Rabbi's Chayva's Chat

I got more than one raised eyebrow last week when I told people that I was going to see the eclipse in rural Missouri. “Why rural Missouri?” people asked. The simplest answer is that an old friend invited me, and, of course, it’s nice to be hosted rather than pay $900/night for a Super8 motel room. Beyond that, though, it’s important to me to have experiences that push my boundaries. I knew that most people I would meet were politically, religiously, and in some ways, culturally different from me. And that was part of the point, because we cannot preach the need for dialogue and then refuse to talk. It was different, to be sure - the people I met spoke with a range of accents, said “have a blessed day” and “bless her heart” unironically, and people in their 20s could afford to buy a house! But more importantly, everyone was kind, gracious, inclusive, and eager to learn about Am Tikvah and what it means to be a rabbi.

“Around the world, the most common cause for awe is the closest to home: other people’s courage, kindness, strength, or ability to overcome,” I said on Rosh Hashanah morning. I certainly felt that. The other awe-inspiring “wonders of life,” according to awe researcher and social psychologist Dacher Keltner, are feeling part of a group, visual design and art, witnessing life beginning or ending, spiritual or religious awe, epiphanies, nature, and music. 

We have an opportunity for musical awe this week: we are cosponsoring Rabbi Josh Warshawsky’s concert at Congregation Beth Sholom tonight at 7 pm. There are more details below, but the key information is that you can register here, listen to Rabbi Warshawsky’s music in the Praylist for this month, and Gail Harden is coordinating carpools from Am Tikvah at 6 pm.

The impetus for my trip to Missouri was the awe of nature. Keltner describes awe as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world,” and I can’t imagine an experience as closely attuned to that definition as a total solar eclipse.

The sky was a deep periwinkle twilight, with a beautiful sunset that wrapped around all the flat land we could see. The trees became silhouettes. The stars came out immediately, though most clear were a couple of planets. But the craziest thing was the sun-moon.

Looking at it, I felt like the world glitched. It felt like I was staring into the eye of a sci-fi cyclops that had no pupil. Affixed in the dim purply blue, a few feet above the budding oak tree, was a pitch black ball surrounded by a streaky, peaky circular crown of white tendrils. It was hard to look away. It felt bigger in the sky than the sun had been. I felt like I was getting to see a portal into another dimension, and if I stared long enough it might suck me up into it.

Or maybe, I was seeing a hidden truth. Here was something of the way our world works that I’d never seen before and might not ever see again. It felt like a huge pause in the world, everything suspended. And that pause felt like it might hang there for a while. But then it also felt so fast - very quickly, we were calling “Here it comes!” as the corona grew brighter on one side. I got a half-second glimpse of the brightness of the sun exploding over the 5 o’clock edge of the moon, which was, I think, the most brilliant and beautiful image of all. And then I quickly threw on my glasses and watched the sliver of orange return and widen.

Keltner’s research says that the average person feels awe two or three times a week. I share my eclipse reflections because I hope that you will find a moment of awe this week. I think that if you lay the mental groundwork, then when you feel it, you’ll know. I wish you an awesome week.