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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Continuity, discreteness, infinitude, and finitude
Life is finite. It's something I've been thinking about lately.
Our life often seems a tug-of-war between the continuous and the discrete; the infinite and the finite.
Our life often seems continuous - each moment blends into the next. You inhale, you exhale, inhale, exhale, and unless something draws your attention to it, each breath blends into the next. Often, even each day blends into the next. Monday feels like Tuesday, which feels like Wednesday, with only slight, smooth modifications in between. Even more continuously, the sun rises with a reliability more predictable than clockwork.
Yet at the same time, there are moments where life doesn't seem to flow so smoothly along. There seem to be pivotal, life-changing moments - even world-changing moments - where people are stunned, hold their collective breaths, or receive great fortune. People even form words and phrases around such events - antediluvian for "before the flood", and pre- and post-9/11.
Yet these moments which seem to stand out so clearly compared to most other moments, even these moments have a continuity to them. Other moments precede and follow after them, and are even linked to them. The plot-diagramming that they taught me from 3rd-9th grade is finally coming to use. Each story has a beginning, rising action, climax, falling action, and an end. If the story is of the flood, then the beginning is G-d deciding that the world needs to be flooded, and telling Noah to build an ark. The rising action is the building of the ark, and the filling it with all the animals. The climax is the flood itself. The falling action is the receding waters, and Noah sending out birds to check if the land was dry. The end is Noah exiting the ark, to start repopulating the world again. Intrinsic in the end is a new beginning. This is more continuity.
For 9/11... the start is that the hijackers were upset at the US. So upset, that they planned a terror attack. This planning is the rising action. Included in this is the ignored intelligence that the US had about it. The climax is the hijacking and collapsing of the twin towers (and the Pentagon attack and the Pennsylvania flight). The falling action is all the media coverage, and the end would likely be when a final body count was made. Yet, one could say that the attacks were the start, the panic afterwards and the Patriot Act were the rising action, Bush's decline in popularity was the falling action, and Obama's election was the end. Even for life-changing events, one moment flows into the next.
At the essence of this is the nature of reality. In Chassidic thought, G-d didn't create the universe only to let it sit on auto-pilot for the rest of time. G-d created the universe, and continues to create it, every single moment. Just as when you imagine sitting by a lake, with a cool breeze on a hot day, the water glinting in the sunlight... it is your thought that is keeping your imaginary world in existence. So, too, G-d is constantly thinking of us, and everything in this world, down to the path a leaf takes as it falls to the ground, and because of it, we and everything around us exists. Each moment is fresh and new... and because G-d continues to think of it with all its details, it continues to blend in with the previous moment, and the next, and so on.
So we have these continuous lives, but they are finite. There is a birth, a life, and a death, for each person. The number of moments in our lives is uncountably infinite, yet the set of moments in each life is bounded by birth and death.
However, the same is not the case with our soul. Our souls are parts of G-d Himself. Since He is infinite, then we have a piece of that infinity within us. When we do the mitzvos that G-d commanded us, we connect more with that infinite part of ourselves. Not only that, we tap into G-d's power, and thus the effects of our actions ripple beyond the finitude of our lives.
We may be finite beings, but our actions have infinite effects.
Our life often seems a tug-of-war between the continuous and the discrete; the infinite and the finite.
Our life often seems continuous - each moment blends into the next. You inhale, you exhale, inhale, exhale, and unless something draws your attention to it, each breath blends into the next. Often, even each day blends into the next. Monday feels like Tuesday, which feels like Wednesday, with only slight, smooth modifications in between. Even more continuously, the sun rises with a reliability more predictable than clockwork.
Yet at the same time, there are moments where life doesn't seem to flow so smoothly along. There seem to be pivotal, life-changing moments - even world-changing moments - where people are stunned, hold their collective breaths, or receive great fortune. People even form words and phrases around such events - antediluvian for "before the flood", and pre- and post-9/11.
Yet these moments which seem to stand out so clearly compared to most other moments, even these moments have a continuity to them. Other moments precede and follow after them, and are even linked to them. The plot-diagramming that they taught me from 3rd-9th grade is finally coming to use. Each story has a beginning, rising action, climax, falling action, and an end. If the story is of the flood, then the beginning is G-d deciding that the world needs to be flooded, and telling Noah to build an ark. The rising action is the building of the ark, and the filling it with all the animals. The climax is the flood itself. The falling action is the receding waters, and Noah sending out birds to check if the land was dry. The end is Noah exiting the ark, to start repopulating the world again. Intrinsic in the end is a new beginning. This is more continuity.
For 9/11... the start is that the hijackers were upset at the US. So upset, that they planned a terror attack. This planning is the rising action. Included in this is the ignored intelligence that the US had about it. The climax is the hijacking and collapsing of the twin towers (and the Pentagon attack and the Pennsylvania flight). The falling action is all the media coverage, and the end would likely be when a final body count was made. Yet, one could say that the attacks were the start, the panic afterwards and the Patriot Act were the rising action, Bush's decline in popularity was the falling action, and Obama's election was the end. Even for life-changing events, one moment flows into the next.
