Post by Rabbi Neil on Jan 10, 2020 22:40:06 GMT
In the past, I had very little time for books of fiction. If I could get most of the story in two hours on a cinema screen, with much greater special effects than I could create in my head, I always thought it was much better than sitting down and reading fiction for an extended period. The one exception to that during childhood was Biggles, the story of an English World War I pilot, possibly because there isn’t much that you need to imagine with one man having dogfights in a Sopwith Camel over enemy territory.
That changed when Rabbi Jenny suggested that I read Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. For those who don’t know, Northern Lights is the first in a trilogy of books about a world that is similar but slightly different to ours. They turned the first book, Northern Lights, into a movie which was so bad that they never finished the trilogy of movies. And the book came to mind this week when I saw Zafra carrying a copy of it, and it reminded me of a connection I made years ago between that book and this week’s Torah portion.
As I said, Northern Lights is about a girl called Lyra in a world very similar, but slightly different, to ours. For example, everyone in the world is accompanied by a daemon. Not demon, as in a big, red creature with horns, but d-a-e-m-o-n. I remember that for the first fifty or sixty pages, I was quite unmoved by the story. I found it childish and not very engaging, but then something interesting happened. I can’t tell you what, of course, because then it’ll ruin the surprise for Zafra as she reads it, but there was such a plot twist that I was simply drawn in.
Along with the excitement that came with the plot twist, something else was happening at that point in the book. We were beginning to understand a little bit more about the relationship between individuals and their daemons. The daemon changes shape depending on the mood or thoughts of the child. So, for example, Lyra’s daemon Pantalaimon takes the shape of a panther when she is angry, or a moth when she wants to hide. The daemon is, in some sense, the outer expression of the individual, but there is more than that - the daemon can express something that the individual can’t. For example, when Lyra feels rather trapped on a boat, her daemon Pantalaimon turns into a seagull, leaping into the air with a loud caw of delight, wheeling, skimming and darting ahead of the boat, and Lyra exults in it, feeling with him as he flies.
The idea of the daemon who externally expresses the self is fascinating to me. If everyone had their own daemon as Pullman envisages, then everyone could be a good judge of character, since you could simply see who the person facing you truly is. You see, when someone grows up, the daemon settles into one shape, in much the same way as when we grow up our character stays fairly similar. Lyra asks a very interesting question to one sailor, whose daemon is a seagull – “Suppose your daemon settles in a shape you don’t like?” The answer is simple, although I’m not going to do the accent that the text suggests: “You’re disconnected, en’t you? There’s plenty of folk as’d like to have a lion as a daemon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they’re going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.”
There is one final part of the relationship between a person and their daemon, which is that they can never be too far away. In one instance, Pantalaimon tests the distance which they can be apart. With Lyra stationary, he pulls and pulls, and Lyra screams in intense longing and despair.
Now, this week’s sidrah many years ago was my bar mitzvah sidrah, and Jacob’s deathbed scene was somewhat of a mystery to me for over many years. As a teenager, I found myself wondering, how can Jacob summarise each of his children in such short sentences? How does he reduce their character to so little? But thanks to Lyra and Pantalaimon, I may have an answer. A person cannot be long separated from their true identity. We cannot run from we are, and while we can improve ourselves, our nature and nurture instinctively lean us toward certain behaviour. To continue to run away from our true selves causes only pain and longing.
But so many people walk around disconnected from their true selves that they might indeed think they are lions rather than poodles. It’s an interesting question to ask yourself which animal might best represent you, and then ask someone else whom you believe knows you well which animal they think best represents you. Do the two answers match up? If not, why not?
In this week’s Torah portion, Jacob does what Pullman imagines. He knows his children so well that he can see the very essence of their being. Some of them he literally describes as creatures, some as geographical features – Judah is a lion’s puppy, Zebulun is a shore for ships, Issachar is a large-boned ass, Dan is a serpent, Naphtali is a released hind, Joseph a fruitful vine, and my bar mitzvah sidrah started with the description that Benjamin is a ravenous wolf.
So, how do we come to know what we are? The answer, I believe, is in self-reflection, otherwise known in Judaism as prayer. Not just reciting liturgy, but true self-reflection in the eyes of God. Asking the deepest question of ourselves – What am I? What is my life? What is my love? What is my justice? What is my success? What is my endurance? What is my power? That is perhaps the hardest group of questions we can ask ourselves, but is clearly something Jacob had mastered of himself and of his children.
