Not On Everest
Aug 18th, 2010 | By admin | Category: 2007-8, Archives
I never understood explorers and mountain climbers. To me, they were foolhardy adventurers, risking life and limb for the glory of getting their names in the newspapers or the history books. Actually, most will never achieve notoriety, and resort to running rapids and climbing mountains for no purpose other than “because it’s there.” Or, if they are the silent (more likely inarticulate) type, can give no reason whatsoever. Nor do they necessarily think they are in need of a reason.
But I think I understand them better now. I’ll tell you what happened. No, I didn’t book for Everest, or even the Hermon. It was a journalistic assignment. The print and electronic media are in constant need of new material to fill pages and time slots, and I had noticed a trend that my editor agreed was worth investigating. So I did. And I got caught up in it (admittedly, it may have been a psychological trick I played on myself to summon the energy to do the piece, but no matter), in discovering something new, in this case a social development that no one had written about before. The feeling is akin to what every explorer feels, of being out there on a frontier, seeing it before any other human, and coming back with the story.
Scientists have often spoken of it. Imagine being the one to discover the Double Helix, the secret mechanism of life itself. Or a Galileo, gazing into the heavens with a telescope, before hardly anybody else even knows what a telescope is.
The reason that all of us—even unadventurous, stay-at-home me—can identify with the great and not-so-great adventurers is because the spirit of the explorer exists in all of us. Having said that, I want to ask the question, Why?
Jewish tradition teaches that God created the world and everything in it. He created the mountains and the men to climb them; the wildernesses and the pioneers to settle them. Scripture declares that God did not create the earth to be empty, but to be inhabited. For that plan to be implemented, there have to be hardy, daring souls who will journey forth from the ancient Near East and spread civilization.
There is, however, another reason. We are imbued with a desire to discover new things and tell others about them because of Torah. Torah is the ultimate repository of knowledge, and it is the basis of existence. As the Sages say, if the Jewish people had not accepted the Torah at Sinai, the Creator would have turned it back into null and void. “If not for my Torah [being studied] day and night, I [God] would not have created the heavens and the earth.”
The rewards of Torah study are incomparable. The pleasure of discovering and mastering new areas of knowledge, and of thereby drawing closer to the spiritual source of our existence, is not to be found anywhere else, no matter how hard you look or how far you travel. And like the terrestrial explorers, there is the desire to share with others, to come back from that far place and tell others about it. As a certain Torah scholar once remarked, “If it would be possible for a person to go up to heaven and see how things are up there, he would not be able to enjoy his attainment unless he could return and tell others about what he had seen.”
But Torah study is an arduous endeavor. The material is often formidable in its complexity, and touches on historical and spiritual matters remote from our everyday experience. We need a special energy pack to sustain us in the lifelong quest of Torah study.
And because it’s hard, people tend to seek out other outlets for their adventurousness. Some climb mountains, others gaze through telescopes or bend over microscopes, others go into journalism, and some join the Navy, you know, to see the world. I’m not saying that these aren’t worthwhile pursuits. What I am saying is that the ultimate discovery, the kind for which we were really made, is in the Torah. Not on Everest.
Search, and you will find.
by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman
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