The Other Side of Being Human
We almost always hear the words "being human" with a connotation of fallibility, weakness, normalcy -- "human error," "he's only human," "he succumbed to his natural, human urges," and so on. All of this is certainly true, and without a doubt we must be conscious to maintain our idealism in perspective, keeping our feet on the ground. However, I would like to suggest, and think you will agree, that there is another dimension to being human that although diametrically opposed to the first, is a more essential expression of our humanity.
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The soul of man seeks endless expanses -- pines to touch the infinite -- thirsts to taste eternity.
Without exception, every human being is compelled, whether he knows it or not, towards Greatness. From the free-faller diving from an airplane to the entrepreneur hoping to go global -- from the violinist who demands perfection from every bow-stroke to the mathematician poring over an unsolved proof -- from the bride and groom lost in eachother's eyes to the parents quietly taking in the sight of their newborn child -- from the Israeli backpacker in a Tibetan monastery to the college students waxing philosophical in the wee hours of the night, to the pair of chavrusas probing the Talmud's secrets...all of them are looking for the Ineffable, for that cusp of Reality that glows white hot -- Life's cutting edge -- where the finite approaches the Infinite asymptotically, hoping to find what they are so desperately looking for albeit unaware.
None of these admittedly unnatural human behaviors should come to us as a surprise seeing as a "the soul is nothing other than a fragment of G!d Above, with its only desire to return and connect to its source" (Ramchal Daat Tevunot I:24). People are not wholly natural creatures. That boundless place inside every person of thoughts and emotions, creativity and ethical strength has its root in the Infinite.
You don't see many cows bungee-jumping on their own volition -- nor partaking of any other extreme sports or grandiose artistic, intellectual or ethical endeavors (I know I haven't watched TV in a while, but I am confident that this is still true). It's not sufficient to chalk this up to their lack of intelligence because: 1) it's not clear that the people who choose to bungee jump on a regular basis are quantifiable smarter, and 2) even given the resources they (cows) have at their disposal, there is nothing they do which even remotely can be described as a "striving for transcendence" -- no behavioral outlier beyond the pale of food, shelter, survival, and reproduction.
Not so the human being. It is a disservice to our species to only refer to our humanity in the context of what is normal and natural, for in the heart of every one of us is an unquenchable desire to have contact with that which we can hardly put words to. Extreme sports is perhaps not the best use of the infinite longings of the human spirit, but at least it can serve for us as a vibrant image of how super-natural of a species that we are.
The "Insurmountable" Chasm
As surely as the desire for Greatness burns inside of us, we precariously stand at risk of losing hope of ever reaching it.
It's a catch-22. Surely, a person with no- or low-expectations will not get very far -- this is clear. But, on the flip side, a person with high expectations, can get crushed under their weight. The young man with dreams of "making it big" in the business world can very easily throw in the towel after one or two failed start-ups. The athlete that defines success by competing in the Olympics will not only have a bitter career, he will almost certainly never make it to the Olympics. If he does not value any of the smaller but significant success along the way, how will he ever cross the gap to Greatness?
All of this is true in the world of "natural" endeavors. How much more so is it true in our pursuit for Torah, Hashem's Wisdom Itself.
A relative of mine told me recently that she had been convinced that she would never understand any idea in Torah. She had accepted this as fact and had grown comfortable with it. Divrei Torah always seemed to her "too high," she said, with "too many foreign concepts," and logically "too complex." What a tragedy -- her perception of Torah's Greatness was the very thing that kept her away from it.
The real tragedy is that this is true on some level for all of us. All of us give up to some degree at some point in looking up the mountain.
"Me?!? I will never be able to understand what those people are talking about..."
"That stuff is for rabbis...people in yeshiva..."
"I'm going to understand Rabbi Akiva Eiger's kasha?!?"
"What's a 'kasha?'"
"The Maharal? No, no -- that stuff's too deep for me -- I'm a simple Jew."
