The Ways of the World
King Solomon was the wisest person to have ever lived. But even the wisest among us can not know everything. "Three things are hidden from me," he says in Mishlei (30:18), "and a fourth I do not know."
Something interesting came across my friends page today that seems to shed light on this odd statement of Solomon the Wise. The fourth item on Solomons list is "the way of a man with a woman." It's interesting to note that the first 3 are hidden from him, while this one may not be. And yet this is one he does not "know". You must realize this is where the language gets tricky. The root form of the verb he uses is "Da'as," which is a deep intimate knowledge of something, something which you can feel through your whole self. An example: After eating a very large meal you know what it feels like to be full. I hope all of you have experienced that. To truly know something you must experience it fully.
The Gemara in Sanhedrin says that a person is called an "olam," (roughly translated as "world"). This is supposed to teach us the value of life. That if you kill but a single person it is as if you have destroyed the entire world.
And when you save a single life, you have saved the entire world.
Now here comes the part I found interesting. You see the word "olam," does not really translate to "world" as in Earth or Mars. It means world as in "all of the existence," not the solar system, or the galaxy, but even bigger than that. Perhaps clusters of galaxies would suffice as a proper translation.
For years people have speculated, hypothesized, and tested for the existence of Dark Matter. It's there the whole time, but it seems to surface when two olams collide. Masses and masses of energy that waits underneath the surface. "Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people in the whole world. I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.*
Solomon knew that. He knew that each person is an infinite world. So how can you know "the way of a man with a woman?" There's so much beautiful and unseen energy inside everything that when two people collide the whole cosmos shakes.
Call me crazy, I believe in love.
*Neil Gaiman, Sandman.
PS I fly to Israel for the third time in as many years in a few hours. Metavlad (at) hotmail.com if you'd like to contact me.
Something interesting came across my friends page today that seems to shed light on this odd statement of Solomon the Wise. The fourth item on Solomons list is "the way of a man with a woman." It's interesting to note that the first 3 are hidden from him, while this one may not be. And yet this is one he does not "know". You must realize this is where the language gets tricky. The root form of the verb he uses is "Da'as," which is a deep intimate knowledge of something, something which you can feel through your whole self. An example: After eating a very large meal you know what it feels like to be full. I hope all of you have experienced that. To truly know something you must experience it fully.
The Gemara in Sanhedrin says that a person is called an "olam," (roughly translated as "world"). This is supposed to teach us the value of life. That if you kill but a single person it is as if you have destroyed the entire world.
And when you save a single life, you have saved the entire world.
Now here comes the part I found interesting. You see the word "olam," does not really translate to "world" as in Earth or Mars. It means world as in "all of the existence," not the solar system, or the galaxy, but even bigger than that. Perhaps clusters of galaxies would suffice as a proper translation.
For years people have speculated, hypothesized, and tested for the existence of Dark Matter. It's there the whole time, but it seems to surface when two olams collide. Masses and masses of energy that waits underneath the surface. "Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people in the whole world. I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.*
Solomon knew that. He knew that each person is an infinite world. So how can you know "the way of a man with a woman?" There's so much beautiful and unseen energy inside everything that when two people collide the whole cosmos shakes.
Call me crazy, I believe in love.
*Neil Gaiman, Sandman.
PS I fly to Israel for the third time in as many years in a few hours. Metavlad (at) hotmail.com if you'd like to contact me.