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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