COMMENTARY
September 2021
Federation Star
35
Eyes on the stars Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross
P
ublished in Istanbul in 1730, MeiAm Lo’eiz is a comprehensive Torah commentary and compendium of folklore. Maintaining that balance between authentic religion and folk religion, between authority and entertainment, made author Ya’aqov Kuli a virtual tightrope walker. A case in point is his commentary on the six days of creation at the opening of Genesis. Discussing the formation of the celestial luminaries on day four (Genesis 1:14ff ), Rabbi Kuli digresses into an exposition of the 12 sun signs of the Zodiac. This poses a problem, since the concept that our lives are governed by the far-off stars is entirely contrary to our Biblical theology of free will and of personal moral responsibility. But Kuli pulls out of that dive — and steps back from the precipice of pagan heathenism — by casually (but nonetheless emphatically) explaining that any influence the celestial bodies may, in fact, have upon us is merely an attribute endowed upon them by their Creator, to whose will both we and they are subject, which comes under the category of “good save.” But even more to the point, it serves to establish a clear context for ethical monotheists to make passing reference to the signs of the Zodiac without compromising our status as ethical monotheists. The “sun signs” are not an inexorable force influencing our lives, but rather milestone markers on the calendar-clock of the sky. As such, our sages of antiquity and medieval commentators are not shy about invoking the hallmark constellation of the season to derive a topical lesson about the season in question and its moral and spiritual implications. And there are two Zodiac signs, half a year apart, that are most notable in this regard.
The first of them is Aries, “the Ram.” Our rabbis in the Talmud point out that this is the sun sign of early spring, marking the season of Passover. The ancient Egyptians worshipped a panoply of gods and goddesses, with the ram-headed deity of life and fertility being foremost. By slaughtering a lamb under the sign of Aries, our long-ago forebears marked their distinction from those who had enslaved them by affirming that a sheep is just a sheep. As such, the blood of the Passover lamb on our doorposts represented a literal point of departure — not just from servitude to freedom, but from idolatry to monotheism and to a sense of our own greater possibilities. Whether we have made the most of those possibilities is broached half a year later by the current sun sign of Libra, “The Scales.” With Rosh haShanah and Yom Kippur now upon us, the hallmark constellation of the season poses a question On High about how the balance between our worthy and unworthy impulses, between our proper and improper actions. The shofar-blast, Maimonides declares, is a wake-up call to our own personal inventory, while the prayer uN’taneh Toqef affirms that we stand in judgment before the open Book of Life, in which all our works are recorded. That tenuous dynamic is a reminder, if we take the New Year season seriously, that Ya’aqov Kuli was not the only tightrope act in the Jewish world. As we move this month from the solemn challenge of S’lichot to the 10 days of soul work beginning on Rosh haShanah, and beyond the arduous Fast of Atonement to the glorious joy of sukkahbuilding and -sitting, and after that to the jubilant start of a new Torah-reading year, may each step of this sacred journey be one of personal rediscovery. Formed of dust of the Earth and ensouled with God’s Own Breath, may we tread lightly in delicate balance as we walk the Earth with our eyes on the stars. Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross serves at Jewish Congregation of Marco Island.
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