Friday, October 7, 2022

We Need to Look Out for Each Other- Yom Kippur 5783

 We Need to Look Out for Each Other

Yom Kippur 5783

October 5, 2022

Rabbi Alan Cook

Sinai Temple, Champaign, Illinois

 

 

Some people aren’t going to like this sermon.  This sermon is going to ask you to think about things that might be uncomfortable for you to think about.  It’s going to ask you to care about others in a way that may require a degree of personal sacrifice.  It’s going to talk about issues with which you may disagree.

 

It’s OK.

 

I believe that you can handle it.

 

And if it does make you upset or angry, I’ll ask you to sit with those feelings for a few days.  If, come Friday, you’re still feeling that way, then by all means give me a call or send me an email or kvetch to a board member.

The thing is, we are actually commanded on Yom Kippur “V’anitem et nafshoteichem—you shall afflict your souls.”[1]  For many, this translates to abstaining from food and drink during the holiday.  But we’re meant to experience a degree of actual discomfort; by being pained and inconvenienced in some manner, we begin to think and care more deeply about things outside of our personal comfort and experience.  We come to see more clearly our place within the broader society, and hopefully we begin to acknowledge our responsibility for the welfare of others.  As Isaiah notes in the Haftarah for this day, God does not desire us to engage in fasting and self-denial if we are merely going through the motions and divorcing these actions from any sense of a broader moral responsibility.  The prophet declares, “No, this is the fast I desire: to unlock fetters of wickedness…to share your bread with the hungry, and take the…poor into your home; [to clothe the naked], and not to ignore your own kin.”[2]

Not to ignore our kin.  The actions Isaiah prescribes require us to pay attention to the needs of our neighbors and remain involved in their lives.  Over the past few years, responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have perhaps nudged us to a greater degree of isolation from which some of us are just beginning to tenuously emerge.  A side effect of this approach is that it became easier to only focus on concerns that impacted us as individuals, and those in our immediate orbit.  Perhaps, in retrospect, “social distancing” was an inappropriate name for the containment and prevention tactic that we practiced in the early days of the pandemic.  For while science and medicine prescribed that we should maintain physical distance between ourselves and others, that should have driven us to emphasize other avenues of socialization—not to forgo such interactions. Muscles atrophy when they are not regularly used.  If we go for an extended period without using our legs, we may find it difficult to walk.  If we go for an extended period without exercising our heart, we may find it difficult to care.

 

Eden has a t-shirt she’s worn a few times this summer.  I can’t take credit for it; Rabbi Jody found it for her.  It reads, “We Need to Look Out for Each Other.”

 

At first glance, the shirt expresses a wonderful, uplifting sentiment: we residents of this beautiful planet need to show concern and empathy for one another.  We need to lead our lives in a way that is mindful of the needs and aspirations of our friends and neighbors.  I feel fairly confident that this is the message the designers of the shirt were hoping to convey.

 

But there’s a presumably unintentional double entendre in the shirt’s message.  One could read it as saying, “We Need to Look Out for Each Other,” we need to be cautious and wary because others whom we encounter may not have our best interests at heart.  It might suggest that we need to approach others whom we don’t know with suspicion and cautiousness lest they prove to be a threat to us and our livelihood.  Sadly, that’s a message that, at least tacitly, seems to be broadcast in American society nowadays.  We see individuals unwilling to take action for the sake of the greater communal good because it may cause them some degree of personal inconvenience.  So death tolls and property damage costs from natural disasters continue to climb because individuals and communities are unwilling to make lifestyle adjustments to curtail climate change and preserve our planet for future generations.  Immigrants legally seeking asylum from violence in their home countries are treated inhumanely because some have too readily forgotten that they and their ancestors were themselves once strangers in a strange land.  Vaccination numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic were depressed because some people failed to appreciate and empathize with the fact that they were not merely protecting themselves but also building layers of protection for the immunocompromised and other vulnerable populations.  Gun violence continues unabated—an average of two mass shootings per day in the United States during 2022—because many who wish to own firearms resist increased background checks, ammunition purchase limits, and other reforms.  The right of individuals with uteruses to exercise free choice over their reproductive health and maintain autonomy over medical decisions is curtailed because some have determined that their religious doctrine on this matter supersedes the constitutional right to privacy.

