Temple Aliyah

By Rabbi Carl M. Perkins

The Righteousness Uncertainty Principle
Parashat Vayetze
December 2, 2006

There is a principle in physics known as the Uncertainty Principle. According to this principle, if you shine light on an object (which you need to do in order to see it), the light actually moves the object slightly, so that it no longer is where it had been just before you shined light on it. A more general way to put it is this: you can’t observe a phenomenon without changing it.

This is a profound insight from the world of sub-atomic particles. But we can see examples of this principle on the human level as well. Anyone who has ever been asked to observe a group of four or five people knows that it’s very difficult to be unobtrusive. Even in a group of a dozen or more, one’s presence can be felt.

At the very beginning of this week’s Torah portion, the text tells us that “Jacob left Be’er Sheva, and traveled to Haran.” (Genesis 28:10) Rashi, in his commentary on this passage, asks, “Why does the Bible goes out of its way to tell us that Jacob left Be’er Sheva?” After all, earlier, the Bible had told us that Jacob was in Be’er Sheva, so all it really had to tell us here is that he traveled to Haran. Why bother to tell us that he left Be’er Sheva?

The answer Rashi gives could be called the Righteousness Uncertainty Principle: “When a righteous person leaves a community,” he writes, “osah roshem,”—“it makes an impression.” A righteous person can never “blend into the woodwork”; he or she can never be oblivious. “For while a righteous person is in a city, he or she is its glory, he or she is its splendor, he or she is its crown; and when that person goes, so goes its glory, so goes its splendor, so goes its crown.” Rashi is telling us that a community cannot but be enhanced and enlightened when a righteous person is present, and the community’s radiance is necessarily dimmed when that person departs. By telling us that “Jacob left Be’er Sheva,” the text is trying to teach us that Be’er Sheva just wasn’t the same after Jacob left.

One of our goals when we teach kids is to help them develop their individual strengths. We want them to develop their reading ability, their writing ability, their musical talents, their creativity. But we also want our kids to realize their potential to influence the communities in which they live and learn. We what them to perform mitzvot and to realize what kind of a positive impact that can have on those around them.

Rashi’s statement can be very helpful in this regard. It’s inspiring to realize that if we behave in a menschlich fashion, then the classrooms, the friendship circles, the families, and the communities—indeed, the entire world—in which we live will be enhanced, and that, conversely, if we fail to act in a menschlich fashion, those environments will be diminished.

Think how influential all of us can be, according to this insight! So much depends on us!

Let’s teach our children this midrashic insight. Let’s remind them that they should not imagine that they can simply sit back and observe their surroundings. One way or the other, they will influence them. And if they behave in the way that they should—the way that, deep down inside, they know that they should—then the lives of all those around them will be enlightened and illuminated.