine sparks that are within each of us, can give us the fortitude to ride out our own personal storms.  That belief that there is something beyond ourselves, that we are part of an incredible cosmos that is amazing in so many ways and testifies to an intelligence far beyond chance—that can allow us, if we put our hearts and minds to it, to accomplish so much.

And I firmly believe that science and religion are fully compatible.  The first chief rabbi of Israel, Rav Abraham Isaac Kook, certainly believed this.  A century ago he wrote, in his book Lights of Holiness (2:537),

“The doctrine of evolution, that is currently conquering the world, jives with the eternal secrets of Kabbalah to a larger degree than any other philosophical doctrine.

“Evolution, that goes in an ascending route, gives the optimistic foundation to the world, because how is it possible to despair when we see everything develop and ascend. When we pierce to the inside of the doctrine of ascending development we find in it the Divine matter shining with complete clearness.

“Evolution shines light on all of God’s ways in the world. The creation as a whole develops and ascends, just as this matter is noticeable in parts of it, the ascent is general as well as particular - it rises to the peak of the Absolute Good.”

Rav Kook is always inspirational, and what he is saying is simply that just as human aspiration should seek to rise to the level of holiness and goodness, so the universe created by God rises to that level by natural processes created by the Creator. 

Of course, that will be a matter of perspective.  Of understanding that by giving more of ourselves and our abilities and resources we actually can help create a better, kinder world.  That by treating our families, our friends, our acquaintances with greater empathy, with more understanding, with a deeper appreciation for our own small place in this great universe, we can help create the world we wish to live in.

On this Yom Kippur, this holiest Day of Atonement, may you find your own frame of reference, your own perspective, your own way to see your place in this great creation.  May your awareness of the presence of God, of the interconnectedness of everything and everyone, grow over this day.  And may all of that help you return to the best version of yourself, tonight, tomorrow and in this 5786 year.

Gmar Chatimah Tovah—may your Teshuvah be complete, as you return to those you love in honesty and peace.