Leon's No News Bulletin 100 Thur 12th Mar 09

Shalom everyone,

This last Friday night I went to Ariel and Lilach to play with Ophir and Alon; we kicked the ball, raced motor cars, did some somersaults, took some pictures then Ophir had his bath and then we both bathed Alon; Ophir poured the soap and I did the scrubbing. Afterwards Lilach made us a great supper and Ophir and Alon went to bed and I went home to Jerusalem.

The wet weekend was a welcome change from the hot summery weather we’ve had so far this winter. Now the heat is back again and Purim allowed people to celebrate in the streets dressed like kings, queens, princesses, policemen, Spiderman etc.

I remember many rainy and even snowy days on Purim or Hanukah. This year it’s different and I can’t complain that once again we have a rainy Purim.

Where is Gilad Shalit in the midst of all the fun? This is the question everybody in Israel is asking themselves and there’s no answer.

When someone is so silent the rest of the world has to make a noise or else he’s as good as dead. This is why the demonstrations take place, not because anybody expects that demonstrations are going to persuade Hamas to release him, but to keep him alive at least in the minds of the living.

A person is only dead when he’s dead in the mind of the living, either in his mind or in the mind of others.

A person might be on a solitary island, like Gilad, with no living creature around him to attest to his life. Only his mind can attest to that.

That’s why when we don’t know whether someone is alive or dead we must demonstrate that he’s alive until we have absolute proof that he’s dead.

The relationship between death as something which involves non thinking and lifee which involves thinking about a thing is similar to the way God created the world.

The fact is that actually God created two worlds, a world of chaos, without thought and a world of order, with thought.

According to the first verse in the Bible He creates the world of chaos, as it says:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and the earth was null and void and darkness was upon the abyss”.

There’s no mention of thought here. The word for created “barah” doesn’t imply any thought, but just an instinctive act. God according to His instinct creates. He’s creating all the time, that’s what God does according to the rabbis in the Talmud.

Then the second verse talks about another world which God created, a world of order, where He uses thought, which is indicated by the many times the Bible uses the expression “and God said” (Vayomer) as it says:

 “.And G-d said: 'Let there be light.' And there was light.

And G-d saw the light that it was good; and G-d divided the light from the darkness.

And G-d called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day”.

My conclusion is that order and separation comes about by thinking and the resulting creation is something beautiful, while one amorphous mass (the null and void) comes about without thinking, by an instinctive act and the result is something ugly.

As soon as God separated the various elements, by means of thought, of light and darkness, wet and dry, life and death etc. the world became beautiful because there was variety, organized in a meaningful way like the beautiful music I listen to every morning, which contrasts with the dark which is still all around in my study on the balcony as I begin to write. The only sounds I hear are the music and the computer motor. The one a beautiful harmony created out of variety, the other monotonous and dull.

Most people understand today that no matter how far, in time we are from original creation, from the moment the “null and void” was created and the separation of elements began it is easy to fall back into the “null and void”. The most famous sign of how close we are is the ease with which a person stops living; just one stab, one bullet, one car smash, one minute virus and we are back into the “null and void”.

I want my life to be like the sound of the music not like the sound of the computer motor. Like the 2nd world God created not like the first chaotic one.

The more I distinguish between good and bad, beautiful and ugly or beautiful and more beautiful, the more distinctions I make among the various elements of the world the further I distance myself from the “null and void” and the better chance I have of not falling back into it.

Everything I do is in fact directed towards this objective. Each act is an act of separation; I separate words from letters, colors from light, clean from dirty, hot from cold, good music from bad music, a good movie from a bad movie, kindness from cruelty etc. etc.

When we speak of the end of the world we mean the end of a living creature thinking that the world exists. Even if there’s one person who thinks about the world existing then it exists. The world that stops existing is the world of thought which creates harmony by separating the amorphous mass into myriad varieties and harmonizing them into beauty.