 

These are but a few examples in what is a growing list of ways in which we are showing callous disregard for our neighbors.  In the aftermath of the horrors of World War II and the Shoah, Pastor Martin Niemoller began to speak out about his experiences, and the danger that society might allow them to be repeated, remarking, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.  Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”[3]  Niemoller was no saint; he was initially a Nazi sympathizer before he finally decided their precepts were against Christian ideology.  But his words nevertheless serve as a cautionary tale: beware turning a blind eye to others’ suffering; you may be the next in line to absorb the blows of the oppressor.  Nearly eighty years after the end of the war and the liberation of the camps, we may not be witnessing history repeating itself quite yet.  Mark Twain is said to have quipped, “History doesn’t repeat itself.  It rhymes.”  My friends, I think that even for those who aren’t students of poetry, the rhyme scheme is becoming evident.[4]  

 

The last major liturgical observance on the Jewish calendar prior to the High Holidays is the fast day of Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av.  This day is said to commemorate a number of calamities that befell the Jewish people over the course of history, including the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem.  The Talmud teaches that God allowed the destruction of the First Temple due to transgressions of the people against God.  The Second Temple, however, was said to have been destroyed due to sinat chinam, baseless hatred of one individual by another.[5]

 

We no longer have a single temple as the central institution of our lives.  Yet I’d argue that the fabric of our society faces a risk of destruction, much in the same way the Temple once did, as we once again face a rise in sinat chinam.  Avowed hate groups are increasingly feeling emboldened to have a more visible presence.  But perhaps more insidious are the individuals who profess not to have a hateful bone in their bodies but nonetheless turn blind eyes or deaf ears when their neighbors are in need.

 

A story is told of Rabbi Moshe Leib Erblich of Sassover, a real person who lived in the 1700s.   Reb Moshe entered a tavern one evening and encountered two peasants.  One man turned to the other and said, “Tell me, Reuven, do you love me?" Reuven responded, "Of course I love you, Shimon. We're drinking companions. Naturally I love you." Then Shimon said to Reuven, "Then tell me, what causes me pain?" Reuven said, "How should I know what hurts you? I'm just your drinking buddy." Shimon replied, "If you loved me you would know what causes me pain."

 

I have a confession: I’ve told that story for years in various contexts.  But I don’t think I ever fully comprehended it until fairly recently.  To me, the key question of the conversation is not whether Reuven knows what hurts Shimon.  It is whether, once he discovers what brings his companion pain, he takes any measures to alleviate it.  This is the action needed to defuse sinat chinam in our society.   As poet Amanda Gorman puts it, “To love one another just may be the fight of our lives.”

 

Loving members of the LGBTQ+ community means refusing to ignore homophobia or vote for political candidates who wish to curtail marriage equality or transgender medical care.  Creating welcoming environments for People of Color and indigenous people means embracing education about our nation’s ongoing oppression of these populations.   Our friends and neighbors will feel our love for them amplified and underscored when we consider their bests interests as valuable as our own.  This is what it means to heed the commandment found in this afternoon’s Torah portion: “Lo ta’amod al dam rei’echa—do not stand idle while your neighbor bleeds.”[6]

 

If we only bandage the wound, and do not get at the root cause of the pain, we have done our fellow human beings a tremendous disservice, and have failed to look out for one another.

 

Adjacent to the admonition against standing idle while our neighbor bleeds, we find one of the most famous mitzvot in the Torah.  It has been defined by some as the core tenet of Judaism, upon which all other precepts are built.  The verse reads, “V’ahavta l’rei’acha kamocha—love your neighbor as yourself.”  Every major faith tradition has some iteration of this teaching, often referred to as “the Golden Rule.”

 

As most of us are aware, the Torah does not contain vowel markings or punctuation.  It also does not contain asterisks, footnotes, or fine print that apply conditions or exceptions to this commandment.  We are expected to show love and respect and dignity to all of our neighbors without exception.  Even if an issue doesn’t directly impact us, even if we can’t fully appreciate how and why it concerns our neighbors, if we are being told that it causes others pain, we should be taking that to heart.