Right now is the period of preparation between leaving Egypt (celebrated through the holiday of Pesach) and the receiving of the Torah 50 days later (the holiday of Shavuot [June 7-9 this year]). Let's take a look at how the Torah prescribes to remedy this uniquely human predicament of being stuck on earth with aspirations towards the stars.
Counting the Omer
It's often worthwhile to think of how you would have written the Torah to appreciate how Hashem chose to write it. Personally, I would have thought of a more grand series of mitzvahs leading up to our receiving the Torah at Shavuot. I don't know...regimented Torah study everyday, go through the entire Chumash...something! The last thing that would have occurred to me is a mitzvah to count every day from Pesach to Shavuot. Indeed, that is what the Jewish people are doing right now -- counting the Omer. Every night, we make a bracha for that night's count and say, "Today is ___ days of the Omer."
Why is this the way to prepare for receiving the Torah? It is really a quite unimpressive mitzvah. It doesn't get more simple than...counting.
And why is it called the "Omer?" Of course, the simple answer is because of the Korban Omer, the barely offering that marks the beginning of the counting. But this begs the question: why is the whole count defined by that offering? Why do we mention it every day, היום _ ימים לעומר "Today is the __ day of the Omer?" This is most bizarre because the word "omer" is just the name of a measurement (a tenth of an eifa)...this is like calling this month-and-a-half mitzvah "the counting of the kilogram!" It just doesn't have that nice ring to it that we would like to see for the mitzvah that leads us to Shavuot, the celebration of the Giving of Torah...
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To open up this mystery, we must know a little bit about the Korban Omer.
Until the Korban Omer is offered, eating from the new harvest is not permitted. This means that this barley is essentially the first of the harvest. The question is: what are we expressing by giving the first of our national harvest?
It's very "in" today to speak about where our food comes from. Usually, this means explaining all of the chemical, social, political and economic human factors that went into a particular food product. But what about the pre-human factors? You need the right amount of rain, rain acidity, alkaline level in the soil, sunlight without excessive heat, insects to keep the soil fertile but not too many to ruin the crop...this is just a basic list, which we could probably continue to expand and break down into thousands and thousands of independent factors. All of those factors must intersect in the perfect proportions to produce this crop.
We have a choice. Either we look at all of these coming together as happenstance, every natural element on its own -- and they all happened to end up in the same motel i.e. my barley crop, OR we see the one-ness of their harmony, orchestrated by Hashem who took interest in us that we should have a harvest this year.
This is the unique human process of bundling, taking disparate elements and binding them together. In Hebrew, the word for this is לעמר leAmer, which is actually one of the 39 creative processes forbidden on Shabbat, and of course, the exact same word as עומר Omer.
We have a choice to look at the world as "fortunate coincidences" or expressions of Hashem's Love for us. When we offer up the Korban haOmer, we are saying, "Thank You -- we realized that all of this came from You."
It is this very human act of bundling is what kicks off the Counting of the Omer. It serves as our paradigm for the whole time period. As we mentioned, "Omer" is a measurement. More specifically, it is the measurement of food a person needs in a single day. In the desert, every person received exactly an omer of manna (Shemot 16:16). This is the path the Torah helps us chart to reach the Infinite. We have to look at everyday as a portion.
The way infinity works is that you can come into contact with infinity by touching any part of it. Divide infinity by any number and you will come to infinity.
Everyday we try to look at we have in front of us and try to find the local unity. We have to turn our day into a bundle that is worth bundling all on its own. Everyday, we can מעמר-bundle the different pieces together of that day -- we can find oneness where we are.
...Very often, another individual can look to us like a disparate package of quirks, thoughts and interests, but there is a one-ness there to uncover...
...We may not be able to bring the world together, nor the entire Jewish people, but we can start with the people we come into contact with on any given day -- our classmates, co-workers, family members -- it's very good to think global, but without acting local, we will turn into cynics...
