Rabbi Jack with Lindsey and Zachary under the chuppah
Dear Friends: This being another in a series of quarterly missives from a physics rabbi, I’d like to share with you a few thoughts about relationships, mostly from a Jewish perspective (don’t panic – there will be no equations!).
In physics experiments, it is often the interaction between particles that evokes the most interest. My research was focused on nuclear fusion, a process that brings lightweight nuclei together to produce something new. Isotopes of hydrogen, for example, can fuse and form helium, and in the process, energy is released. This is how the sun and all stars work.
Similarly, in human beings, it is the interactions between people that are particularly interesting, and it struck me recently that Jewish life cycle events largely mark a fundamental shift in relationship.
Weddings are perhaps the most obvious example of this principle: under the chuppah, two adults come together to form a completely new entity – a married couple. I love conducting wedding ceremonies and being present as this shift in relationship occurs.
A Bar or Bat Mitzvah ceremony also signifies a shift in relationship. In this case, it marks a moment when a young person becomes identified as a card-carrying member of the worldwide adult Jewish community. I always stress that Jews become Bar or Bat Mitzvah – they don’t have a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Many Jewish teens participate in a Bar or Bat Mitzvah ceremony, but the shift in status occurs when the young person comes of age, regardless if the occasion is marked with a religious service or a party. Nonetheless, Jews who never celebrated the occasion often feel less than, which I think is terribly unfortunate.
It is always an option to celebrate being a Bar or Bat Mitzvah in conjunction with a worship experience, and I am looking forward to participating as a dear friend marks his 83rd birthday with a ceremony. Why 83, you ask? A rabbinic teaching suggests that 70 years of age marks a full life, and by sophisticated mathematics, 83 years of age is a second chance at publicly and joyously reaffirming one’s connection to the adult Jewish community. I note, as an aside, that my full life moment is rapidly approaching!
Birth is a miraculous event that establishes the relationship between a new human being and the human race, and by extension, Brit milah/baby naming events publicize the establishment of a new relationship between an infant and the Jewish people.
Death, on the other hand, marks the severing of the physical relationship between an individual and those who remain alive. One responsibility of the survivors is to preserve that person’s memory through emulation of their good deeds and teachings, and Jewish funerals as well as unveilings provide opportunities for relatives and friends to reflect on their loved one’s life. I was privileged to conduct such ceremonies this past quarter and help ensure that the memory of the deceased serve as a blessing and a guide for the living.
I’m not quite sure how to relate the other, likely more familiar nuclear process, nuclear fission, to this description of relationships – fission being the disintegration of a heavy nucleus into lighter particles. Perhaps fission teaches us that even when something comes apart (a marriage, a parent-child relationship, even death), new things can emerge which are also valuable in their own way.
May all your relationships bring you new insights at the very least, or to quote the 12th century Spanish Jewish author, Joseph Zabara, in his work Sefer Sha’ashuim (The Book of Delights), may your life be filled with “love, which is the best relationship.”
B’shalom, Rabbi Jack
Book list
Below is my reading list from the past quarter, with an asterisk denoting a particularly good selection.
The Polish Lad – Isaac Joel Linetski; tr. Moshe Spiegel
The Non-Jewish Jew – Isaac Deutscher
Flight Without End* – Joseph Roth; tr. David Le Vay
The Diamond Setter – Moshe Sakal; tr. Jessica Cohen
The Jews of Vienna 1867-1914: Assimilation and Identity – Marsha L. Rozenblit
Laugh, Jew, Laugh – B. Kovner (Jacob Adler); tr. Abraham London
Montage: Works by Debora Vogel; tr. Anastasiya Lyubas
Lamed Vav: A Collection of the Favorite Stories of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach – Tzlotana Barbara Midlo
Poland, A Green Land – Aharon Appelfeld; tr. Stuart Schoffman
Remnants: The Last Jews of Poland – Madgorzata Niezabitowka & Tomasz Tomaszewski
Die Ephrussis Eine Zeitreise: The Ephrussis. Travel in Time*
Fire in the Blood – Irene Nemirovsky; tr. Sandra Smith
Tract on Prayer – Shalom DovBer of Lubavitch; tr. Eliezer Danzinger; ann. Avraham Vaisfiche
Amsterdam – Maya Arad Yasur; tr. Eran Edry
Proust: The Search* – Benjamin Taylor (Yale Jewish Lives series)
To Jerusalem and Back* – Saul Bellow
Creations and Creators – Abraham Goldberg; tr. Daniel Kennedy
My Yesterdays – Israel Emiot; tr. Byrna Weir and the author
Frankfort – A. Freeman and F. Kracauer; tr. Bertha Szold Levin
One for Each Night: The Greatest Chanukah Stories of All Time
Almost Dead – Assaf Gavron; tr. Assaf Gavron and James Lever
JEWels: Teasing Out the Poetry in Jewish Humor and Storytelling; ed. Steve Zeitlin; lead commentary by Peninnah Schram
Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation*: Adapted by Ari Folman, illustrations by David Polonsky
May the Angels Carry You: Jewish Prayers and Meditations for the Deathbed – Simcha Paull Raphael
Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755-1816: Pawel Maciejko
Trembling of the City – Hagit Grossman; tr. Benjamin Balint
