Raise a Glass to Freedom
9 min read
GOOD MORNING! In last week’s column I discussed Mark Twain’s remarkable article in Harper’s magazine in March of 1898 where he observed that “The Jews are peculiarly and conspicuously the world’s intellectual aristocracy.” This week I will address Twain’s overarching question in that very same article – a question that he leaves unanswered: “All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”
Like Twain, some of the history’s greatest thinkers have made similar observations regarding the Jewish people.
The great Russian author Leo Tolstoy wrote: “The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He whom neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy. He whom neither fire nor sword nor inquisition was able to wipe off the face of the earth. He who was the first to produce the oracles of God. He who has been for so long the guardian of prophecy, and who transmitted it to the rest of the world – such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is as everlasting as eternity itself.”
Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, physicist, and religious theologian lived a brief thirty-nine years, from 1623 to 1662. In 1654 he had a mystical vision and was enraptured. He subsequently abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to theology. The story is told of King Louis XIV of France asking Blaise Pascal for a proof of the existence of God. The reply was immediate. “The Jews, your majesty, the Jews!” replied Pascal.
Rabbi Yaakov Emden (also known as “Ya’avetz”), one of the most famous rabbinic thinkers of the 18th century, wrote that the survival of the Jewish people over three millennia is the greatest miracle that God ever performed; eclipsing every other miracle, including the plagues in Egypt and the splitting of the Red Sea.
Obviously, there is a miraculous aspect to the survival of the Jewish people; as the Passover Haggadah points out, “In every generation they have tried to destroy us but God has saved us.” Still, I believe we can explain how this miracle occurred and address how we have survived and even thrived, and what it means for the future of the Jewish people.
This week's Torah portion contains an element of this formula for survival. In last week’s Torah reading we find that our forefather Jacob is forced to flee for his life after his mother warns him that his brother Eisav had laid plans to kill him for taking their father’s blessing (Eisav felt they were rightfully his). This week’s Torah reading opens with Jacob traveling to his ancestral homeland to both escape his brother’s wrath and to seek a wife:
And Jacob departed from Be’er Sheva and went to Haran. He encountered the place and spent the night there because the sun had set, he took from the stones of the place and put the around his head. (Genesis 28:10-11).
According to the Talmud (Brachos 26b), it was there that Jacob composed ma’ariv – the evening prayers. That very same passage explains that the three daily prayers of the morning, afternoon, and evening were set by our forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob respectively. The Talmud goes on to explain that these prayers align to the times of the daily sacrifices brought in the Holy Temples. From then on they were considered obligatory.
What does this have to do with Jewish survival?
The eternal relationship between the Almighty and the Jewish people was actually promised to our forefather Abraham, “I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you […] to be God to you and to your descendants after you in an everlasting covenant” (Genesis 17:7).
I believe that the secret to the survival of the Jewish people is best understood by examining what makes diamonds so unique.
Let us examine two naturally occurring crystals that are made out of one the most common elements in the universe – carbon. Carbon has rightfully been referred as “the building block of life” because carbon atoms form the basis of most molecules that make up living things. In fact, a well-known sequence called the “carbon cycle” demonstrates the key role that carbon plays in our lives.
Plants “consume” carbon dioxide and convert it through photosynthesis into carbohydrates. The plants are consumed by animals and through metabolism they produce carbon dioxide (and other products) and return it to the atmosphere where it is, once again, consumed by plants.
There are two crystals that are made out of pure carbon – diamonds and graphite – and although they are formed from the exact same element they couldn’t be more different. A diamond has a hardness rating of 10 – one of the hardest substances on earth. By contrast, graphite is one of the softest – it has a hardness rating between 1-2. What causes this remarkable disparity?
Everything in life is about structure. From the physical world, to the business world, to the world of concepts, to the mystical world – everything requires a structure to maintain form integrity. Structure is known as a coherent form – otherwise referred to as organization. Coherence is defined as when parts of the same mass are held firmly together.
