The 36 “Tzadikim”

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Optimism about life, humankind, and the general state the world is in, is often in short supply when one looks around, reads the newspaper and contemplates whole areas of the world being driven back to the barbarism of the dark ages.
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And when one reflects on the “sanity” and “civilized” behavior of what modern civilization in our own day is capable of doing as evidenced by the horrors of the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia and Sudan one can see why an existential pessimism may indeed be warranted.
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And yet life is not all bleak. Here in America we have generation by generation freed ourselves not entirely, but in very significant ways from views and prejudices that in the not so long ago past led to very serious discrimination and suffering for women, people of color, people with disabilities, people incarcerated for long terms for relatively minor drug offenses, and people whose sexual orientation is towards people of their own sex.
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The fact that we currently have an Afro-American finishing up his SECOND term as President of the United States means that his first election was no fluke; and the fact that a very conservative oriented US Supreme Court has endorsed the concept of Gay Marriage as the law of the land speaks volumes as to how our society has evolved to become more inclusive.
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And yes, while it is true that black men are still gunned down unnecessarily by white police officers, it is also true that these acts are now unanimously condemned at all levels of government by both black and white elected officials. And this is a far cry from just 50 short years ago when lynching in the South was a relativly common experience and where senators from southern states were able for decades to prevent the US Senate from approving any kind of national anti lynching laws which basically left million of black American citizens living in the South unprotected from lynch mobs instigated by the KKK.
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Judaism as a culture and a religion has always, in spite of often cruel realities, offered up a nuanced optimistic view of the world which began with father Abraham heading out on a long and dangerous venture to a new land.
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Some 3800 years later the Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel, another Abraham (Abraham Isaac Kook) in his book “Orot Hakodesh” (Holy Lights) as quoted in David Birnbaum’s “Summa Metaphysica 1” (page 154) wrote as follows:
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“Light is steadily pitted against the dark, and light will increasingly overcome the dark. Nothing remains the same; everything blooms, everything ascends, everything  steadily increases in light and truth. The enlightened spirit does not become discouraged even when he discerns that the line of ascendence is circuitous, including both advance and decline, a forward movement but also fierce retreats, for even the retreats abound in the potential of future progress”
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But what happens when there is a “fierce retreat”and a functioning, beautiful, productive, and creative society is condemned to smoke in the ovens of Auschwitz and Treblinka.
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Victor Frankl, the noted Viennese psychoanalyst, philosopher, author and Holocaust survivor as quoted by David Birnbaum, page 154 of Summa Metaphysica 1, relates to this very topic as follows:
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“But I prefer to live in a world in which man has the right to make choices, albeit wrong choices, rather than a world in which no choice at all is left to him.  In other words, I prefer a world in which, on the one hand, a phenomena such as Adolph Hitler may occur, and, on the other hand, phenomenon such as the many saints who have lived”
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No doubt many of us, including me, would greatly prefer, if given the choice, to give up a few saints in return for Adolph Hitler to have been one of the many millions of caualities of World Wart I.
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But this level of “choice” is not given to us.
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What is given to us is the old Jewish Tradition of the 36 hidden “Tzadikim”…(righteous people/saints) whose very existence keeps the universe as we know it from collapsing.
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I must admit that I do not know where when and how this story/myth came into being. And, in any event, It is not intuitive, at least for me, to think, feel, or believe that the fate of the universe as we know it depends on the number of “Tzadikim” NOT falling from 36 to 35…and that such a slight change in numbers could possible mean so much.
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And as I pondered this matter, valuable insight appeared, as if out of nowhere, in the editorial section of the NY Times in an article by the noted author and  Professor of Neurology at the NY University School of Medicine, Oliver Sacks.
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In an opinion piece entitled “My Periodic Table” published on 7/26/15, Sacks writes as follows and hereby indicates his scientific understanding that the line between existence and non existence is a very fine one…just as Jewish mystical belief, as indicated above, postulates that a reduction from 36 to 35 “Tzadikim” could have cataclysmic consequences:
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“In a recent issue of ‘Nature’, there was a thrilling article by the Nobel Prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek of a new way of calculating the slightly different masses of neutrons and protons. The new calculations confirms that neutrons are very slightly heavier than protons–the ratio of their masses being 939.56563 to 938.27231–a trivial difference, one might think, BUT IF IT WAS OTHERWISE THE UNIVERSE AS WE KNOW IT COULD NEVER HAVE DEVELOPED” (emphasis added)
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What we learn from this is that if the relation between neutrons and protons did not fall exactly in the place where the percentage difference between them in terms of the ratio of their masses was greater or less than .001376509 the universe as we know it to be with the reality of life here on earth and the potential for life in other places would in scientific terms not be possible.