So, if nothing else, let us pray for the understanding to see who we really are, to search our souls and to ask of God before whom we stand, Who am I? For then, we shall have really prayed. Let us pray, then, that we might be honest with ourselves, develop ourselves, and never convince ourselves that we are anything other than our true selves. May such be God’s will, and let us say, Amen.
That changed when Rabbi Jenny suggested that I read Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. For those who don’t know, Northern Lights is the first in a trilogy of books about a world that is similar but slightly different to ours. They turned the first book, Northern Lights, into a movie which was so bad that they never finished the trilogy of movies. And the book came to mind this week when I saw Zafra carrying a copy of it, and it reminded me of a connection I made years ago between that book and this week’s Torah portion.
As I said, Northern Lights is about a girl called Lyra in a world very similar, but slightly different, to ours. For example, everyone in the world is accompanied by a daemon. Not demon, as in a big, red creature with horns, but d-a-e-m-o-n. I remember that for the first fifty or sixty pages, I was quite unmoved by the story. I found it childish and not very engaging, but then something interesting happened. I can’t tell you what, of course, because then it’ll ruin the surprise for Zafra as she reads it, but there was such a plot twist that I was simply drawn in.
Along with the excitement that came with the plot twist, something else was happening at that point in the book. We were beginning to understand a little bit more about the relationship between individuals and their daemons. The daemon changes shape depending on the mood or thoughts of the child. So, for example, Lyra’s daemon Pantalaimon takes the shape of a panther when she is angry, or a moth when she wants to hide. The daemon is, in some sense, the outer expression of the individual, but there is more than that - the daemon can express something that the individual can’t. For example, when Lyra feels rather trapped on a boat, her daemon Pantalaimon turns into a seagull, leaping into the air with a loud caw of delight, wheeling, skimming and darting ahead of the boat, and Lyra exults in it, feeling with him as he flies.
The idea of the daemon who externally expresses the self is fascinating to me. If everyone had their own daemon as Pullman envisages, then everyone could be a good judge of character, since you could simply see who the person facing you truly is. You see, when someone grows up, the daemon settles into one shape, in much the same way as when we grow up our character stays fairly similar. Lyra asks a very interesting question to one sailor, whose daemon is a seagull – “Suppose your daemon settles in a shape you don’t like?” The answer is simple, although I’m not going to do the accent that the text suggests: “You’re disconnected, en’t you? There’s plenty of folk as’d like to have a lion as a daemon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they’re going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.”
There is one final part of the relationship between a person and their daemon, which is that they can never be too far away. In one instance, Pantalaimon tests the distance which they can be apart. With Lyra stationary, he pulls and pulls, and Lyra screams in intense longing and despair.
Now, this week’s sidrah many years ago was my bar mitzvah sidrah, and Jacob’s deathbed scene was somewhat of a mystery to me for over many years. As a teenager, I found myself wondering, how can Jacob summarise each of his children in such short sentences? How does he reduce their character to so little? But thanks to Lyra and Pantalaimon, I may have an answer. A person cannot be long separated from their true identity. We cannot run from we are, and while we can improve ourselves, our nature and nurture instinctively lean us toward certain behaviour. To continue to run away from our true selves causes only pain and longing.
But so many people walk around disconnected from their true selves that they might indeed think they are lions rather than poodles. It’s an interesting question to ask yourself which animal might best represent you, and then ask someone else whom you believe knows you well which animal they think best represents you. Do the two answers match up? If not, why not?
In this week’s Torah portion, Jacob does what Pullman imagines. He knows his children so well that he can see the very essence of their being. Some of them he literally describes as creatures, some as geographical features – Judah is a lion’s puppy, Zebulun is a shore for ships, Issachar is a large-boned ass, Dan is a serpent, Naphtali is a released hind, Joseph a fruitful vine, and my bar mitzvah sidrah started with the description that Benjamin is a ravenous wolf.
So, how do we come to know what we are? The answer, I believe, is in self-reflection, otherwise known in Judaism as prayer. Not just reciting liturgy, but true self-reflection in the eyes of God. Asking the deepest question of ourselves – What am I? What is my life? What is my love? What is my justice? What is my success? What is my endurance? What is my power? That is perhaps the hardest group of questions we can ask ourselves, but is clearly something Jacob had mastered of himself and of his children.
So, if nothing else, let us pray for the understanding to see who we really are, to search our souls and to ask of God before whom we stand, Who am I? For then, we shall have really prayed. Let us pray, then, that we might be honest with ourselves, develop ourselves, and never convince ourselves that we are anything other than our true selves. May such be God’s will, and let us say, Amen.