At the essence of this is the nature of reality. In Chassidic thought, G-d didn't create the universe only to let it sit on auto-pilot for the rest of time. G-d created the universe, and continues to create it, every single moment. Just as when you imagine sitting by a lake, with a cool breeze on a hot day, the water glinting in the sunlight... it is your thought that is keeping your imaginary world in existence. So, too, G-d is constantly thinking of us, and everything in this world, down to the path a leaf takes as it falls to the ground, and because of it, we and everything around us exists. Each moment is fresh and new... and because G-d continues to think of it with all its details, it continues to blend in with the previous moment, and the next, and so on.
So we have these continuous lives, but they are finite. There is a birth, a life, and a death, for each person. The number of moments in our lives is uncountably infinite, yet the set of moments in each life is bounded by birth and death.
However, the same is not the case with our soul. Our souls are parts of G-d Himself. Since He is infinite, then we have a piece of that infinity within us. When we do the mitzvos that G-d commanded us, we connect more with that infinite part of ourselves. Not only that, we tap into G-d's power, and thus the effects of our actions ripple beyond the finitude of our lives.
We may be finite beings, but our actions have infinite effects.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The Eyes are the Window to the Soul
This summer, I was in Monsey for 10 days. Monsey is a town in upstate New York where a lot of different types of observant Jews live - both Litvishers and Chassidim, and different types of Chassidim, all in the same town. Next to Monsey is a town called New Square. I had the opportunity of taking a guided tour of New Square this summer.
For those of you who don't know, New Square is an all-Jewish town marked by two main things: its separation of non-married men and women (which is evident even on the streets), and its isolation from the rest of the world. The level of the first is controversial, to the point where the second is often overlooked.
Yet the isolation is fundamental to their way of life. An example to explain this: Our tour guide told us the history of New Square - how when he came to America, the Skverer Rebbe was shocked at the ads on the streets and what people wore, so he started a community out away from the city, on a plot of land that hadn't been built on before. In the middle of this, our tour guide mentioned the phrase "the eyes are the window to the soul", a phrase that commonly means "you can see someone's soul through their eyes". This seemed out of place, until she explained the Skver interpretation:
What you see, enters your soul.*
This is why they built themselves a shtetl in America, isolated from the rest of the world. Yet our tour guide also said that she admires the strength of Lubavitchers - that they go out into the world for the sake of others, despite all the things that they end up seeing.
----
* This idea is not unique to the Skverer Chassidim - there's a phrase, even in popular internet culture, with the same idea - "There are some things you can't un-see."
For those of you who don't know, New Square is an all-Jewish town marked by two main things: its separation of non-married men and women (which is evident even on the streets), and its isolation from the rest of the world. The level of the first is controversial, to the point where the second is often overlooked.
Yet the isolation is fundamental to their way of life. An example to explain this: Our tour guide told us the history of New Square - how when he came to America, the Skverer Rebbe was shocked at the ads on the streets and what people wore, so he started a community out away from the city, on a plot of land that hadn't been built on before. In the middle of this, our tour guide mentioned the phrase "the eyes are the window to the soul", a phrase that commonly means "you can see someone's soul through their eyes". This seemed out of place, until she explained the Skver interpretation:
What you see, enters your soul.*
This is why they built themselves a shtetl in America, isolated from the rest of the world. Yet our tour guide also said that she admires the strength of Lubavitchers - that they go out into the world for the sake of others, despite all the things that they end up seeing.
----
* This idea is not unique to the Skverer Chassidim - there's a phrase, even in popular internet culture, with the same idea - "There are some things you can't un-see."
Monday, February 9, 2009
My chassidic LOLcats: Let me show you them.
For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of LOLcats, they are unusually-captioned pictures of cats. The captions generally are in a sort of "kitty pidgin" (that is, the grammar and spelling in them is internally consistent but different than standard English), and are for humorous effect.
So I present to you, two Chassidic LOLcats that I just made:
So I present to you, two Chassidic LOLcats that I just made:
Thursday, February 5, 2009
An Introduction
Hello, my name is Miriam, and welcome to my blog!
The Sages say that "every person is a world" - and I believe it! Everyone has a different set of life experiences than the person next to them. Not only that, but even if two people share a single experience, how they perceive that experience differs - sometimes slightly, sometimes greatly - depending on the experiences they've had in the past. Hopefully, by sharing some of my world as it happens, this world will be a better place. So welcome to my world.
The Sages say that "every person is a world" - and I believe it! Everyone has a different set of life experiences than the person next to them. Not only that, but even if two people share a single experience, how they perceive that experience differs - sometimes slightly, sometimes greatly - depending on the experiences they've had in the past. Hopefully, by sharing some of my world as it happens, this world will be a better place. So welcome to my world.
- I'm a Mathematics senior at Arizona State University, graduating in May 2009.
- I am a Chabadnik.
- My mother passed away a little over a year ago (late December 2007).
- I am engaged to be married in early June of this year to the wonderful Ariel.
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