Let’s start with a number: 38,055,354,510,682, also known as, thirty eight trillion, fifty five billion, and change. I’m sure many of you recognize this number as the total US National Debt. But I’m sure none of you know what that number really means; I certainly don’t. So here are a few ways to think about it.
If you were to make a stack of single dollar bills, 38,048,354,510,682 high, it would stretch from here to the moon and back more than ten times. If you decided to write the word DEBT again and again, and fill entire books with it, you would either need a library that could hold 423 million books, or just one book shelf 10,000 miles long. The city might have some zoning laws that prevent that.
If you were to keep on living until you breathed 38,048,354,510,682 breaths, you’d be over six million years old by the time you passed. If 38,048,354,510,682 people lined up, shoulder to shoulder, the line would go to the sun and back 155 times. If every taxpayer in the US had to pay an equal share of the US National debt, the bill would be about $250,000 per person!
But wait, there is more. What about the unfunded liabilities? This included the monies promised to people by the Federal, State, and local governments, mostly for Social Security and Medicare benefit, and some for retirement plans, that are not included in the national debt because they have not been paid YET, but as of right now, the US has no way to cover them? You’d have to add an additional $143 trillion dollars, more than three times our current debt.
Your stack of bills is suddenly 12.2 million miles long, your library needs to fit two billion books with just the word debt written in them, you’d live 28.5 million years, the line of people would go to the sun and back 736 times, and every taxpayer would have to pay about $1.2 million dollars to cover the debt.
Why am I talking about the National Debt? Is it simply to ruin your day? No. Is it to encourage you to think about what this means for your financial future, spurring you to investigate what always happens in history when societies overprint their currency and get into too much debt, and to ensure that you are planning appropriately? Not either. Is it to remind you of the importance of what King David told us (Psalms 146:3), “Do not trust in princes, in the son of man, who has no salvation.” That’s also very true, but Nope.
It’s because it’s the biggest number I could think of that we are familiar with. And now that we have that starting point, we’re going to kick it up a notch. We’re going to move on to numbers that are truly incomprehensible, even larger than the US National Debt!
We live in a nice neighborhood, it’s called Solar System, a small collection of big rocks that spin around a star called the sun, which holds them all in orbit using gravity. Anything held in the gravity of a star is part of the Solar System, and besides the planets, there is the Kuiper Belt, and the Oort Cloud, vast collections of icy rocks and gases that are locked in our suns fiery embrace. All together, the Solar system is about 18 trillion miles in diameter, also known as about 3 light years.
The sun is just one of many stars in a galaxy, which is a collection of stars, stardust, and gases, held into one big gravitational embrace, and moving in concert. Our galaxy, called the Milky Way due it’s appearance as a milky band across the night sky (in places where it is dark enough to see it!), contains between 200-300 billion stars. It is about 100,000 light years in diameter, which is 588 quadrillion miles in diameter. That looks like this, 588,000,000,000,000,000.
But how many galaxies are there? We used to think there were about 100 billion galaxies, but then we got better tools, including the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, and the James Webb Space Telescope, and we now know that there are closer to 2 trillion galaxies. If you’re keeping track, two trillion galaxies with each galaxy holding about 200 billion stars, means that the observable universe likely contains about 400 sextillion stars. That looks like this: 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. It’s even bigger than the US National Debt!
And now, before we move on, let’s just blow our minds with this exercise: Imagine every star in the observable universe—and then multiply that by five: that’s how many atoms are in a single teaspoon of water.
But let’s get back to the stars. There are lots and lots and lots of them. They were all created by Hashem. Being that Hashem is infinite, it wasn’t hard for Him, all he had to do was command (Genesis, 1:14) “Let there be luminaries in the expanse of the heavens,” and they came into being (from the original matter that Hashem created on the first day, see Ramban Genesis 1:1). Their vastness, which we only are discovering now with the most advanced tools, are tools to help us appreciate the Power and Majesty of Hashem and be filled with awe before Him, and faith in Him, and in His ability to do anything.
But how important are the stars to Hashem?
We have a prayer in the morning prayers where we say the following: “It is You alone Hashem, You have created the heavens, the heavens of heavens and all their hosts. The earth and everything in it, the seas and everything in them. And You give them all life. And the hosts of the heavens (the angels) bow down to You. It is You, Hashem, the God who selected Avraham. You took him out of the city of Kasdim, and You made his name Avraham. You found his heart faithful before You. And you established the covenant with him.
Rabbi Shimon Schwab, OBM (1908-1995, Frankfort, Germany – NYC), explains, that of all the vast heavenly hosts, the 400 sextillion stars, the trillions of galaxies, and their billions of solar systems, creator of unfathomable amounts of atoms, all spinning to perfection with their neutrons, protons and electrons in perfect balance, Hashem chose to focus His attention on one man, Avraham. He chose Avraham to educate the world, because He found Avraham’s heart to be faithful to Him, and He made a covenant with Avraham to start a nation that would carry on Avraham’s job of educating the world, being a light unto the Nations and bring them the message of Hashem’s godliness and goodness.
