The Stars Sang

Did you know that one of the most unnatural things for people to do in this modern age is to look up? Watch people, especially as they are walking, and you will see them looking ahead or down, depending on whether or not they are carrying a device, but rarely will you ever see people looking up.

Now I admit I am a little bit on the weird side. I tend to look up quite a bit. I am a weather watcher so I look to the sky and the clouds all the time to determine what is coming. Tell me that snow is coming and I will literally spend hours watching the clouds thicken up, observing the temperature dropping, anticipating the first of the snow fall. In fact I am so fascinated by weather change that I will quite literally sit outside ( on a covered deck or porch) and watch lighting storms. I love to look up and see the changes.

But there is another reason that I like to look up. On a cold clear night,especially here in the north east, you can see the stars in all their glorious fullness and it gives you a proper perspective on just where you stand in the grand scheme of things.

I remember as a child laying outside on my grandmothers lawn and watching the stars. They were so bright ( where I grew up in Maine there wasn't much for lights to obstruct the view) that I could imagine that each star had a musical twinkle with them. I was always just a bit disappointed when I didn't hear anything, yet I was convinced that I should.

Imagine my surprise when I read the book of Job and found this particular passage. Job 38:7 “When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

This, of course, was G-d responding to Job and asking him a series of questions, that he essentially didn't have an answer for, but the fact that G-d says that “ the morning stars sang” gave me a small amount of vindication, knowing that G-d said it has happened. I suppose that we have just lost our ability to hear it.

One thing about looking at the stars ,especially if you spend any length of time at it, is that you get a much better perspective of just where you are ,and stand, in the grand scheme of the universe.

We all live on this planet. We can't escape it. None of us gets out of this alive. Yet we live our lives, thanks to the media and the world wide political class, in almost constant fear. We have threats of war and nuclear holocaust thrown at us on a daily basis, as world “leaders” play a constant game of deadly chicken with each other. Even at our own peon level we fight with each other over everything that those powers tell us we should be “outraged” over, yet nothing is ever resolved and everything remains in chaos. What is the point of all this outrage? Why should we waste our time?

Go find a quite place, preferably well away from lights, on a mountain top, lay down and look up at the stars. Just look. Don't speak, or think, just observe and consider where you are in the grand scheme of the universe. Consider that we are all minuscule dots, on a minuscule planet, in a very small region of space. It is not to say that we are not important to G-d, we are, or His plans, but the universe is so big that it defies imagination and after a while you come to realize that all these things that we are “outraged” over, actually don't mean anything in the grand design of the universe.

Now just imagine if you could get world “leaders” to do the same, to look up into the heavens and come to the realization, that all our differences are petty and that we would, as an entire planet, be better off if we would focus on what really matters, the things that unite us, rather then what, allegedly, divides us.

Perhaps then we would hear, once again, the morning stars singing, and all of the sons of G-d rejoicing as we come to appreciate the things that are truly important.

Someone one said that if we worried about the things that truly matter there would be an extreme shortage of fishing poles. I would amend that with a shortage of back backs and telescopes as well.

In A Beginning

Genesis 1:1 “In a beginning”. A very powerful set of words. Notice I did not write “In the beginning” which most English translations have. The Hebrew says “b-rashith bra” which translates to “ in beginning he created” there is no “the” and , at least in the Hebrew version I have, it suggests the use of the word “A” as being more appropriate. In other words it was a beginning of a cycle of time which is what I want to speak to you about.

Today, even as I am writing this, Jews around the world are celebrating “Simcah Torah” or the completion and the starting over of the readings of the Torah cycle. It is done with dancing and singing while the Torah scroll is brought around the congregation and the scroll is kissed. It is literally celebrating the word of G-d and His laws. And it all starts with “In a beginning.”

So whats the big deal about this? It depends on how you see “beginnings.”

Most of us are taught that everything has an beginning and an ending and a straight timeline in between. This straight line is where we have our lives lived, we live, laugh and cry, eat, drink and sleep, get married, have children and grow old all within this line of time , hence we see that we had a beginning and we know that we have an end, so logic dictates that life is a linear thing from start to finish.

I disagree.

A Rabbi once suggested to me that life is actually circular not linear. He suggested that G-d doesn't just see one day on a particular date, but rather He can see all of the days of that date at the same time. In other words, today being “Simcah Torah” He doesn't just see today, but rather He sees all the Simcah Torah's that have ever been celebrated and will be celebrated all at the same time so that even as we pass from this world to the world to come, G-d still sees us in the cycle of life celebrating His holy days on those days because we have done so. In other words He sees the cycle of life and holy days constantly. It never ends.

Nature shows us the proverbial “circle of life” every day and season.

Look at the moon. Every month it goes from being completely dark ( New moon) to a full moon and then back again, it is constant, and sailors have been predicting the tides since time immemorial because of it's consistency.

We are currently in my favorite time of the year,fall. Yet I know that fall will slowly give way to winter, which will then lead to the renewal of spring and the full vigor of summer, then back to fall. Its a cycle that continually repeats.

One last example. Go out and take a hike in the woods and look for trees that have died. Many times you will find either new shoots or young trees growing out of the stumps or at least you will find various fungi and lichens, even in death, new life begins and is renewed. It's a cycle, circular, not linear.

All of these are an example of “a beginning” and a renewal of life. It is written as In a beginning on purpose, G-d and nature show this.

Now can I prove to you that our lives are circular rather then linear? No I can't. If my soul has been in the past I have no memory( though I believe our dreams play a role in helping us to remember) but I believe that the Jewish concept, that our spirits return to G-d after we die, is true, and if so, G-d may very well put us back into play to learn more. Just my humble opinion on this.

So as we celebrate the renewal of the laws of G-d and the renewal of the reading of the Torah, remember what this is truly about, in the end, and that's the next word in the line, Elohim. HaShem ( the name) G-d. “In a beginning G-d.” After that it's all commentary.