 

During rabbinic school, I did a summer internship in which I got to shadow three experienced rabbis at a large congregation.  Once, I was invited to sit in on a counseling session with a young woman who had come to recognize that she needed assistance with issues related to her substance abuse.  Prior to the meeting, I was very nervous.  I asked my mentor how I could possibly respond to such a situation: I had no personal experience with addiction, had never taken drugs, and was very moderate in my alcohol consumption.  The rabbi assured me, noting that we need not have personally lived through a given situation in order to be able to express care and concern for how it is impacting others.

 

We should not confuse sympathy with empathy.  Sympathy is when we display care and concern for others because we have weathered an analogous moment.  We understand another person’s emotions, but from our own personal perspective.  Empathy, however, does not require that you share another’s experience, only that you recognize the validity of the person’s emotions and reactions related to the event.  Choosing to care for others and welcome them into our lives suggests that we will make an effort to behave empathetically toward them as they face life’s joys and sorrows.  But I would argue that true menschlikeit—a true display of our humanity—calls us to extend our empathy even to those who are not in our immediate circle.  

 

Now, some might say that, broadly speaking, they support the rights of all and want to see everyone be able to achieve their hopes and dreams and aspirations.  Their only bone to pick, they assert, is that everyone should be treated fairly.  So, student debt relief becomes a contentious issue because it is deemed unfair to those who have already paid off their loans.  Or welfare and other social safety net programs are deemed unfair because many people in previous generations had to scrape and suffer in order to build a better life.  But for quite some time, the deck has been stacked in favor of a very specific population; what is being cast as “unfair” is an attempt to level the playing field after centuries of favoritism shown to middle-class and upper-middle-class whites.  There are inherent implicit biases built into many of the educational and social systems of this nation that discriminate against non-white individuals; if measures can be put in place that seek to correct these disadvantages, should they not be celebrated?  As the late Senator Paul Wellstone taught, “We all do better when we all do better.”[7]

 

Our Torah portion today instructs us, “Kedoshim t’hiyu—strive for holiness.”  I believe that the text is not merely speaking about a religious and spiritual imperative, but also a moral one.  We have the opportunity and the obligation to bring sacredness into our often troubled and broken world by ensuring that chances to advance and thrive are available to all people.  We have the responsibility to do our civic duty to vote for those candidates and those issues that speak to our values and preserve democracy and fairness for all.  We are called to behave lovingly toward our fellow human beings.  We understand that, “To love another person is to see the face of God.”[8]  We need to look out for each other.

 

We afflict ourselves for this one day each year in order to purify ourselves before God, that we may be wholly prepared during the remaining days of the year to ensure our neighbors are not unduly afflicted.  May our eyes, our ears, our hearts, and our minds always be open to assisting others in reaching their aspirations and their highest potential, and may we thus each merit to be inscribed in the Book of Good Life and Blessing.



[1] Leviticus 16:31

[2] Isaiah 58:6-7

[3] Pastor Martin Niemoller.  It is hard to cite a specific text for this quote, since Niemoller repeated it (and transformed it) in many post-war speeches.

[4] A variation on a quote attributed to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes

[5] BT Yoma 9b

[6] Leviticus 19:10

[7] Senator Paul Wellstone, from a 1999 speech to the Sheet Metal Worker’s union.

[8] Victor Hugo, Les Misérables.

Are You There, God?- Kol Nidre 5783

 Are You There, God?

Kol Nidre 5783

October 4, 2022

Rabbi Alan Cook

Sinai Temple, Champaign, IL

 

Jordan Greenstein’s parents rushed the family out of the house to hurry to Kol Nidre services.  As they got to the synagogue and made their way to their seats, Jordan couldn’t help wondering what the fuss was all about.  The family did not make service attendance much of a priority during the remainder of the year, and Jordan wouldn’t have defined them as “religious.”

 

Jordan posed the question to the adults: “You don’t seem to be very focused on the service.  I’ve never really heard you pray.  So why do we get all dressed up to come here and talk to God?”

 

“You’re mistaken,” Jordan’s parents answered.  “We’re not here to talk to God.”  They gestured further down in the row of seats.  “You know the Goldschmidt family, right?”

 

Jordan nodded.

 

“The Goldschmidt family comes here to talk to God.  We just come here to talk to the Goldschmidts.”

