Bending Light
We tend to think of changing or rewriting prayers as a modern invention. The audacity it takes to tinker with the words crafted by prophets and sages can only be found in these recent generations that have escaped the gravity of traditional faith. Especially when the words come from a Biblical verse as many do. This is not correct.
A glaring counter-example is found in the very first line after the call to the morning prayer: “Blessed are you, G*d, Sovereign of the universe that fashions light and creates darkness, makes peace and creates all'' This powerful prayer is based on a verse in the prophet Isaiah, but a very significant change has been made: “I fashion light and create darkness, make peace and create evil!” Three questions are raised immediately. Does G*d create evil? If so according to the Prophet Isaiah, how could the sages simply switch out one word of the verse for a very different word? And finally, if they are going to take out evil, why leave in darkness?
The first question lands us in the middle of one of the great theological challenges of monotheism - if there is One G*d then not only good things but also bad things must be attributed to G*d. Or in its more pointed form: why do bad things happen to good people? The answer will not be found here and there are as many ways to approach these questions of theodicy as there are human beings who may grapple with them. What matters here is that Isaiah carried G*d’s blunt affirmation that in fact there is no countervailing force to the Divine. No Devil worth mentioning or demonic force that is an independent source of evil. Why or how to reconcile an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good G*d with the existence of suffering is for philosophers and clerics. Isaiah simply speaks the prophetic truth.
And the Rabbis? They decide that there are times, well, you can’t handle the truth. Or more accurately, handling the truth is not what is called for. And prayer is a time to put the emphasis on the beneficence of our Creator: on our gratitude and call to give praise and on G*d’s surety in meting out justice and power to bring salvation. All of which is also true and certain at the heart of our faith even as the world presents us constantly with painful realities and unsolvable mysteries that carve out the shapes of our own hearts and souls. Prayer is a projection of the world as it can be and as we deeply need it to be. A world-building exercise to live a righteous and meaningful life. So, Isaiah’s harsh prophecy and it’s gateway to important and honest questions is hidden inside the larger truth: G*d creates all.
So why not just take out the darkness part as well? Darkness is different from evil. We would love to live without any evil in the world, but even if it were possible we would still need darkness. It is interesting to compare Isaiah’s words to the opening of Genesis in which the darkness is “upon the deep” as opposed to being described as created. Yet darkness is more than just the absence of light. Darkness has a place and a purpose.
This week both the Torah and the expanses of space teach a lesson about the dark with help from the most powerful device ever to scan the deep sky. The pictures released from the James Webb Space Telescope not only capture very distant objects with incredible precision and detail, but they are made possible by a phenomenon by which the gravitational pull of a massive object acts like a lens. In other words, the Webb Telescope is able to image galaxies whose light has been traveling almost since the universe was born by using a cluster of galaxies like a magnifying glass. Light and dark are not opposites, but bend and reveal each other in a cosmic dance.
These insights help reframe a famous moment in the Torah portion in which the prophet Bilaam is hired by an enemy King to curse the Israelites but each word he tries to say comes out not as a curse but a blessing. He looks out at the Israelite camp and the dark words he intends become the radiant verse “How beautiful are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel”. Yet, learning from Webb, what would it mean if the curses and blessings were also interacting with each other, the blessing visible because the words of the curse work like its own kind of gravitational lens, a dark mass that bends and reveals the light that would otherwise be hidden.
And we return again to the Sages change of the Biblical verse “creates evil” to “creates all”, audacious and intentional yet with a similar consequence to Bilaam’s curses. The darkness cast by Isaiah’s blunt statement does not obscure, but bends the light of creation, revealing the Creator of All.