I was 12 when I
first read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince
in summer camp. I returned to it in
high school when we read it in the original in French class.
If you have read
the book, you undoubtedly recall the drawing of a boa constrictor that
swallowed an elephant, which children easily recognize, but adults—lacking
imagination and insight—mistake for a hat.
The Little
Prince travels through the universe to allay his loneliness. His first stop is Asteroid
325, home of a king, attired in magnificent royal habiliments, seated on a
throne—and entirely alone. The king claims to rule over all the stars and
planets, yet there is no one who obeys him because no one is even aware of him.
The king’s way of ruling is to promulgate laws that coincide with what people
are already doing or wish to do. Seeing that the Little Prince is reading, he
imperiously demands:
I order you to
keep reading! I order you! You see, you are already
reading so my request is reasonable. I order you to keep reading. I do not
allow insubordination, but I do not ask unreasonable things of my subjects. I
order you to keep reading, but only if you want to. If you are going to stop, I
command you to do so, but only if you are going to. I have a magnificent air of
authority.
When the Little
Prince asks the king to order the sun to set, the king consults an almanac and
says yes, he will do so at 7:40 pm. The king wears the accouterments of a ruler,
and speaks grandly, but his authority is meaningless, his power illusory.
The king leapt
to mind as I perused this week’s parashah, Chayei
Sara, and came upon a rabbinic comment, which I will share just as soon as
I explain what the Rabbis are responding to in the Torah text. Preparing to
send Eliezer off to Haran to find a wife for Isaac, Abraham adjures him,
“Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the
Lord, the God of heaven and the God of
the earth that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of
the Canaanites among whom I dwell but will go to the land of my birth and get a
wife for my son Isaac” (Genesis 23:2-4).
We might be
curious about the hand-under-the-thigh ritual, but the Rabbis latch onto a far
more ordinary, seemingly prosaic, phrase: “the God of heaven and the God of the
earth.” The Hebrew here is not the usual Elohei
shamayim va’aretz/God of heaven and earth, but rather Elohei shamayim veilohei ha-aretz/God of
heaven and God of earth. Rabbi Pinchas explains it this way:
Abraham said, “Before I made God known to God’s creatures, he was
the God of heaven; now that I have made him known to his creatures he is the
God of the earth.” (Genesis Rabbah 59:8)
Is R. Pinchas
saying that God needs Abraham to make
God known to people in order for God to rule on earth? Like the king on
Asteroid 325, whom no one knows, God cannot influence
people until they know God, which is to say, until they are mindful of God, aware
that divinity resides in them, fully conscious of their moral capacity, and
attuned to their spiritual power. Without these, people simply do what they
want to do, or what is instinctual, dutifully obeying the vapid commands of the
king on Asteroid 325: they are beholden only to themselves. We all need to know that, and while we
sometimes succeed at reminding ourselves of our divine potential and capacity,
often we need another to remind us or tell us. Conversely, we can be that
someone who reminds another person.
Abraham’s role
is to introduce into the world some radical ideas: People are not just subjects
of the King, but children of the King. People are not merely animals that eat,
breath, compete and procreate, but human beings endowed with insight, moral
discernment, and the capacity for so much good. People are far more than slaves
to the Sovereign; they are architects, designers, and builders of civilization
and guardians of the planet. Knowing God means recognizing our own moral and
divine potential.
Without
awareness, we cannot know that. And so the Rabbis also explain a verse from the
book of the prophet Isaiah:
“You are My witnesses—declares the Lord—My servant, whom I have
chosen, to the end that you may take thought and believe in Me and understand
that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, and after Me none shall exist” (Isaiah
43:10). R. Shimon bar Yochai explained: “If you are my
witnesses then I am the One, the first One, neither shall there be any after
Me. But if you are not My witnesses, I am not, as it were, God.” (P’sikta
D’Rav Kahana, 12)
Without
mindfulness, we cannot fulfill our mandate.
Long ago, I read
a moving story recounted by Rabbi Paysach J. Krohn, published in several books,
and circulated far and wide through the internet. Perhaps you’ve already heard
it. It is told by the father of a learning-disabled boy named Shaya, who longs
to play baseball with his peers although he barely knows how to hold a bat.
Shaya watches the boys in his class playing and asks to join them. With a
shrug, Shaya is given an at-bat in the ninth inning since they are behind by
six runs in the eighth. By the time the boy comes to bat, however, the score is
even. Shaya swings clumsily and misses the first two pitches, so the pitcher
takes a few steps forward and tosses the ball gently. Shaya swings and hits the
ball, a slow grounder. The opposing team throws the ball wildly far over the
first baseman’s head, allowing Shaya to run to first. Again the ball is thrown
too far, and Shaya reaches second base. The children cheer him on. He rounds
third and runs to home with the children from both teams cheering him on.
Shaya’s home run wins the game.
God says,
You shall be holy, for
I the Lord your God, am holy. (Leviticus 19:2)
Shaya’s classmates understand this verse in its fullest
sense. They were God’s witnesses.
Is there someone who reminds you of the divine spark of
holiness within you, your value and potential? When was the last time you
reminded someone else? The question before us today and every day, especially
in all the challenging, stressful, aggravating and infuriating situations we
face at work and at home, with friends, family and community, is: Can we see,
and do we help others to see, beyond the ordinary, beyond the mundane? Do we
see the boa constrictor swallowing the elephant, or does our vision extend no
further than a mere hat? Can we see beyond what is, to what might be?
© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman
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