 

Whatever reasoning happened to draw you here tonight initially, I hope we can agree that this season seems to afford us a prime opportunity to speak with God.

 

But where to begin?  The traditional liturgy for Yom Kippur actually presents the prayer leader—mirroring the actions of the High Priest at the time when the Temple stood—entering into a conversation with God on behalf of the congregation: “Here I am. So poor in deeds,  I tremble in fear, overwhelmed and apprehensive before You to whom Israel sings praise.”[1]

 

But perhaps that’s too formal…  How about…Are You there, God?  It’s me, Alan.[2]  No?  But it worked for Judy Blume?!

 

I’ve been reading this book by an author named John Roedel.  It’s called Hey God.  Hey John.[3]  John is a comedian and writer who started posting his conversations with God on Facebook; his book collects them all in one place.  They’re occasionally humorous, occasionally mundane; occasionally poignant; and occasionally profound.  I figured, if John Roedel can sit down on any ordinary day and enter into dialogue with the Divine, why can’t I do so during this holy season?

 

In the 1970s, Princeton psychology professor Julian Jaynes published The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, in which he suggested that human consciousness began only in the 2ndcentury BCE.  I don’t mean to oversimplify Jaynes’ thesis, but he essentially suggests that prior to that time, the left and right hemispheres of the human brain did not effectively communicate with one another.  So if an idea arose in one hemisphere to, for instance, leave one’s home and go on a quest, the other hemisphere might impel one to do so.  Without understanding that that urge originated internally, an individual might then ascribe it to the voice of a god steering them in such a direction.[4]  According to this argument, prophecy and other religious experiences may have just been a function of individuals not understanding how to understand and utilize their inner voice.

 

I don’t bring up Jaynes’ work to discount or dismiss the possibility of meaningful interfacing with God.  On the contrary, I think we can heighten our experience of spirituality if we understand God to be an extension of our highest selves.  When we pray to and converse with God through our internal dialogue, we are, in my opinion, giving voice to our highest aspirations.

 

Still, it’s often not an easy thing for us to talk to God.  It’s difficult, and perhaps disconcerting, to engage in such a dialogue when all of the normal feedback mechanisms that we rely upon in other conversations have been disrupted.  There is no eye contact to be made with God, no body language to read, no empirical proof that we’ve received a direct response to our inquiries.  Speaking with God requires, if you will, a leap of faith. 

 

 

But, despite the hurdles, I set out to have a chat with God.  Maybe my conversation might inspire you to do the same.  The answers you glean might be different than what God said to me, but I hope the conversation will be meaningful nonetheless.

 

I began by telling God that it is becoming increasingly hard for me to watch what’s going on in the world and pretend that everything is really fine.  It leads one to ask God, “Where have You been?”

 

Tradition tells us that God is everywhere.  But if God is really in all places at all times, then of course God knows

that there is incredible suffering and pain.  Surely God sees so many people who are foundering, searching desperately for answers.  It leads to another question: why does the pattern of troubles persist?  As Abraham asked, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”[5]

 

But I recognize that an all-knowing, omnipresent God is not unaware of these difficulties.  Every day, God bears witness to, and hears complaints about, environmental issues; a struggling economy; political unrest; grotesque acts of gun violence; rampant antisemitism, bigotry, homophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny; the cruelty that human beings can inflict on one another.

 

It led me to wonder, though, why a God who is aware of these issues doesn’t seem to intervene.  But in our conversation, God noted that such an accusation is not really fair.  Torah teaches that we are created in God’s image.  Yet over the centuries, humanity has also molded God in our image, making God into the being we can never hope to be, with many of the qualities to which we aspire.  We have defined God as all-powerful, ever-present and all-knowing, because we’ve assumed that we need God to check all of those boxes.  We expect that if we have a God Who fits such a definition, then anytime we need something, we can call out and God will wave a celestial magic wand and fix it.

 

The problem is that if God doesn’t respond to our hopes and prayers in the way we’d like, some may leap to the conclusion that God doesn’t care about the world, or has abandoned us.

