Significance of Insignificant Things

Through another's eyes

Why don’t we paint mountains anymore? I never knew this to be a problem but according to art critic, Michael Kimmelman, it is. He believes we have lost something culturally. As Dr. Erica Brown notes in here article, “What Are We Afraid Of? Fear and Its Role in Jewish Adult Education 163-164:”

urbanization of society has made our attitude to mountains, among other awe-inspiring aspects of nature, less about fear and more about pleasure. Mountains are no longer wild, irregular, and asymmetrical natural structures that make us feel small through their vastness. It’s hard to be in awe of something we can conquer.

As our capacities, connection, and amassing of knowledge have grown and gifted us immense knowledge, we have also created a lack that, thankfully, can be filled by the Jewish tradition.

This past week, we traveled to Denver¹, which is famously shadowed by the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. As we gallivanted our way through various parts of the city, anytime we got a peek of the mountains, we pointed them out to Cal, our almost-two-year old. When we wasn’t distracted by the passing trucks or horns of the train, his ability to be struck by something that we take for granted was noteworthy. He looked with great wonder at these beautiful peaks.

As is always the case, seeing someone experiencing awe and wonder is one of the great blessings in life. Their ability to open our eyes is inspiring. The same thing happened on our return as we killed time at the airport, Cal and I watched the planes land. Intently watching them, he kept clamoring for “more, more,” as I too found myself silently hoping for more and more. It was an embodiment of what Kierkegaard noted as the:

significance of insignificant things.

That’s not to say that a plane landing or a beautiful mountain range is insignificant, not by a long shot. But I think our taking of them for granted has rendered them that way. We have lost the thread of finding awe in our world. That is problematic but not without a fix.

One potential answer comes from our portion this week in Deuteronomy 10:12:

וְעַתָּה֙ יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל מָ֚ה יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ שֹׁאֵ֖ל מֵעִמָּ֑ךְ כִּ֣י אִם־לְ֠יִרְאָ֠ה אֶת־יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהֶ֜יךָ לָלֶ֤כֶת בְּכׇל־דְּרָכָיו֙ וּלְאַהֲבָ֣ה אֹת֔וֹ וְלַֽעֲבֹד֙ אֶת־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ֖ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶֽׁךָ׃

And now, O Israel, what does your God demand of you? Only this: to revere your God, to walk only in divine paths, to love and to serve your God with all your heart and soul

That phrase, to revere, stands out as the first of the various demands of God. Before we act divinely, love divinely, or serve divinely, we are told, in the original Hebrew, to fear God. Now fear is not an emotion we normally seek out. In fact, I would venture a guess that many of us try to actively steer clear of it. So how can we square this peculiar commandment?

We first can remember that what the Torah calls fear is more likely what we understand as awe. This is expanded on in a powerful commentary by the great Moroccan commentator Or Ha’Chayim:

The thrust of this verse has to be understood along the following lines. We know that there are two different levels of serving God, 1) to serve God out of fear, 2) to serve God out of love…When a person is afraid of the consequences of doing wrong she will make certain that she does not do anything wrong. Moreover, fear, i.e. reverence for God is a forerunner to arriving to the gate of love for God. Moses hints at this when he prefaces the verse with the word ועתה, "and now." He means that whereas for now, initially, all that God asks for is for you is fear, there will come a time when you will do more than that, i.e. to love God.

The Or Ha’Chayim opens our minds up to a process of maturation. At first, we live in the world through a framework of obedience, once that is fueled by fear. Someone tells me not to do something and I do it because I am afraid of what’s to come. But we can grow beyond that because that is just one step toward to acting out of love.

This framework allows us to get beyond the struggle of how love and fear can even be in relationship. We’d normally think of them as mutually exclusive. If we can understand them as a process of spiritual maturation, then we can better see their relationship.

To fully comprehend that, we need to understand that what we see as “fear” in the Biblical context is probably something closer to awe, this sense of awe and grandeur. There is something sort of scary in there but it is joined by a powerful sense of being so struck by something larger than ourselves. It doesn’t mean that it becomes all about sunshine and lollipops. There is an element of fear there but it’s not a punitive one. It’s more akin to confronting the power of the ocean for the first time. The immensity of it is hard to comprehend.

Dacher Keltner, a scientist who studies awe speaks about how ordinary people doing amazing things draws out a sense of awe in people. In addition, he highlights collective effervescence, acts that involves us doing things with others, moving together can aid in encountering more awe, which feels especially powerful as we continue to confront our loneliness epidemic.

Taken together, something that feels so vast might actually be more reachable than we think. Our tradition reminds us that the mandate to live in fear of the Divine is actually tapping into how awe filled our world is. How we do that is up to each of us. For me, I’ll continue viewing the world through my son’s eyes, taking the mundanities of life and reprogramming myself to see them as wide-eyed as he does. After all, we probably should paint more mountains and marvel at a plane descending smoothly and safely from 30,000 feet. It is quite awesome.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Weekend

Shout out to our stellar hosts, Sam, Amalia, Lev, Ziva, and Nessa!

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