The Cultivation of Beauty
Dear friends,
“Would you kill a baby chicken for a billion dollars?” This was the question Manu posed to me as part of our morning prayers today. My heavy-handed response that followed was a reflection of the troubling effect this week’s events had on my soul. “Do you know what a sin is,” I recall myself asking. “No,” said my seven-year-old. “Killing for the sake of killing is a good example of it.”
We still don’t know why Thomas Matthew Crooks pulled the trigger. But that fact is one of the most chilling pieces of this last week. At this point it appears as though there was no ideological drive. Evidence from his phone suggests that he may have been considering shooting Biden or Trump. Either one would do. If you haven’t read Michelle Goldberg’s piece in the Times this week, it’s worth it. She describes an online world where young men encourage one another to commit acts of violence for the sake of violence. This sad vacuousness of meaning and purpose, out of which this thinking emerges, is our greatest enemy.
We see this despairing, dark attitude all over the world. It shouldn’t surprise you that this is the meaning of the biblical word Hamas, one of the world’s greatest examples of violence for the sake of violence. In the bible, a person of חמס (Hamas) is one whose worldview is violence. In this lawless world, this person thinks, violence is the only appropriate, even the holy way to act. It’s sad to witness many of my fellow Israelis fall down this same path. The rifle used to mean something very different to Jews than it does today. That’s true about Americans too, and many others. It has become in large part a symbol of the incurable, lonely emptiness of life.
Isaiah’s prophetic sense could see that clearly when he said:
“and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks.”
My prayerful conversation with Manu took place in my parents in law’s gorgeous garden in Montreal. My father-in-law, Roby is a master gardener who spends much of the warm months (which now get very hot!) creating and tending his garden. Every year the flower arrangements are different. Perennials mix with annuals to create a dazzling corner of Eden.
When Manu and I discussed what we’d like to say wow about this morning (our version of what the traditional prayers call praise), several different specific flowers nearby were mentioned, as well as the Apple tree over a bed of day lillies. When we were done, I told Roby that I’m thinking of writing about his garden as the antidote to the world’s ills. “That’s true,” he said, “but not looking at it – working in it.”
It’s not enough just to see the ephemeral beauty. If we want to feel the beauty, we have to work on our garden. Thankfully, Shabbat is almost here, so for now we can just take it in with our eyes. But we better get our gardening gloves ready for Monday morning.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