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It would indeed seem…both scientifically, and from Jewish mystical tradition… that we live on an existential knife edge between being and non being..both in terms of the lives of each individual as well as the overall existence of the universe and that human consciousness…feelings, thoughts an actions, as symbolized by the 36 “Tzadikim” plays a very important role in keeping the precarious nature of our universe in a sustainable balance.
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One way to look at the concept of the “36 Tzadikim” is to view all of the Jewish people, and indeed all of the world’s population, to be divided into 36 groups..and in each group there is a constant battle between compassion and cruelty, love and hatred, greed and sharing..and the ongoing struggle to move forward to fulfill our Potential or to back away from this struggle.
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The good news is that we can and should be inspired, assured and reassured by the words quoted above of Rabbi Kook:
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‘Light is steadily pitted against the dark, and light will increasingly overcome the dark. Nothing remains the same; everything blooms, everything ascends, everything steadily increases in light and truth.  the enlightened spirit does not become discouraged even when he discerns that the line of ascendance is circuitous, including both advance and decline, a forward movement but also fierce retreats, for even retreats abound in the potentials of future progress”
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And so it was, so it is, and so it will be..and all together just like the mass of neutrons is slightly higher than the mass of protons…and thereby allowing our universe as we know it to exist…the ratio of the “Potential of future progress” that supports and sustains the 36 “Tzadikim” is, was and, according to Jewish tradition, will, thankfully, always be slightly higher than the “fierce retreats”..both internal and external that obstruct our forward progress.
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Michael Papo
mapapo44@gmail.com
www.PapoBlogSumma.com
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Adam and Eve in the Garden

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This Midrash on “Adam and Eve in the Garden” was inspired by my reading of David Birnbaum’s “Summa Metaphysical 1, God and Evil”
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Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden. It is day 11,466. The weather, as always, is perfectly comfortable but is not something that they notice or even truly enjoy…as they never have experienced heat or cold, ice, snow freezing rain or terribly hot and humid summer days with the threat of torrential rains and   tornadoes never being too far out of mind.
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They are both naked but as erotic passion has not yet emerged, and as they need to exert no energy to obtain the necessities of life, they live in total peace, comfort and tranquility with themselves, each other, their environment and their creator.
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Anger, pain, joy, frustration, pleasure, strife and death are not yet present in their consciousness and they are therefore not distracted from each present moment of contentment.
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The problem of Evil in the world has not yet arisen either in their day to day lives or as a theoretical or theological abstract construct standing in opposition to the concept of an ever present, all powerful and totally beneficent God.
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If one was to step back and look at Adan and Eve from a distance, one might well conclude that they are living their daily lives with no sense of past or future, and with no way to fully enjoy their many benefits (as they have nothing to compare them with), and no consciousness of having been condemned to live an eternal “life sentence” in a golden cage, bound by golden chains and completely unable to know who they are in terms of latent emotions or to tap into the intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual potential that lies dormant within them.
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We note in passing (though it should be recognzed that this “note” is at the very heart of this modern day midrash) that Adam and Eve were made in the image of G-d, the creator of heaven and earth whose spirit sustains every corner and every particle in the universe… then, now and forever.
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And according to this midrash…what G-d wanted from his latest act of creation was Not another set of “angel like creatures” who like all all other angels did not have the potential to grow, create, or to more fully understand themselves. And if these almost angel like creatures  (Adam and Eve in the garden) wanted to fly…they would have to do so on their own through the use of steel that is powered by oil..things which human beings on their own created, and discovered, worked with, changed, and used in new and creative ways.
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It was now day 191,429 and Adam and Eve were slowly coming to realize that the animals with whom they shared their garden were born, matured, procreated, aged and died…thereby making room for a new generation of their progeny who continued this cycle of birth and death.