 

I spoke about belief on Erev Rosh HaShanah.  Because belief is so precarious, some abandon their faith convictions rather readily when things don’t go according to their expectations.  God reminded me that the Divine Presence is here whenever we choose to call upon God. Because we are God’s witnesses, God is able to continue to be God.[6]  Even in those moments where God may seem to be absent, God knows what goes on in the world, and is ever-present.  

 

At the same time, God cannot, or chooses not to, intervene in everything.[7]  If we think about it, we probably wouldn’t really want a world shaped in this manner.  We would become little more than glorified marionettes, with God guiding our every move.  There would be no room for spontaneity, for passion, or for deliberation.  But God doesn’t play dice with the universe.[8]  Therefore, we have free will to think and choose our courses of action.  Of course, since we have free will, so does everyone else—from the most compassionate to the most sociopathic.  That’s the painful dilemma inherent in the way humanity was designed.  That’s why occasionally God feels the need  to pull back, and let us all work it out amongst ourselves.

 

Of course, in this season when we are called upon to make amends for mistakes that we have made, it might be logical to ask why God doesn’t say, ‘I am sorry’[9] for having created humanity with an innate inclination toward evil from birth?[10]  So in my conversation with God, I asked this question.  And God responded that if we are inclined to be disappointed or angry, that this is also a welcome encounter with the Divine.  Even if we revile God, we are at least engaging.[11]  

 

God reminded me of a core teaching from Lurianic Kabbalah, a mystical understand of Judaism.  Before creation, God’s glory filled all of the universe.[12]  But when the creation of the world began, God had to engage in the act of tzimtzum, reducing the Divine Presence in the world somewhat so that others would have a chance to thrive and flourish.  But the same tzimtzum that left room for creativity and caring also left room for destruction and misbehavior.

 

We look out at “bad actors” in the world and may lament that they appear to go unpunished, that there is no “fear of God” in them.  But God does not want to be feared; God wants to be respected, loved, and even regarded with awe occasionally.  We address God during the High Holidays as Avinu Malkeinu—a Parent and a Ruler.  We affirm that God can handle both of those roles, sometimes simultaneously.  On the one hand, God can be gentle, welcoming, and comforting—the role of many a parent.  God also can have precise expectations, rules, and laws—similar to the sovereign of a nation.  Since God has the ability to make a point in these ways, there’s no need for fire and brimstone.

 

Still, in my conversation with God, I found myself longing for one small miracle every now and then, just to remind us of God’s presence in the world.  But God noted that any such act is only likely to convince those already primed to appreciate God’s presence.  As the Ba’al Shem Tov taught, the world is full of miracles and wonders, yet we choose to take our hands and cover your eyes and see nothing.[13]  

 

The fact is, humans created most of the issues that many of us are now finding so demoralizing and upsetting.  So, it’s up to humanity to come together to resolve them.

 

God gave humanity stewardship over the earth, and gave us all free will in our dealings with the world, and in our dealings with one another.  All that God asked in return was that you not hurt or destroy the world, or our fellow creatures.[14]  When individuals or groups have violated this trust, that’s been their choice.  It hurts and upsets God tremendously.  But the alternative was never having created humanity in the first place.  

 

At this point in my conversation with God, I fell back upon the age-old question: “Why do You let bad things happen to good people?  Why don’t we ever seem to see punishment for those who behave contrary to your expectations?  Why don’t you come down and at least shake your fists at the bad folks, occasionally?[15]

 

And I think I heard God reply, “I have My means of dealing with those who misbehave.  For one thing, guilt is a marvelous tool for self-correction.  Each person was factory-shipped with their own internal feedback mechanism that helps them discern right from wrong, and sets their gauges to ‘icky feeling’ when they err.  Most people engage in a course correction when they get into that red zone of having erred too much.  But individual mileage may vary.”

 

In the “olden days,” God noted, there were prophets who carried God’s message to the people.  But none of the prophets whose stories are recounted in the Tanakh had it easy.  Isaiah was despised, shunned by humanity, a man of suffering, familiar with disease.[16]  Jeremiah was exiled.  Ezekiel was thought to be suffering from psychological delusions. If God sent a prophet today, they would be ridiculed, excoriated, or executed for blasphemy.  So God doesn’t rely these days in only one individual.  Instead, God hopes that each individual will come to their own realization, in their own way and in their own time, of their role in healing the world.

