Putting Awe Back In Awesome
By: Rabbi Efrem Goldberg
The home of the great composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, has been preserved as a museum in Bonn, Germany. One historical gem in the museum is the piano Beethoven used to compose most of his renowned works. The piano, estimated to be worth more than $50 million, is roped-off and out of the reach of the thousands of visitors who pass by it each day.
Many years ago, a group of students from Vassar College visited the Beethoven Museum. Matthew Kelly tells the story of how one of the students came to the room that held the piano and couldn’t resist the temptation to ask a museum guard if she could play it for a moment. The guard allowed himself to be influenced by her generous tip and let the young woman beyond the ropes for a few moments. She sat at the famed piano and knocked out several bars of “Moonlight Sonata.” When she finished, her classmates applauded.
As she stepped back through the ropes, the young woman asked the guard if over the years any of the great pianists had played this special piano. “No, miss,” the guard replied. “In fact, just two years ago I was standing in this very place when the famed Polish pianist, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, visited the museum. He was accompanied by the director of the museum and the international press, who had all come in the hope that he would play the piano.
“When he entered the room, he stood over there, where your friends are standing, and gazed at the piano in silent contemplation for almost fifteen minutes. The director asked him to play the piano, but with tears welling in his eyes, Paderewski declined, saying that he was not even worthy of touching it.”
Mammals get what we call goosebumps, the constriction of skin surrounding hair follicles when they feel threatened or attacked. But only humans get goosebumps for a different feeling, that of awe. Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of greatness, of being exposed to something transcendent or extraordinary. Paderewski was in a room with Beethoven’s piano and was overcome with awe. The young student saw the piano and thought it would be cool to casually play it.
Researchers believe that we are living in a time of “awe deprivation.” Technological advances have made things we once thought impossible not only possible, but normal, expected, even mundane and unimpressive. We FaceTime with people on the other side of the globe without another thought, we have search engines that access millions of pages of information in nanoseconds, we instinctively use global positioning satellites to find the quickest route to avoid traffic. The result of the speed with which breakthroughs, change, and advances happen leaves us struggling to be impressed with anything.
We have gone from calling everything “awesome” to reacting to everything by saying “meh.” The byproducts of being awe-deprived include increased arrogance, decreased empathy, greater challenge in finding meaning, and even failing health.
A Wall Street Journal article describes how current research shows that the capacity to feel awe makes people more empathetic, generous, kind, and humble. The actual feeling of awe and the experiences that inspire awe make us healthier, improve our relationships, and give more meaning to our lives. The author writes, “Awe is an emotional response to something vast, and it challenges and expands our way of seeing the world. It might be triggered by an encounter with nature, a religious experience, a concert or a political rally, or sports event. We’re not likely to find it on a treadmill at the gym.”
She goes on to describe how some people experienced awe at the birth of a child, others by watching a meteor shower, and still others by visiting the Pine Forest in California. Interestingly, others found it awe-inspiring to work with homeless people and witness their resilience and kindness. Dr. Dacher Keltner from UC Berkeley found that feeling awe can help fight depression and even help reduce inflammation in the body. Dr. Paul Piff from UC Irvine explained that “awe minimizes our individual identity and attunes us to things bigger than ourselves.”
We are in the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe. On Rosh Hashanah we coronate Hashem as King of the Universe and remind ourselves of His awesome omnipotence and omniscience. On Yom Kippur, Hashem will judge us to determine if we are fulfilling our role in His renewed kingdom and the purpose for which we were created. As described in U’netaneh Tokef, these days are in fact, Norah v’Ayom: they are simply and literally awesome.
But we will only be moved by the awesomeness of these days if we still have the capacity for awe, reverence, and veneration. If everything is so utterly unimpressive, uninspiring, and ordinary, these days will be ritualistic and ceremonial, empty and devoid of meaning and transformation.
Rav Yitzchak Hutner, zt’l, explained that Amalek and his descendants are the archrivals of the Jewish people because their philosophy is the very antithesis of ours. When recounting Amalek’s attack on the Jewish people, the pasuk says, “Asher karcha baderech—they happened upon you.” Amalek believes in mikreh, in chance, randomness, and happenstance. They see nothing as chashuv, nothing as significant, meaningful, or worthy of awe. As a result, Amalek’s attitude is to denigrate, knock down, destroy, and to display cynicism and sarcasm. Amalek mocks and makes fun; they look at something or someone that others are in awe of and seek to demolish, trample, and vilify it.
We, the Jewish people, are charged to live life with the opposite attitude and approach. Our mission is to live life with awe, to see ourselves as a small part of something much greater. Our charge is to see and create meaning and purpose in life, to build up, lift, and admire. To revere and venerate that which is worthy and important in the world.
Rav Hutner describes that the battle between the attitude of Amalek and the attitude of the Torah is the battle between what he calls the koach hachillul and the koach hahillul. The koach hachillul is the power of skepticism, the influence of that little voice inside each of us that, like Amalek, tries to get us to be cynical, to mock and belittle, rather than respect and bring us to awe. The koach hahillul is the capacity to praise, honor, identify, and admire the beauty and the greatness which is sometimes beneath the surface.
Preparing for the Days of Awe includes working to defeat the Amalek inside of us. It demands that we weaken and eliminate the koach hachillul, our tendency towards cynicism and skepticism, and strengthen and build up our capacity for koach hahillul: to see all the impressive, remarkable, and praiseworthy characteristics in the people, places, and things all around us.
Awe is not only the result of being in the presence of something worthy of awe. Awe results from an openness, willingness, and interest to see greatness and be moved by it. My brother Judah pointed out that when Yaakov Avinu first encounters Har HaMoriah, he is unmoved and in fact goes to sleep. Only after his dream and epiphany does he awaken with a sense of “Mah norah HaMakom hazeh—How awesome is this place.” Even a great person like Yaakov could encounter the holiest place in the world and at first find no meaning in it. Only with new insight and a changed attitude does he see beyond the ordinary stones and identify the place for what it truly was: norah, awesome.
To preserve and expand our capacity for awe, we should make an effort to have three awe-inspiring experiences per week. This Tishrei, look at something, study something, contemplate something, admire someone, experience something that makes you feel: “Wow, that is awesome! That is incredible. And that is humbling!”
Albert Einstein once said, “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.” In the Days of Awe, let’s choose to see everything in our lives as a miracle—and be filled with awe as a result. n
Rabbi Efrem Goldberg is the Senior Rabbi of the Boca Raton Synagogue (BRS), a rapidly-growing congregation of over 850 families and over 1000 children in Boca Raton, Florida.