There is no such thing as jumping to grab onto the infinite -- to all-at-once, see the One-ness of the Big Picture that those college students, up late at night, think they are so close to uncovering. BUT, every day of our lives we have the opportunity to find Hashem in that day -- the things we will learn about life, the people we will help, the new insights into what makes us tick. Everyday has its one-ness to uncover. As the picture unfolds, we will see how today's one-ness is really part of the higher perspective of one-ness we will have tomorrow.
A person who learns Torah regularly knows this well. Everyday, you open up your gemara and find a page of Talmud that makes no sense whatsoever. There are arguments about arguments, contradictions and paradoxes -- it's a mess. Part of you wants to close the book, and the other part is flipping to the end of the tractate to see how many pages you have left to finish, and then the rest of Shas (the whole Talmud is called "the Shas"). Again, stuck between despair and high expectations.
The mission is to realize that the Torah is One, every part of it is Infinite. If you cannot enjoy learning this daf of gemara, what makes you think you will have enjoyed finishing the Shas? A person has to look at this daf of gemara as his mission. Find the unity that resolves the problems at hand. Reveal the beauty here. This is the way is to appreciate our daily portion -- to put our whole being into it.
For the person who doesn't learn Torah regularly, this principle can change his life. As soon as he realizes that the Torah is One -- that every single concept he gets clear can be applied all over the place and throughout his life, the panorama of Torah will open up for him.
Moreover, often, we get blocked from seeing the trees because of the forest. We're hung up on enormous questions about the nature of G!d and the Torah at large. The omer teaches us a mind-blowing idea: in Torah, if we keep our eyes open, we will discover the forest in the trees!
We must learn to appreciate the micro to get to the macro. This is why everyday we make a bracha on that day's count -- on the underlying beauty and unity we will discover on that day. It's not just one bracha at the beginning of the count and another at the end of 49 days.
We must also appreciate that everyday is connected to the next. This is essentially what counting is. When I say the "5 books of Moshe," or the "3 forefathers," I am indicating an underlying unity among those 5 books and among those 3 forefathers. This is the depth of what counting is (לספור to count is of course connected to ספר book, a sequential narrative of otherwise disparate events/information).
If we do this, Hashem takes care of giving us the Big Picture, that Ineffable and Infinite Expanses our soul so intensely longs for.
It's like learning a language. You learn one word, two words, start constructing sentences, etc. For a long time, even if you're having conversations, it's still disparate parts that you are mechanically putting into place. Until one day, after you've immersed yourself in that foreign culture...you're fluent! You are no longer translating as you go. You can just speak!
This is the aspect of "50" in Torah -- the Ineffable that we don't even count in the Omer because it's really not in our hands to count. It's a gift. Even if you have all the pieces together, you may still not have the "all." The absolute one-ness. This, the Torah calls "כל" which means "all," and "happens" to appear in the unbounded middle of the aleph-bet, and also "happens" to have a numerical value of 50 (כ=20, ל=30).
It is for this reason that the holiday on the 50th day of this count, after 7 weeks, is simply called by the same name as the sum of its parts that were spent preparing for it, שבועות "Shavuot," which literally means..."Weeks."~~~~~
Leaving Egypt is relatively easy. What did we have to lose? Plus, we were shown a flash of the Infinite. Razzled and Dazzled by miracles, it's not so impressive that we left. On a certain level, a herd of cows would have done the same. That is what was necessary for our nation in its childhood. However, what is quintessentially human and adult, is to have the soul's desire for the infinite, yet realistically direct it to every day's unique mission. To find the infinite within the finite, and to appreciate that this is the path to Hashem.
Day 26...here we go...
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This post was based heavily on a shiur by Rav Immanuel Bernstein shlit"a, and a Shabbat drasha by Rav Beryl Gershenfeld shlit"a that was explicating the approach of the Arizal to the Omer.
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