Us and the Stars

Ben Shahn

Dear friends,

Imagine you knew the constellations as well as you knew your neighborhood. Like you knew how to get from the subway stop to your apartment, you knew the way from the Big Dipper to Orion. Like you could make your way from Lincoln Center to Grand Central you could follow the stars from Aquarius to Gemini. This used to be a much more common human ability but it was always rare. In the Talmud we find one true expert of the heavens. “Shmuel said: the paths of the skies are as clear to me as the paths of Nehardea (the town he lived in).” An intimacy with the night skies is something we city dwellers seem to have largely lost. 

A couple weeks ago the stars entered my living room. My cousin shipped me a painting that belonged to my grandmother, with text from the Book of Job under an abstract depiction of the night sky. Painted by Ben Shahn, a Jew who traversed the paths from the old world to the US, from Cheder (parochial school) to the world of political art, the painting has brought with it soft questions of our place in the universe, gentle queries about the ways we walk the earth, and new readings of the Book of Job. 

The stars serve a few different purposes according to our creation story.  

והיו לאתת ולמועדים ולימים ושנים 

They will serve as signs, and holidays and days and years.  

Signs that suggest where we might go. Holidays that we can stop and mark special times. Days that we might stay connected with the slow movement of the everyday. Years that we can feel the flow of our lives, its circularity as well as its changing nature. 

Life here on the ground beneath the stars is not always easy. We struggle to see those signs up there.  

The text in the painting is part of God’s speech to the ultimate sufferer, Job toward the end of the book. You’ll recall that Job was a rich, happy man, who had his entire life implode, losing his children, his wealth and health, and his trust in the goodness of God. After thirty some chapters of theological poetry about the question of bad things happening to good people, God finally speaks. God’s speech is most easily understood as a scolding. General sentiment: Who are you to complain at me, you little speck of dust?! But staring at these verses sitting under Shahn’s constellations has softened God’s words from angry rhetorical questions, to just plain questions: 

הַֽ֭תְקַשֵּׁר מַעֲדַנּ֣וֹת כִּימָ֑ה אֽוֹ־מֹשְׁכ֖וֹת כְּסִ֣יל תְּפַתֵּֽחַ׃  

הֲתֹצִ֣יא מַזָּר֣וֹת בְּעִתּ֑וֹ וְ֝עַ֗יִשׁ עַל־בָּנֶ֥יהָ תַנְחֵֽם׃  

הֲ֭יָדַעְתָּ חֻקּ֣וֹת שָׁמָ֑יִם אִם־תָּשִׂ֖ים מִשְׁטָר֣וֹ בָאָֽרֶץ׃ 

Can you tie sweet cords to Pleiades 
Or undo the reins of Orion?  

Can you lay out the constellations each month, 
Or keep the North Star in her mothering spot?  

Do you know the laws of the sky 
Or the way they govern the earth? 

There are answers to these questions beyond the simple “No” that most people have seen in them. Instead of a slap on the wrist or a trodding upon I have begun to see them as an invitation to participate in the heavenly play. Sitting under the loving painted sky I can’t help but notice how Shahn has tied sweet cords to Plaides, connected me to them and them to the other constellations. Or how Shmuel, like many star gazers learned the laws of the sky, and how some part of me understands the way they are connected to my life. Even though we rarely see the vast majority of the stars, many of us still know the way they were aligned on the day, the hour and the minute we came out from the dark to the place where they can be seen. There is hidden love and protection in this universe that we can look for, imagine, discover, take part in and know, even in - especially in - our darkest moments. 

Wishing you a shabbat filled with stars. 

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha