Shanah Tovah
A 2006 article in the Guardian reports that archaeologists found 27,000-year-old drawings in caves that existed during the Ice Age in what is now known as western France. Its author, Jonathan Jones, writes that the only reason we can be sure that the creatures who were painting on the walls of caves were “as human as we are – that is, they used their brains in the same way we do – is that they made art. No other animal,” he writes, “makes art.” And not only does no other animal make art, but the 27,000-year-old images are portraits, drawings of human faces – what other animal depicts itself?
Since ancient times, portraiture has been a constant. But, the very first self-portrait, only emerged 600 years ago, in 1433 when Jan van Eyck (Yahn van Ike) painted, “Portrait of a Man,” an image of himself. This began an era of self portraits, and about 300 years later, a new art medium came on the scene – the camera. In 1839, the camera and photographic process were publicly released. It only took a handful of months before Robert Cornelius, a photography enthusiast from Philadelphia took the very first selfie the world had ever seen that same year. Fast forward 185 years and here we are in the kingdom of the selfie.
In the hugeness of this 27,000 year timeframe in which we humans have had a thing for capturing the mystique of our very creatureliness, we can recognize a certain sacredness in that urge to portray ourselves, and, from our particular vantage point, we see a need for balance, too. And, this need is not a new one – only 30 years into the history of photography, Charles Baudelaire already saw the need for that balance. In 1869, he wrote a story about an image collector “who prefers photographs of individuals to individuals themselves.” His character, Mademoiselle Bistouri seeds her relations with real individuals to a set of photographs that she lives vicariously through. Oddly, there is something eerily familiar about this story – a cultural resonance of relating with images more than seeing one another in our flawed and living humanity. This year, in 5784, we can see a need for balance with the world of images. Appropriately for our context, the message of that balance is in our Rosh Hashanah greeting, in the words shanah & tovah.
Often we meet words at their banks. We walk up to the sea of their depths, and from the shores, we glean the surface tension for meaning. In the glimmers of that reflective water, we often translate shanah tovah as Happy New Year. There is a token of truth in the translation, but the word tov contains no such sentiment – it does not mean happy. The surface of the word tov translates as good, which is a value quite different from happiness. And, shanah, at its surface, translates to: “year,” but, as a verb the word means, “to repeat,” or “do again.” It shares a root with Mishnah, a text that was once oral and transmitted via repetition. Already the common translation “Happy New Year,” has lost all of its cunning sparkle – the Hebrew words have no “Happy,” no shiny, “New,” and something a little more complicated than, “year.” Before we let underwhelm with a possibly more accurate and very blimp translation, “good year,” get the best of us – we need to wade into the depths of the word tov, this Hebrew word for “good.”
The first time we see tov in the Torah is just 4 lines in, after God creates light, “God sees that the light was tov,” that it was good. Even with context, we can’t quite imagine what that means, what God may have meant by tov or its translation “good,” when taking in the splendor of the first light. A chapter later, we meet the word, tov, in the garden of Eden, where God tells Adam he may eat from any tree except for the Tree of the knowledge of Tov, good, and ra, evil. While we see the word in relation to “evil,” we still can’t quite get a contextual read on its meaning, but then we see the word again, in the very next line when God sees that it is lo tov, not good, for Adam to be alone. So, what does God do? God casts a deep sleep over the human, and while he slumbers, God creates the perfect companion for Adam, another human!
So, we have these three images of tov, goodness – a description of the first light, the tree that Adam and Eve eventually eat from, and this state of being alone, which is not good, for which the remedy, is sleep. While the surface of the word accurately translates to “good,” we can glean a deeper meaning. This word, tov, has something to do with both hiddenness and companionship in each of these scenes – a resonance of concealment, and, being in relationship with others and the world.
The Midrash tells us that God hid the first light of creation. The light that was tov, good was a hidden light, one that commentators suggest is hidden in the Torah, and in the natural world. The tree had fruit which gave Adam and Eve access to a type of knowledge that was previously hidden, and that ultimately brought humans into relationship with one another. And, the remedy for Adam’s lonesomeness in the garden is sleep; a hidden state of mind.
This word, tov is teaching that in order to belong to ourselves, one another, and our planet, we need relationship with hiddenness, things outside sense perception, like dream, and God, intuition, and the unplaceable sentiment of what it's like to have unmediated experiences with beauty in our world – the Torah is teaching that goodness has to do with something a photo could never capture.
The average American checks their phone 152 times a day and spends 4 hours and 25 minutes a day on it. An average teenager spends 7 hours and 22 minutes a day on their phone. We live a bit in the realm of Mademoiselle Bistouri where images, memes, and Tik Toks replace our human relationships. There are too many articles to cite where we learn how social media and loneliness go hand in hand. In 2020, the 19th Surgeon General of the US, Vivek H Murthy wrote a book titled, “Together.” In the book, he shares that while facing the health crises threatening this country, an observation that surprised him was loneliness. He writes:
…one recurring topic was different. It wasn’t a frontline complaint. It wasn’t even identified directly as a health ailment. Loneliness ran like a dark thread through many of the more obvious issues that people brought to my attention, like addiction, violence, anxiety, and depression … (there was) a growing concern that our children were becoming isolated … especially those who spent much time on their digital devices and social media.[2]
Our hyper connected planet is buzzing with newfound connections in the digital world, and – it is spinning on an axis of loneliness. Even on our well populated planet, we can relate with Adam sitting alone in the garden of Eden in a state that God saw was lo tov, not good – feeling alone. I don’t need to convince you of the prevalent loneliness in our communities, but what I do want to say is that beyond our need for human connection, or perhaps because of that need, we have to embrace hiddenness, like intuition and beauty in the natural world. We need to seek the hidden light in our creation, one that is uncapturable, even by the most creative gif (jif). While our first inclination to connect with others and our world might be to reach outward, the message of tov, of Shanah Tovah, is teaching something different.
Nature, intuition, and the most passive state we experience as humans, sleep, are the ways our Torah highlights as pathways toward belonging, and each of these suggestions are quite opposite from our electronic culture. We are often led to think that the more we engage with social media, our phones, the world of apps, information and hyperconnectivity, the more connected we might feel to one another. But, research and our own hearts tell us that the constant interaction with technology is making us feel more and more lonely, more distant from one another, ourselves, and the natural world. Instead, we need to lean into the counterintuitive wisdom of tov’s message of hiddenness.
Human beings are wired for social connection, and, we are also wired for hiddenness. In a recent interview, Matthew Walker, author of “Why we Sleep,” and professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley remarked, “We humans are a social species, yet, sleep deprivation can turn us into social lepers.” We need social connection, but without sleep, without time spent in imaginative spaces that are hidden to us in our waking lives, we are socially dysfunctional. It’s as if Walker puts science to the story in Eden, when God casts deep sleep over Adam to bring him into a state of companionship. We humans were created with a need to spend ⅓ of our lives in sleep, in a place of hiddenness. We have this innate need to go inward, and it is from that place, the hidden reaches of sleep and dream that, as Walker teaches, we find nourishment for our outward, social lives. This is counterintuitive, especially in our hypervigilant society where action and outwardness are praised as the ultimate ways toward connection, but sometimes it is rest and going inward that can bring us the sense of social belonging we seek.
In her essay, “Every exit is an entrance,” poet and scholar Anne Carson praises moments of “catching a glimpse into something incognito. something unrecognized, hidden, unknown.” She writes, “what is incognito hides from us because it has something worth hiding.” These places of hiddenness hold glimmers, little treasures that are not only worth hiding, but worth time spent seeking. While sleep offers one access point to hiddenness, dreaming is not the only way to build a relationship with the incognito. Sometimes, it can be as simple as taking a breath.
One of my teachers, Bruni Davilla once shared that she has a little post it note next to the ignition of her car that says, “Breathe.” I remember she told me that everyday when she gets in the car and sees the sticky note it’s as if she’d completely forgotten about its message and that even when she is in a mad rush in those commuting jams where every millisecond is crucial – she takes a moment to breathe in before taking the car out of park and jetting off into the busy day. It is one moment, not even a full 60 seconds, of breathing in, accessing interiority, that can shift us into a mindframe of belonging. While it might seem obvious, pausing to take a breath in is a way into what is hidden. A brief pause that would otherwise be concealed from the fast pace of life. While mysticism and contemplative cultures teach that hiddenness is some distant concept, it’s actually right here, in the fabric of our selves and creation, and we can access hiddenness in a thousand different ways.
Last week, I received some non-Temple related news that left me feeling stress and indecision! So—I called my best friend about it, processed with another friend, asked for advice from another friend, and sent an email about it to a mentor. At the end of the day I called my best friend back, still indecisive, still asking for her opinion and perspective. She stopped me mid sentence and said, “Hey. I’m not trying to shut you down, but I want to reflect something back to you. To be honest,” she said to me, “You are asking way too many people other than yourself for advice.” There’s a reason she’s a best friend, she ended up withholding her perspective and instead telling me to “trust my gut.” She led me inward and ended my stress and indecision. I had been reaching outward, trying to connect, to feel like I belonged to myself and the world. I went outward as much as possible and it left me in a tailspin, instead my friend guided me to the incognito—the place of intuition, a hidden place. I went inward and felt even more connected to and cared for by my friend, and restored to a place of goodness and belonging within.
Our culture has a strong bend toward outwardness. Whether it’s reaching outside of ourselves to access intuition, or capturing moments of our days to broadcast on social media to feel a connection with our social worlds. Our urges to to grasp and externalize are worthy of compassion – it’s honestly a great idea to reach out to friends and loved ones when we’re making decisions, and it can be lovely to share the beauty of a meal, or something that’s inspired us, or just our latest selfie on social media – it’s just that we need to find balance. We need to remember that when we are seeking connection and reaching for our phones to do so, it might be the less obvious way to connect that we actually need – a beckoning toward hiddenness.
A few weeks ago, I took a long walk by the ocean to a cove north of the one I live in and when I got there, I paused to send an email on my phone. There I was, evening dawning across the Pacific, that gold summer light pouring over softly breaking waves – and i was looking down, buried in the unmysterious electronics of Outlook on my phone. And, I feel like this never happens anymore, but a stranger started talking to me. At first, I was annoyed! Could she not see that I was busy?! But I peeled my focus from the small glimmering rectangle in my hand and gave her my attention. When I looked up, I saw that she was absolutely delighted by the moment, the radiance of it in her eyes, she looked at me and said, “Isn’t it beautiful?” “Yes,” I said back to her. She wished me a good evening and the small encounter jostled me into the huge world I was neglecting. I felt a renewed sense of delight and open eyes to see the beauty around me, and, that sunset moment in all of its glory inspired a moment of connection between two humans, that connection; that sense of belonging felt to me like the hidden light in creation.
In the moment with the cell phone at the sunset beach, I had a choice between isolating myself from nature and avoiding a kind interaction with a fellow human, or seeking the hiddenness in front of me and accepting an invitation to belong to the length of the horizon line. I think I would have chosen isolation since, oddly, it has a curious allure, but this woman saved me from that, she brought me into beauty, into goodness, a place where I belonged to her, my fellow, and to the world.
And, I also saw that walking on the quintessential cliffs of the Northern California coastline had become rote to me. This seems to often happen. The beauty right here ebbs into the sea of itself and becomes hidden from us. New things become mundane, what once made us happy, becomes routine. And this is why I am not wishing you a happy new year, but a Shanah Tovah. Of course, i wish for your happiness, and yet the wisdom in Shanah Tovah – that wish is for something more sustaining.
Instead of newness, I wish you renewal in the repetition of things. This word, Shanah, to repeat – it speaks to daily life, its routinization, and rather than seeking the short lived moments of happiness on social media and online, or the greatest new post, may the word tov be like a compass for us this year. Pointing, at times, away from technology and toward one another, ourselves, and our planet. May it be that, when we remember, we notice the urge to reach for our phones, technology, the world of fast connections, and instead of acting on it, we take the breath in, seek what is hidden, and revel, even if only briefly, in the feeling of belonging to the world. So, friends, what will it be for you this year? When are the moments when you might redirect the urge to pick up the phone? When will you seek hiddenness? When will you choose to reach outward? Whatever you choose, choose balance – choose trust in yourself.
I wish you many moments of belonging in 5784, many moments of unmediated, unscreened encounters with life. And, from those hidden places may we know the depth of our belonging to this world, ourselves, and one another. In the truest sense of the phrase, I wish you a Shanah Tovah.