{"id":47376,"date":"2019-01-13T06:36:39","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T04:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=47376"},"modified":"2022-08-05T13:19:44","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T10:19:44","slug":"the-long-night-of-weeping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-long-night-of-weeping\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long Night Of Weeping"},"content":{"rendered":"
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During their night of weeping, I suggest, the people are crying “o-o-o-o,” mourning a nameless loss. The core fantasy of <\/span>efes<\/span><\/em> has made it impossible to think. This is what the Talmud calls <\/span>bechiyah shel chinam<\/span><\/em>\u2014literally, crying for nothing. But this crisis raises bewildering questions about the nature of faith, of goodness and badness in the wilderness. <\/span><\/p>\n

Joshua and Caleb respond by enacting a mourning scene\u2014”They tore their garments.” They declare: “The Land that we passed through to explore it is a very, very good land!” (Num. 14:6-7). What is the force of this response to the weeping nation! After all, the Spies had freely acknowledged the goodness of the Land. What, then, are Joshua and Caleb adding, by intensifying their description of goodness\u2014”very, very good”?<\/span><\/p>\n

In a remarkable reading, Ha’amek Davar connects “very, very good” with God’s final vision of His created world: “And God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). On each previous day, God has seen the world as simply good. Is it the sheer fact of completing His work that intensifies God’s sense of tov<\/em>? Or is it, perhaps, the final object of Creation\u2014the human being\u2014that is <\/span>tov me’od<\/span><\/em>, very good? <\/span><\/p>\n

One midrash points out that adam, the human being, is an anagram for <\/span>me’od<\/span><\/em>\u2014<\/span><\/i>very (good). It is the human presence in the world that is <\/span>tov me’od<\/span><\/em>.<\/em> But Ha’amek Davar cites another, more challenging midrash: “Very good refers to the Angel of Death!” Human mortality sharpens, intensifies the goodness of life. The experience of limits, of loss, allows one to experience delight more acutely. <\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly, Joshua and Caleb are describing the subjective human experience of pleasure and satisfaction. They acknowledge life and death as inextricably interwoven. For the people, Joshua and Caleb’s acknowledgment of the paradoxical beauty of the world is enraging. What they are attacking is the notion of what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins calls “Pied Beauty”: <\/span><\/p>\n

Glory be to God for dappled things\u2014<\/span>
\n<\/span>All things counter, original, spare, strange; <\/span>
\n<\/span>Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) <\/span>
\n<\/span>With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; <\/span>
\n<\/span>He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him. <\/span><\/p>\n

Constantly losing the world, Joshua and Caleb acknowledge that it must be regained every day; absence and presence become the essential game. But the people live in the place of loss, in a malady of skepticism to which, apparently, there is no alternative. They inhabit a world in which love and hate, goodness and badness, are radically split. <\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":94156,"id":94156,"title":"job13-faith understanding questions","filename":"job13-faith-understanding-questions.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/job13-faith-understanding-questions.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-need-to-understand\/job13-faith-understanding-questions\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"job13-faith-understanding-questions","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":94140,"date":"2021-06-12 20:53:34","modified":"2022-08-11 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