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It was around this time that on lazy afternoons with a beautiful blue sky, warm sun and a cool breeze, totally satiated after a healthy and delicious lunch sitting in the shade of an Apple Tree…. that Adam and Even first began to discuss what legacy they would someday be leaving and whether future generations would praise or curse them for having chosen to stay in the garden where every need was fulfilled at no cost to them except for their decision to accept comfort and eternal life over a potential life of more intense joy, meaning and freedom, and all that comes with being mortal.
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And as these conversations continued, Eve began to have some unexpected but welcomed stirrings deep within her body and mind. she began to feel a yearning not yet named or fully recognized…but a yearning that we, the generations that followed, know as the very root of our later physical existence.
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Eve’s yearnings, correctly understood, were for physical union with Adam, in a way neither one of then had yet imagined, leading to pleasure not yet experienced and joy at the image of one day seeing a satisfied baby smile at her while receiving nourishment from her breast.
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And G-d seeing all of this unfold smiled to himself and asked the angels to construct the first huppa.
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For G-d this was evolution happening right before His eyes as first Eve then Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge with all that has followed including bringing into the world consciousness of:
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freedom/passion/autonomy/love/the awakening of maternal and paternal instincts/the coming forth of intellectual, emotional physical and spiritual creativity/healing/joy/gratitude/prayer and thanksgiving.
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And yes, along with all of the above came the very real and very human feeling and tendency towards:
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greed/fear/envy/lust/desire to dominate, conquer, oppress and enslave/gossip/ and the inclination towards destructive and self destructive behavior/
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and all of this along with the reality of living in the real world with aging/pain/suffering/realization of death and all of this followed by the ultimate finality of the ending of the separate and autonomous physical reality  and consciousness of each and every human being at the moment of their death.
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And in the blink of an eye, the snake spoke, the apple was eaten and Adam and Eve quickly found themselves reborn, as it were, outside of the womb of the most pleasant of gardens, and into the realities of the world as we..the generations who followed them..have come to know it.
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And G-d smiled as he acknowledged to Himself that for His children, made in His image, to fully recognize their own potential he would have to grant them both time and space to experiment, to learn, to fail, to learn resiliency, to mature and to figure out how best to cope with a natural world in constant flux and a human world beset with all the negative emotions and destructive and self destructive behaviors generated by these negative emotions that is (as Adam and Eve quickly learned after leaving the garden) part and parcel of being  human beings in the process of growth and self discovery.
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And G-d knew that His children would struggle and be cruel to each other, and in addition they would suffer from natural causes..(earthquakes, hurricanes, drought, flooding, illness etc)..all of which would threaten the lives and livelihoods of all peoples; and that all of this would inevitably befall human beings as soon as Adam and Eve left the Garden for the adventure of becoming fully human.
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And G-d knew that for His children to grow up and to meet their full potential it would take time and that He would have to hide His face in order to keep himself from intervening when his children lost their way or became victims to natural or man made disasters. He also knew that He would have to endure their adolescent rebellion against Him including their sometime tendency to deny His very existence.
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But G-d also knew that in spite of the pandora’s box that was opened when Eve first bit into the apple from theTree of Knowledge, that He had time on his side.
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For G-d knew for a fact, and human being are still continuing to learn, that all of G-d’s children have the potential to find meaning in their lives..regardless of external circumstances, and to find the creative potential deep inside of them that would throughout the following millennia allow them to continuously redeem the sparks hidden in plain sight at the time of the creation of the world.
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And G-d knew that through human struggle and perseverance, love and compassion, along with an open heart, and positive action taken both individually and collectively that human beings would be able to redeem the lost and hidden divine sparks and in their own finite lives be able to get a taste of the peace and contentment enjoyed in the garden by Adam and Eve.
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And God looked at the post garden of Eden world in which Ever and Adam had chosen to live in, and in spite of the evil, the pain, suffering and death that was now part of the reality of all living things, and because of the joy, love, compassion and understanding that His children could now experience as they tapped into their latent potential for growth….G-d smiled and reiterated that from His perspective “It was all still very good.”
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Michael Papo
mapapo44@gmail.com
www.PapoBlogSumma.com

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