That covenant is what we read about in this weeks parsha. And that’s where you come into the picture. You are a continuation of that covenant. You carry the job that Hashem gave to Avraham and his descendants. You are now part of the people that Hashem watches over with like the apple of his eye (Deuteronomy 32:10, Psalms 17:8, Zecharia 2:8). Hashem turns from all the vastness of creation, He doesn’t focus on the stars or the atoms, nor on the millions of different species living on Earth, and not even on the 8.2 billion people on this planet. He focuses on you, and your family, the Jewish people.
He wants to see you educate the world around you on what it means to be holy, loving, kind, sacred, disciplined, righteous, and good. He wants you to emulate His ways, and teach others by example to be Godly as well. The universe and all of its vastness in both the tiny and the huge, are not the main stage, you are. Let’s make all of it shine brighter, let’s bring humanities debt to Hashem for all of his kindness to the forefront, and let’s lead them in paying back that debt by becoming the divine beings Hashem created us to be.
Parsha Dvar Torah
Abraham stood ready to accept his fate. Though he and Sarah had spent a lifetime spreading loving-kindness and bringing countless people back to a relationship with the one true G-d, they had no children of their own. He had been promised offspring by G-d on at least two occasions (Bereishis 12:7, 13:16), but still, Abraham’s understanding of the spiritual laws that govern human existence led him to believe that he and Sarah were not destined to have a child together.
At that very moment, the word of G-d came to Abraham once more and reassured him that his fate has not been sealed. Not only would he have offspring, but also their numbers would be like the stars in heaven. Previously, G-d foretold that Abraham’s offspring would be as numerous as the “dust of the earth.” (Bereishis 13:16)
The Talmud comments on these two metaphors, noting that when the Jewish people stray from their mission and refuse to follow the will of G-d, they will be trampled and looked down upon by all – like the dust of the earth. However, when they fulfill their mission as G-d’s emissaries in the world, they rise to unimaginable heights – like the stars in the heavens.
There is a deeper aspect to comparing the Jewish people to the stars in heaven. From our vantage point, stars appear as tiny specks of light in the sky. It would be easy to regard each star as relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Each star is actually a phenomenally huge, burning mass of energy and power; most are more than a hundred times the size of our own sun.
The same holds true with regard to the powerful spiritual potential inherent in every Jew. From a distance, it can be easy to overlook – or not notice – the special talents and abilities found within each Jewish person. The truth, however, is that there is no such thing as hidden potential! There is only potential that we have perhaps not yet come to see, recognize or understand.
Rabbi Yisroel Brog relates this story from his childhood that illustrates this point:
Rabbi Brog’s father was a man with an enormous heart. He would regularly invite people into his home to share meals, even offering them a place to sleep if need be. Even when a person was a bit eccentric, rude, or demanding, he continued to care for them with patience, kindness and love.
One day, Rabbi Brog’s father brought an elderly, apparently homeless Jewish man home for breakfast. The man asked for two eggs cooked for exactly two minutes. When the eggs were done, he asked for another set – the first two had been cooked longer than his required two minutes! By the end of the week, not only was this man having his “two eggs cooked for two minutes,” he actually moved in – and ended up living with the family for a number of years!
Every day, this old Jew would leave the house at five in the morning. For large parts of the day, he was gone. No one knew where he went or what he did. Rabbi Brog, then a youngster, was curious. One day, he worked up the courage to ask him what he did. The man told him that if he wanted to know, he should join him. The next morning, the young Yisroel was up and ready at five a.m., and together, he and the old man left the house.
That day turned out to be one of the most memorable days of the young boy’s life. For an entire day, he watched as this elderly Jew went from hospitals to old age homes to individual homes, helping people without let-up. They visited the elderly and the infirm, bringing them various things they needed, helping them put on tefillin, cheering them up, and raising their spirits. The whole neighborhood felt the impact of this man and his good deeds.
It turned out that Rabbi Brog’s eccentric house guest was a survivor who lost everything in the Holocaust. Now, his only wish was to help others as much as he could. Imagine what the young Rabbi Brog would have grown up thinking had he never bothered to draw closer to this hidden treasure!
There are many such people among the Jewish people. Perhaps they are hidden just beyond our view, or perhaps we have not taken the time to discover who they are. Nonetheless, they are there. Learning to seek out, appreciate and encourage the spiritual potential of every Jew enriches our lives and helps us become a nation of people who are truly likened to the stars.
Parsha Summary
In this week’s Parsha, the story of the creation of the Jewish people commences. In the beginning of the Parsha, Ha-shem tells Avram to leave his land, his birthplace, and the house of his father, and go to the place that G-d will show him. G-d promises him greatness, wealth, and children if he goes.
We learn two things from the journey that Avram embarked upon. Firstly, in order for a person to make his mark in the world, he has to do things because he believes in them, not because it is the way he grew up, the custom of his people, or the custom of his parents. Additionally, we see that G-d never told Avram his destination, he simply told him to go “to the place I will show you.” G-d was not trying to hide the destination from Avram, He simply couldn’t show it to him. When one sets out on a spiritual journey, he can’t possibly comprehend his destination, because the journey itself transforms him into a different person, with a different perspective, one that he couldn’t have had at the beginning of the journey.
