being the voice of the universe

Imagine every single object in your periphery declaring that HaShem is One all at the same time. Your desk, computer, chair, telephone, wallpaper, floor, door, assorted books, cups, etc. (Anyways, you get the idea.) That is what happened on Har Sinai -- only it wasn't just everything talking to you -- everything was talking to all 600,000+ of you at once, telling you all in no uncertain terms that there is only one God, HaShem. That's how the Tikkunei Zohar describes it. (it's quoted in today's Tanya, the 22nd of Adar) Imagine your own body telling you, your hair, everything. 

It seems to me that the beauty of HaShem's world is this: On Har Sinai, the whole world spoke up and told us that HaShem is One. From that time on, it is our job to give voice to the whole world, to unite HaShem's name in the world and proclaim HaShem's One-ness in the name of all the world.

How is it that we can give voice to the world? The Talmud explains that mankind is called the challah of the world. Challah is a special offering, a small quantity of any dough that is prepared is given to the Kohanim and is attributed Holiness, Kedushah. In a way this is similar to the kedushah of other such tithes, ma'aser or terumah, or even the first fruits and first born. What it means is that mankind represents the microcosm of the macrocosm. 

Another midrash describes a similar idea by saying that in order to create Adam, the first man, HaShem gathered dust from the four corners of the world. Astronomers and science fiction writers take great pleasure in pointing out that most of the heavier elements that make up the world around us, including our bodies are elements that were forged in the hearts of stars in the early universe. I don't think they've ever equated these two ideas from these two vastly different frames of mind. Adam's body [and soul too] was created from a gathering of a little bit of everything created. 

There are other midrashim that hint at the same idea, one example equating different parts of the human body with different animals, etc. Other parshanim explain (as we've mentioned in the past) that the Mishkan was a microcosm of both the world, and the human body, implying that the human body is a microcosm of the world. The Tikkunei Zohar goes into this in depth, explaining the metaphor pertaining to the various major organs.

In short, we here today, each one of us, is a microcosm, gathered from the furthest reaches of space and time, heaven and earth. We are the true testament to HaShem's Oneness. If HaShem wasn't One, how could a little bit of everything created be brought together into a single creation. 

On Har Sinai the whole world proclaimed it for us, just to bring the point home. Today, it is our job every time we say Shema Yisrael, (2 (3^*1) times a day) to embody the whole world, as its representatives.

HaShem Elokeinu HaShem Echad - Hear O Israel, HaShem created and sustains everything in creation, HaShem is One.

The whole world waits every morning and every evening to hear us proclaim this deepest truth, to fulfill its deepest purpose, to bear witness to the oneness of HaShem.^*2

This is also a good kavanah to have when you recite Perek Shirah, that all the animals of the world are waiting to praise HaShem, but they need you to give voice to their prayers.

notes:

*1 We say Shema Yisrael in the morning and evening prayers, and we are meant to repeat it (a third time) on our bed every night before we sleep.

*2 The Ramhal in his Da'ath Tevunoth explains that the whole purpose of creation is to make us aware that HaShem is One.

it's the little things really, no.. really.

a long article on Dark Energy over at Scientific American, tells of how all the various processes that determine all of the universe as we know it may depend heavily on the existence of dark energy. (A weak force that pushes everywhere away from everywhere evenly.)

It's obviously cool to think of this as gevurah to gravity's hesed. Though, in a way, it seems more like in reality it is the reverse, dark energy has more in common with hesed. It is constant and it is weak but over time it will prevail. Whereas, the universal nice guy, gravity, actually is much more gevurah oriented. It's inexorable and crushes things down into black holes, given enough time; it is very strong (relative to dark energy) but it's forces peter out over time and distance.

There was a great article about how powerful gas jets from galactic centers and more generally galactic weather had a heavy impact on star formation in distant parts of galaxies, but I don't know what happened to that article. Here's a similar one. Here's some more explanation of how galactic weather affects star formation.

Similarly we are only beginning to discover how global warming trends can affect all manner of seemingly unrelated processes upon which we rely on a daily basis.

My point here is how little we know, and how much we have to learn about seemingly mild and gradual changes affecting the universe in a profound manner. Something I mentioned in passing in a previous post about breathing. Hesed is what really makes the world go round, not gevurah, but in our day to day interactions, it seems like the effects of hesed are little to nothing. Similarly, in the early universe dark energy had very little impact. Halfway through the present development of the universe, the subtle changes dark energy had wrought on the universe were already irreversible and the trend only continues in the direction of dark energy's continued and growing influence on the universe at large. (and perhaps even on a much smaller scale as the universe continues to develop.)

This is perhaps one of the reasons we have the midrash that God first created the world with midath haDin, (gevurah) and then added midath haRahamim. (by adding hesed) If we apply it to gravity and dark energy, we end up with the first half of the development of the universe being dominated by gravity/din, and then the second half being dominated by dark energy/hesed. Obviously, dark energy is still only a theory, but the nature of lengthening, the long line, is the nature of hesed, and the short line, contracting, is the nature of gevurah. [Similarly but along different lines, time dilation is closer to hesed, whereas length contraction shares more in common with gevurah.]

Anyways, what I was getting at was this: that as our understandings grow, much of what at first might seem either detrimental or ineffective will prove to be beneficial and crucial. (Another example would be oxygen; at very early stages of the development of life oxygen was life-threatening and corrosive, but as life developed it couldn't have continued to develop without embracing oxygen as a vital element in the generation of energy.)