On Becoming a Rabbi: David Webber

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-13-2024

Publisher

Shalom Hartman Institute of North America

Language

en-US

Abstract

Late one evening in early August, my wife, my eleven-year-old daughter, and I went outside to watch a meteor shower. We lay on our backs, staring up at the night sky while conveying to our youngest the same things we were told as children. See that star? It might no longer be there. It can take light decades, even centuries to reach us. There’s the Milky Way, and there’s the Big Dipper. Can you believe the universe is expanding? Yes, it’s hard to understand infinity, but it’s also hard to understand finitude, as if there’s some wall with nothing beyond it. How could that be? We shared with her what we know—what she already knew and listened to anyway—as we had previously with her older brothers who were away. It’s a familiar story, parents helping their children confront the sometimes overwhelming and awe-inspiring aspects of our reality, sharing what we do know, marveling at what we don’t. Even the earth draws a thin blue curtain across all that enormity during the day, as if modeling a way to deal with the so-called big questions: sometimes you ignore them. But that only works part of the time. That stardust overhead is us, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood.

This document is currently not available here.

Publisher Link

Share

COinS