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A VANISHED WORLD
"The world is falling to pieces, and Adams and Weston are taking pictures of
rocks!" - henri Cartier-Bresson during World War ii
Right now, as you are reading this, a million different things are happening in the world. Millions of lives are beginning and millions ending. A vast cacophony called life in all its rawness and gentleness is being played out on this ball turning silently in space. It all seems so chaotic. Great evil is going unpunished. And great goodness is going unrewarded. Where is God? has he thrown up his hands in despair and gone off for a ride with the top down? The basic credo of Judaism is that God is One. Not just that there is one God, but that his Oneness precludes the existence of anything apart from him. This is what we mean when we say the Shema: "hear, O israel, hashem our God, hashem is One." One. Alone. Nothing else. Let me ask you a question. If God is One, how come this world is so full of conflict, so full of contradictions to his Oneness? if he is One, how can evil exist? A few months ago i was scanning through a magazine and my eye came to rest on one of the photo icons of our age - Ansel Adams' immortal "Moonrise over hernandez." A beautiful full moon skirting a low bank of cloud, rising majestically from the horizon. The evening sky dark and brooding... My eye traveled down to the caption and i started to read... "Because of my unfortunate disregard for the dates of my negatives, i have caused considerable dismay among photographic historians, students, and museums - to say nothing of the trouble it has caused me. ?Moonrise' is a prime example of my anti-date complex. It has been listed as 1940, 1941, 1942, and even 1944. At the suggestion of Beaumont Newhall, Dr. David Elmore of the high Altitude Observatory at Boulder, Colorado, put a computer to work on the problem. Using data from a visit to the site, analysis of the moon's position in the photograph, and lunar azimuth tables, he determined that the exposure was made at approximately 4:05 p.m. on October 31, 1941. That is now the official date..." October 31, 1941. here was the doyen of American photography making art in all the beauty of a warm New Mexico evening while, on the other side of the world, this same moon was witnessing the torment of a generation. I wonder what was happening in Europe when Ansel Adams was making that photograph. October 31, 1941. My curiosity piqued, i did some research. The answer made the hair on the back of my neck rise. On January 20, 1942, at an idyllic lakeside house in Wannsee near Berlin, there was an intramural meeting attended by heydrich, Eichmann, and other Nazi leaders. This is how the report begins: Reich Secret Document 30 Copies Protocol of Conference" "The following took part in the conference on the final solution (Endlosung) of the Jewish question held on January 20, 1942, in Berlin, Am Grossen Wannsee No. 56?58." There it was in black and white - "the final solution..." i was reading the death warrant of the Jewish people. On page 4 of the Wannsee Protocol, the following statement is made: "...since the Machtübernahme [rise to power of the Nazi Party], January 30, 1933, until the accounting day, October 31, 1941, a total of about 537,000 Jews had been brought to emigration..." October 31, 1941. The day of accounting. While Ansel Adams was busy photographing a moonrise in New Mexico, the sun was setting on an entire generation. The Germans had drawn a red line under the emigration of Jews from the Reich. There was to be no more emigration. The final phase had been reached. The death sentence of European Jewry had been sealed. ...And where was God? God created the world to reveal his perfection. Logically, then, nothing should emerge from this wish except that which is perfect and complete in every way. Nothing in this world should exhibit any sign of lacking or deficiency. There should be no room for evil. What possible purpose could there be in his creations exhibiting deficiency? God's Perfection has many facets: his kindness, his wisdom, his justice, etc. God could have chosen to reveal his perfection through any of its aspects. he chose, however, to reveal his perfection in one way only - by revealing his Oneness. And his Oneness is uniquely different from any other aspect of his perfection because, amazing as it may seem, we can understand it. For the mind of man to fathom God's kindness, his wisdom, or his justice is impossible. his Oneness, however, we can understand, for when we say that God is not two, we have defined exactly his Oneness. In the famous liturgical poem Adon Olam it says, "he is One and there is no other to compare him with." The definition of God's Oneness is that there is no existence, no other power, nothing, except for him; that we can understand. His Oneness is revealed by what it isn't. Since God's will was to reveal his perfection, it follows that the perceiver of that perfection, man, must be able to grasp that revelation. Finite man must be able to comprehend something infinite. Since God chose to reveal his perfection through his Oneness, necessarily there must exist in this world the opposite of his Oneness - evil. Evil has only one purpose - to be a tool through which man can grasp God's Oneness. Eventually evil - all that contradicts the Oneness of God - will be uprooted and totally removed from existence. One day God will show us his utter dominion over all that exists, that everything in this world is part of his Oneness. Our perception of this Oneness in its total form will come from having known its reverse. We will have seen evil vaunting, seemingly unchecked, to the skies. When God removes evil from this world, we will perceive his Oneness and his perfection like a blinding light. "...For he created everything for his honor" (sheva berachot; see also Yeshayahu 43:7). Everything God created in this world, he created for his honor. (This is why we are obliged to give honor to every person and every thing in this world, for nothing was created unless it, in some way, reveals or will reveal the honor of God - Tomer Devora.) honor is not something that can be prefabricated. It cannot be ordered up like a takeaway meal. honor that is forced from someone is no honor at all; it is the reverse. It is the greatest insult. The essence of honor is that it is voluntary; honor's precondition is the ability to deny it. Not only this, but the inclination to withhold that honor makes the honor all the greater when given. Thus, the greatest honor that God can receive is where there exists the maximum potential contempt and rejection. That place is this world. This world carries within it the maximum potential to do the reverse of the will of the Creator, the maximum evil. The greatest honor, the greatest revelation of God's Oneness, will come from Evil itself admitting to Good, from Chaos admitting to Order, and from Fragmentation admitting to Oneness. In the months of Tammuz and Av, God's Oneness seems most hidden. These are months of tragedy. Five tragedies occurred on the seventeenth of Tammuz and five on the ninth of Av. On the seventeenth of Tammuz, Moshe broke the two tablets of stone after the incident of the golden calf. The seventeenth of Tammuz was the date of the suspension of the daily offering in the time of the First Temple. At the time of the Second Temple, the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem on this day. Titus and his armies then invaded the city. On the seventeenth of Tammuz, the holy Torah was burned. And, finally, on the seventeenth of Tammuz, an idol was set up in the Sanctuary. On the ninth of Av, we commemorate five more disasters. Just when the Jewish people were poised to enter the Land of israel, they insisted on sending spies before them. The spies returned on the ninth of Av and brought with them a negative report. The Jewish people rejected the Land. This rejection provoked God to establish the ninth of Av as a day set aside for calamity. On Tisha B'Av both holy Temples were destroyed. On the ninth of Av, the Romans destroyed Betar and massacred thousands of Jews. On the ninth of Av, Jerusalem was plowed over, like a field. In more recent times, on the ninth of Av in 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain. On the ninth of Av in 1914, the First World War began. But there's another ninth of Av that we probably can relate to more than all the others. In the early hours of July 23, the first transport of "deportees" left Malkinia, Poland. It was loaded with Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. The train was made up of sixty closed cars, crowded with people. The car doors were locked from the outside and the air apertures barred with barbed wire. That was the ninth of Av 1942. The day the first killings started at Treblinka. However, there is one more ninth of Av of which we need to speak. The ninth of Av is the day of the birth of Mashiach, the anointed one who will usher in the era when the knowledge of God is as widespread as the sea, and these heartbreaking events that defy understanding will reveal God's Oneness. STANDING IN SILENCE
the silence of someonestanding in silence is not as loud as two is not as loud as six million (silences) More articles available at Ohr Somayach's website. |