Lessons From a Pencil (Vayeira)

 

Lessons From a Pencil (Vayeira)

In 1958, Leonard Read wrote an utterly charming essay in a magazine about economics. But you’ll have to forgive me - because if this is your first encounter with the essay, you’re going to learn nothing about his perspective on the economy. The reason Leonard Reed’s 1958 essay is so charming - and what I am interested in talking about - is that he wrote it from the perspective of his pencil. 

It is usually referred to by the title “I, Pencil”. The full title that Read wrote, however, is: “I, Pencil: My Family Tree, As Told to Leonard Read.” 

You may wonder - writes Pencil - why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. ... But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. 

Read’s pencil tells his readers: I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. 

It asks us to consider its constituent pieces: the wood, the shiny surface, the graphite, the metal, the eraser. And then it stretches back into its history - what it calls its genealogy. It speaks of the cedar tree which provided its wood, the saws and axes and trucks and rope used to collect it; the slats travelling by rail; it loops in all the makers of cars and rails and engines; its time at the mill cutting the logs down, drying in the kiln and being tinted and waxed and dried again. It speaks of all the belts and motors and the people who made them, the workers and who fed and clothed them, the skills involved in supplying the heat and light and power, and before we’ve touched anything but the wood itself, it seems that half the world is involved in the making of this pencil. 

According to Pencil, the web extending from each element of its creation reaches out further and further than we can imagine. Nobody knows how to make a pencil, because to make a pencil is so much more than we think it is. It reminds me of the old joke where a scientist tells God that they’ve figured out how to create life from dirt. And when they go to prove it, they pick up a handful of dirt and God says: “Hey! Get your own dirt!” 

Now, I must confess that I don’t actually read American economic journals from the 1950s for fun. I’m grateful to Dani Ungar for quoting the essay as a comment on the text that was already on my mind this week: an early rabbinic teaching (Tosefta B’rakhot 6, later quoted in Talmud B’rakhot 58a), which begins with the sages providing a blessing for the experience of seeing a multitude of people: בָּרוּךְ… חֲכַם הָרָזִים - Blessed is the One Who knows all secrets. 

Why this blessing? asks the text. Because for all the people in this crowd, their faces are not similar to one another’s and their minds are not similar to one another’s.

And then comes Ben Zoma, who is described as witnessing a multitude of people at the Temple Mount, and reciting the blessing: בָּרוּךְ … חֲכַם הָרָזִים וּבָרוּךְ … שֶׁבָּרָא כׇּל אֵלּוּ לְשַׁמְּשֵׁנִי - Blessed is the One Who knows all secrets, and blessed is the One who created all of these to serve me.

Ben Zoma goes on to explain this strange blessing this way: 

How much effort did Adam (the first person) exert before he found bread to eat? He plowed, sowed, reaped, sheaved, threshed, winnowed, separated, ground, shifted, kneaded, and baked, and only then could he eat. But I wake up in the morning and find all of these things prepared for me! How much effort did Adam have to exert before he found clothes to wear? He sheared, laundered, combed, spun and wove, and only then had anything to wear. And I wake up and find all of these prepared for me!

All nations, Ben Zoma explains, diligently turn up at my door, and I wake up and find all of these things before me.

And therefore Ben Zoma transforms a blessing in awe of our differences into a blessing that also contains awe at our interconnectedness. 

Ben Zoma and Leonard Read’s pencil seem to be seeing through the same eyes. What if we actually took note of the incredible, interconnected work behind every element of our lives? What kind of awe would that provoke? What kind of gratitude? 

Because sadly, to borrow Pencil’s words, so many things are taken for granted, as if the world around us “were a mere incident and without background”.

Nothing is by “mere incident and without background”. The lights in this building come on because of a great network of things. And today is a good day to recognise one of the most important parts of that network, upon Phil's retirement. Phil, I hope you know how grateful we are for the work you’ve done for us as operations manager all these years, to ensure that everything involving this building continues. Thank you. 

Ben Zoma’s awe is the kind of experience our tradition tries to impress upon us in many ways. The most obvious of those, to my mind, is b’rakhot over food. It is, of course, a practice about recognising God as the ultimate source of everything. But it is not only a general expression of gratitude to God. Whenever we eat anything, in order to know which blessing we should recite, we have to slow down and pay attention. We have to ask how the food grew, how much it was altered, what this mixture of foods might be. Nothing we eat is a “mere incident”; everything is a miracle. Nothing is “without background”; everything has a story. I hugely recommend it as a practice. 

And it is so important that we slow down, that we experience Ben Zoma’s awe when he stood there at the Temple Mount and saw all those people, because a failure to do so is dangerous. A failure to understand and appreciate the interconnected nature of the human family is precisely what we encountered today in the Torah reading. It is the Problem of Sodom. 

The Problem of Sodom is variously described as pride and greed and twisted injustice, but all of these things boil down to a kind of callous, uncaring distance. There is a very famous quote about Sodom found in Pirkei Avot, that Sodom’s attitude was “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours”. “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours” might seem so normal, but it is also isolationist in nature; it rejects our interdependence. 

The problem is described in another very early rabbinic text (Tosefta Sotah 3, quoted in Sifrei Devarim 43) this way: 

The reason that Sodom rebelled against HaMakom, the Omnipresent God, says the Midrash, is due to satisfaction. The Midrash imagines them saying: “Look, food comes from our land; look, we have silver and gold. We don’t need anyone else, so let’s blot out the very memory of the idea of providing care to the wayfarer.” To which the Omnipresent God responds: “All the goodness I’ve given you, and you want to use it to blot out the memory of providing care to the wayfarer. And so I will blot out the memory of you from the world.” 

It’s an extraordinary text, because here, the rejection of caring for the stranger is understood as being a rebellion against God. Their sin is not idolatry. It is not, at its heart, even the violence it descends into. Their rebellion, the rot at the heart of Sodom, is a fundamental self-centredness. They have no interest in seeing themselves as part of an interconnected web of human family. This is even more stark when juxtaposed with Abraham at the beginning of the portion, who rushes out of his tent to welcome the three strangers on the horizon. 

The problem of Sodom is a failure of wonder. 

What Abraham and Ben Zoma see, and what Sodom fails to see, is encapsulated in the Midrash by its choice to refer to God as HaMakom, the Omnipresent, the God who is in all places. Abraham sees angels and has no idea they’re angels, but it doesn’t matter, because he treats every person as if they’re made in the image of God. Ben Zoma and the sages are struck with awe at a crowd of people because every single person has their own soul, their own inner lives and secrets, and God is present in all of them, and we are all connected to one another. 

That is what is lacking in Sodom. They fail to see other people as connected to them and they fail to see the divine image.

We do not live in a world of isolated things and isolated people, and we should not want to. We live in an extraordinary web of lives and skills and labours and ideas, which stretches far beyond what we will ever see. 

May we all experience the awe and wonder that everything in our world deserves - even the humble pencil.

Shabbat shalom.