 

Therefore, it’s up to each of us to figure out our purpose within this world.  I heard God telling me that human life is about taking the Divine Spark that has been implanted within each of us, and striving to use it to its fullest potential.  But it’s up to each of us as individuals to determine how to do that.  We shouldn’t think of ourselves as human beings in search of a spiritual experience.  Rather, we are spiritual beings in search of a human experience.[17]  Everybody knows the golden rule; every tradition has its own gloss on it.  If it is so ingrained in human consciousness, it shouldn’t be that hard to put into action.  Treat everyone decently.  Be excellent to one another.[18]  The ritual stuff of Judaism is important, to be sure, but God gets even more excited when I see you all getting along with one another.  Ultimately, every individual is judged on their own merit.  This isn’t like there are divine scout merit badges or something.  God doesn’t maintain a checklist that gives more weight to some mitzvot than others.  Each of the mitzvot exist for a reason: if somebody, somewhere finds a particular mitzvah helps them feel closer to God, then it has served its purpose.  If some mitzvot were weighted as more “valuable” than others, then people would just focus on the few they thought would earn them the most “points”.  As it stands, many people have little awareness of the commandments besides the ten so frequently discussed and depicted in popular culture.  Having a good life—one that God will bless and record in the book of blessing—requires action.  One can probably lead a pretty satisfying life if you just sit around passively and let the world go by you, but it’s not really “living.”  On the other hand, if we engage in good works, and do things that we are proud of, then God will be proud of us too.

 

It may surprise us to realize that it’s relatively easy to behave in a way that makes God happy.  Many people have made their fortunes off of trying to tell others what God expects.  The difficulty arises when people preach the complexity of God so fervently that they convince others that God is so difficult to please, it might not be worthwhile to even make an effort to do so.  I’m not trying to join that crowd; I’m just reflecting on what my conversation with God affirmed for me.  You might have a different understanding.  

 

Many of us are familiar with the joke that if you ask two Jews a question, you’ll get three opinions.  It’s a self-deprecating way of noting Jews’ propensity for considering multiple sides of a question.  But the truth is that there are thousands of different ways of expressing Judaism, and our lives—particularly during this season—are an ongoing quest to find the way that is most meaningful for us.

 

But I do believe that God welcomes engagement with each of us.  My conversation with God served to reinforce that conviction for me.  But it also underscored for me that our relationship with God is a two-way street: if we want to feel and see signs of God’s presence in our life, then we have to make the effort to seek God.

 

I believe that there is significant beauty and power in us being gathered as a community, as we are this evening, joining our together in prayer and using the collective strength of our voices to affirm our commitment to working with God to make the world a better place.  But Judaism also acknowledges that one can connect with God on one’s own time, on one’s own terms.

 

So, I’ll encourage each of you: if you’re not already doing so, find some time to have that conversation with God.  I think you’ll find God to be a ready and willing listener.  I think you’ll find the exercise interesting and worthwhile.  And I pray that God will open the gates of understanding for each of us, so that we will find meaning and fulfillment as we enter this New Year.



[1] Beginning of traditional confession by the prayer leader for the High Holidays.  This translation is found on p. 17 of Mishkan HaNefesh (New York: CCAR Press, 2013).

[2] Based on Blume, Judy.  Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

[3] Roedel, John.  Hey God.  Hey John.  (Cheyenne, WY: John Roedel, 2018)

[4] My understanding of this idea comes from the podcast “Stuff You Should Know,” and their August 4, 2022 episode, “Thrill to the Stunning Bicameral Mind Hypothesis.”

[5] Genesis 18:25

[6] An interpretation of Isaiah 43:10, based on a midrash in Pesikta DeRav Kahana 12:6

[7] Cf. Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen To Good People.

[8] Attributed to Albert Einstein

[9] From a poem, “T’shuvah,” by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, translated by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

[10] See Genesis 8:21

[11] Aharon Zeitlin, “If You Look at the Stars and Yawn.”

[12] Isaiah 6:3

[13] A paraphrase of a quotation attributed to the Ba’al Shem Tov.

[14] Based on Isaiah 11:9

[15] Thanks to Daniel W. Rasmus for this image.

[16] Isaiah 53:3

[17] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)

[18] Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon.