Spirit and Story Archive
Welcome to Spirit and Story, where you can find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the contours of our contemporary spiritual journeys.
To access the CLAL Spirit and Story Archive, click here.
Oh Ariel, What a Piece of Work is Man!
By Steven Greenberg
It’s springtime in New York. The tulips that line the median on Broadway are in
full bloom against the yellow cabs whizzing by. The
smell of lilacs on the edge of Central Park mixes with the city’s more dependable
smells, like the cool brackish wafts of the Hudson and the greasy diner exhaust next to my
building’s entrance.
My neighbor across the hall just came
home with a baby. Seeing the infant tucked
into his mother’s kangaroo pouch on a cool sunny New York Spring day last week made
me want to break into blessings. I had
none on my lips at that moment, so I did what people do.
I cooed and said he was beautiful. I
stared at him staring at me. I said,
“Hello Ariel,” in the somewhat annoying singsong voice adults use to talk to
babies. His mother smiled at me.
No surprise to me, then, that the
Torah portion that week was Tazria, which begins
by stating the religious laws that pertain to the birth of a child. A midrash on the first verses of the Torah
portion quotes a verse from Psalms as it
explores the meaning of birth. “Backward
and forward you have formed me” (Psalms
139:5) declares the Psalmist. Three views
appear in the text to explain the doubling, the back and forth, that this verse uses to
describe birth.
Rabbi Yochanan observes that the
birth of a child might appear to be the simple emergence of a being into a world in which
one lives and then one dies, but Rabbi Yochanan warns against our being deceived by such
appearances. Birth is just the first of many
transitions. Every birth into this world
foreshadows another that is still to come. When
you witness a birth, you are witnessing a moment that will be repeated at death, which is
at the same time a birth into another life.
Rabbi Ishmael bar Nachman observes
that the birth of a child might appear to be the moment at which identity is fixed and
determined, but Rabbi Ishmael warns against our being deceived. When the first human was created -- the “adam
creature” -- it was created androgynous. Later,
the creature was separated into two beings, one of each sex, but initially it was both. Indeed, modern science confirms that we all begin
our lives in the womb as androgynous fetuses. Rabbi
Ishmael wants to remind us that in each one of us there are elements of female and male
identity. We are “backward and
forward,” doubly created, appearing to be only male or only female, but with a memory
of a condition that goes beyond the boundaries of either.
Rabbi Berchia observes that the birth
of a child might appear to be the birth of a finite being defined and limited by its
physical dimensions, but Rabbi Berchia warns against our being deceived. When the
“adam creature” was created, it was formed, declares Rabbi Berchia, with
dimensions that extended from one end of the earth to the other, that filled the earth
from the east to the west, from one end of the skies to the other, “backward and
forward.” And this fantastical
account would seem to be intended to remind us that to be human is to be joined with all
that exists, to the farthest reaches of the earth. While
we appear to end where our bodies end, we are related to every other human on the planet,
a part of every living being. Were we
to open our eyes wide enough, we would see from one end of creation to the other.
So, Ariel, what is my blessing to you on this noisy and wonderful, sunny and smelly Spring morning in New York? May you come to the awareness, whether as an artist, a scientist, a philosopher or as a plain and simple Jew, that life’s limits are largely illusions. You are a part of everything, extending from one end of the cosmos to the other, limited only by the bounds of your imagination.
To read additional articles by Steve Greenberg, click here.