As soon as Avram gets to Israel , the place he was told to travel to, there was a famine. This was one of the 10 tests that Avram was tested with. Would he have complaints against G-d who promised him greatness and wealth, or would he accept the situation, and know that G-d was doing what was best for him? (Avram underwent 10 tests, which covered every class of challenge his progeny would ever face, so that he could code his children with the spiritual DNA needed to overcome those ordeals.)
Avram traveled to Egypt to escape the famine. Knowing the rampant immorality of Egypt , he asked his wife Sarai to say she was his sister so that they wouldn’t kill him in order to steal his wife. As Avram suspected, they did indeed snatch Sara to become the king’s wife. However, G-d intervened and miraculously plagued the house of the pharaoh until he got the message and, feigning innocence, sent Sara back to her husband with compensatory gifts. He then asked the couple to leave his country knowing that his people could not control themselves.
Avram went back to Israel, only to have an argument with Lot, his nephew, who was allowing his flock to pasture in fields which didn’t belong to him. Avram finally said to Lot, “Pick a direction, go there, and I will go the other way, but I will stay close enough to protect you.” (Important Lesson: If you can’t beat them, leave them. If you stay around people doing evil you are bound to get influenced.) After Avram parted ways with Lot , G-d appeared to him and repeated the promise of numerous progeny which, as a childless man 75 years old, Avram accepted unquestioningly.
Then came the Great War. 4 Kings vs. 5 Kings. All the bookies had the five kings as the strong favorites but, lo and behold, the underdogs took the five kings in a sweep, capturing Lot in the process. Avram set out to save his nephew with a few men, and this time, the bookies once again favored the wrong team, as Avram scored a miraculous victory. Although the king of Sodom (one of the 5 losers that Avram rescued) offered Avram all the wealth of his people, Avram refused to take any of it, being unwilling to exchange an infinite mitzvah for mere finite money no matter what the amount.
Once again, G-d assured Avram that he will have children that will be numerous like the stars and, not only that, he will also give them the land of Israel as an inheritance. Avram asked, “Whereby shall I know that I am to inherit it?” Avram knew that man has free will, and was afraid that he or his offspring would sin and become unworthy of the Holy Land. At this point G-d made a special covenant with Avram using different animal parts, to signify that his progeny would inherit the land in the merit of the animal offerings they would sacrifice in the temple.
After this, Avram, on the urging of his wife Sara, took a second wife, Hagar. She was the daughter of a pharaoh, who came to Avram and declared that she would rather be a maidservant in his house than a princess in the house of a pharaoh. Sara asked that Avram marry Hagar, hoping that she would have a baby that Sara would raise as an adopted child. However, once Hagar got married and became pregnant with Avram’s first child, she began to be haughty toward Sara, thinking that she must be holier than Sara if she got pregnant so quickly. Sara told Avraham of the outrage occurring in his house and said that G-d should judge what should happen with the situation.
Avraham told Sara to deal with Hagar as she saw fit, and Sara, sensing a woman who needed to remember the humility that brought her to the house in the first place, dealt with her harshly. Hagar ran away to the desert. An angel met Hagar and told her to go back and be afflicted under Sara, as it would teach her the humility she needs. He then informed her that she will have a child who will be a wild man, fighting with everyone, and she should name him Yishmael (Yishmael is the father of the Arab nations. As a matter of fact they claim that the Akeida- the final test Avraham was tested with, occurred with Yishmael their forefather and not Yitzchak, our forefather). She thanked and blessed G-d (this, possibly, is the root of Arab women who are happy with their suicide bomber children, as Hagar, the mother of Yishmael, accepts the news of her progeny’s wildness and banditry as a blessing).
Thirteen years after Yishmael was born, when Avram was 99 years old, G-d commanded him to circumcise himself. One of the ideas behind bris milah is the understanding that G-d, by design, creates an imperfect world so that we can be partners with Him in bringing the world to its perfection. This is true regarding food, he creates the olives, grains, and grapes, but we complete His creation by making oil, bread, and wine. He creates us with some negative character traits, and we spend our life changing them and perfecting ourselves. The ultimate symbol of this is our circumcision, in which we show that we believe that G-d only gave us the raw material (an uncircumcised body), and it is our job to bring it to its completion and perfection through the bris.
After this mitzvah, G-d informed Avram that He was changing his name from Avram to Avraham, and Sarai’s name to Sara. In Hebrew, a person’s name reflects their essence, so when G-d tells someone He is changing their name, it means that with it He is changing their essence. With their new names and essences, Avraham and Sara will finally be able to give birth in the next Parsha, but I better stop here because I don’t want to give away too much!
Quote of the Week: Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still. – Leonardo Da Vinci
Random fact of the Week: The deepest trench in the Pacific Ocean is 28 times as deep as the Empire State Building is tall.
Funny Line of the Week: I started out with nothing…I still have most of it.
Have a Delicious Shabbos,
R’ Leiby Burnham