When structure is disrupted chaos reigns and the result is often very painful. Think about what happens when you stub your toe – when the incredibly complex structure that makes up your toe is properly in place everything operates smoothly. When that gets disrupted it results in extraordinary pain.
Simply put, structure is necessary for every element of your life – whether it’s your daily schedule, what you eat, what you accomplish, or your financial goals, the more structured your life is the more successful and productive it will be. In addition, when the structure is properly in place it creates a sense of stability and balance.
So, what’s the difference between a diamond and graphite? Their molecular structure; a diamond has a giant covalent lattice and each carbon atom is bonded to four other carbon atoms. Graphite, on the other hand, is formed in layers and each carbon atom is bonded to three other carbon atoms. As a result, there will be an extra unbonded electron; thus forming a sea of delocalized electrons.
Diamonds are hard due to their giant covalent lattice and their many strong covalent bonds. By contrast, the weak bonds between the multiple sheets of carbon atoms in graphite make it soft and easily flake off on paper, allowing it to be used in your pencil to write. In addition to being soft and slippery, graphite also has a much lower density than diamond.
I believe this is the very same secret to the survival of the Jewish people. The Torah, which the Almighty offered the Jewish nation, is the ultimate superstructure. Almost every element of our lives is highly structured from our daily prayers, to what we eat, to key elements of our marriages.
Every person, and by extension every family, forms the cells of the body known as the Jewish people. We are bonded together by our observance of the Torah – the very structure of our existence. No other nation or people has ever had such a strong personal or communal structure and certainly not both.
Perhaps this is the clearest example; our sages instituted that we must pray three times a day in a congregation numbering no less than ten. So, in effect, we must gather as a community EVERY day. Even more importantly, Jews are prohibited from traveling on Shabbat and yet they must still attend synagogue. This means that Jews have to live in close proximity to one another, which naturally builds community – forming a covalent bond within the cells that form the corpus of the Jewish nation.
Even the structure of Jewish community is carefully designed: providing for the needy, organizing schooling, burial societies, etc. Thus, even as Jews were attacked and persecuted and were running for their lives for the last two millennia, the fortunate ones who escaped were easily able to connect to existing communities in new and strange lands. Within a generation or two they were bonded to their new community in marriage, business, and shared Torah ideals.
Small wonder then that when this critical structural element of the Jewish people is discarded or even slightly altered that it leads to assimilation, disconnection, and eventual disappearance. It doesn’t take many threads to be pulled from a beautiful tapestry for it to become totally unraveled, resulting in a heap of disparate threads that will soon be discarded.
In closing, I want to mention that there is another startling similarity between a diamond and the Jewish people. Ordinary carbon turns into a diamond only when great pressure and high heat is applied to it. Likewise, the Jewish nation, perhaps like no other people, has had to endure tremendous pressure and intense heat from the rest of mankind. A diamond must also be cut and polished to truly sparkle and reveal all its potential and inner beauty. So too every “ordinary” Jew has the potential to sparkle and be greatly valued, but he must develop himself and strip away the outer shell of self-absorption and the empty pursuits of the physical world. Only in this way can a Jew fully develop to be a credit to his lineage and another jewel in the crown of the Almighty.
Vayetzei, Genesis 28:10 - 32:3
This week we have the trials and tribulations of Jacob living with and working for his father-in-law, Laban. Jacob agrees to work as a shepherd for seven years in order to marry Rachel – only to have Laban switch daughters on him at the wedding. (This is why we have the bedekin, the lifting of the veil, at traditional weddings – to ensure one is marrying the right bride.)
As Jacob tries to build his equity, Laban changes their agreement time after time. After 20 years, the Almighty tells Jacob the time has come to return to the land of Canaan. Jacob and his household secretly leave only to be pursued by Laban who has claims to put forth. The story ends with peace and blessings between Jacob and Laban.
“If a diamond is a girl’s best friend and a dog is man’s best friend, you tell me which sex has more sense?”
The Sam Fund
