{"id":96714,"date":"2026-10-23T16:33:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T21:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/?p=96714"},"modified":"2026-10-23T16:33:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T21:33:20","slug":"person-in-the-parsha-vayera-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/person-in-the-parsha-vayera-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Person in the Parsha: Vayera"},"content":{"rendered":"

By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREFLECTING ON THE WONDERS OF NATURE<\/strong>\u201d <\/p>\n

I\u2019m a Brooklyn boy, born and bred. I had few, if any, opportunities to experience the wonders of nature. I grew up in a totally urban environment, except for an occasional visit to the Prospect Park Zoo and the adjacent lake and skimpy woods.<\/p>\n

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Fast forward to my post high-school years, during which I was exposed to the tutelage of several teachers who had studied in the prominent pre-Holocaust Lithuanian yeshivas.<\/p>\n

One might say that I was more than exposed. Better said, I was indoctrinated into their teaching methodologies, which included intensive Talmud study along with heavy emphasis upon classic early medieval theological works. Those works included the opening chapters of Mishneh Torah<\/em>by Rambam (Maimonides 1138-1204) and Chovot HaLevavot<\/em> by Rabbenu Bahya ibn Paquda (1050-1120).<\/p>\n

Viewed chronologically, it was Rabbenu Bahya who first shocked me into the recognition that the preferred manner with which to undertake a relationship with the Ribbono shel Olam<\/em>, the \u201cMaster of the Universe,\u201d was to contemplate the wonders of nature.<\/p>\n

In the second section of his Chovot HaLevavot <\/em>(Duties of the Heart<\/em>), he advocates for a careful study of the world around us. He entitles this section Shaar HaBechinah<\/em>, the \u201cGate of Analysis.\u201d Through careful study of nature\u2014mountains, forests, climate, animal behavior, and the remarkable workings of the human body\u2014one can come to appreciate the Almighty and develop a relationship with Him.<\/p>\n

Even more powerful than Rabbenu Bahya were the words of Rambam:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis revered and mighty God\u2014it is a mitzvah<\/em> to love and stand in awe of Him, as it written, \u2018And thou shall love the Lord thy God\u2019 (Deuteronomy 6:4), and \u2018of the Lord thy God thou shall stand in awe\u2019 (ibid. verse 13).<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is the path to His love and awe? The moment when a person beholds His actions and His wondrous great creations and discovers in them His immeasurable and endless wisdom, he will immediately love, and praise, and glorify, and profoundly desire to know His great name! As David said: \u2018My soul thirsts for God, the living God!\u2019 (Psalms 42:3).<\/p>\n

\u201cAs he further meditates upon these very matters, he reflexively falls backwards with fear and trembling and realizes that he is but a tiny creature, lowly and dim, who stands with a trivial and puny intelligence before Perfect Intelligence. As David said: \u2018When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers\u2026what is man that You are mindful of him?\u2019  As our Sages have taught us, \u2018Only thus can you truly recognize He who spoke and created a world!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

I must confess that, as a youth deprived of the opportunity to encounter raw nature, I was initially overwhelmed by these teachings. My earliest memories of communion with the divine were the times when my cousin and I observed our great-grandmother, Yitta Leah Kriegel, may she rest in peace, bake the challah for Shabbos every Friday morning. As she kneaded the dough, and more fervently as she turned on the oven, she would gaze heaven-ward and speak to the bashefer<\/em>, the Creator, and plead with Him to assure that the kinderlach<\/em>, her great-grandchildren, would have delicious challah for Shabbos!<\/p>\n

That person-to-person connection with the Ribbono Shel Olam<\/em> was reinforced in the various synagogues prevalent in our neighborhood. Men and women who had gone through displacement from the alter heim<\/em>, their \u201cold homes\u201d in pre-holocaust Europe, knew how to \u201clove God and stand in awe of Him.\u201d They knew how to pray to Him as they wept and sobbed, and even more so as they sang and danced. Ah, did they know how to sing!<\/p>\n

I grew up with faith in the One Above that arose from watching humans who lived their faith. It was difficult for me to attempt to find faith by contemplating nature and its wonders. This difficulty troubled me for many years.<\/p>\n

Much later in life, I came across a passage in the writings of Rav Shlomo Aviner, a contemporary Religious Zionist rabbi of great renown, may he be well. It is contained in his collection of sermons on the weekly Torah portions entitled Tal Chermon<\/em>. In his sermon on this week\u2019s Parashat<\/em> Vayera <\/em>(Genesis 18:1-22:24), he writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cAbraham was the \u201cknower-believer-lover\u201d of the Lord, par excellence! It is by virtue of this knowledge-faith-love that he came to love other people, all creatures, and the beauty of nature itself. [It is o]ut of his ability to reveal the Light of the Almighty that he came to appreciate all of creation at its many levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

I remember first coming across this passage and exclaiming to myself, \u201cWow! He is reversing the teachings of his medieval predecessors! It is not from nature that we learn to appreciate the Almighty, but it is from our connection to the Almighty that we come to appreciate nature!\u201d<\/p>\n

Rav Aviner bolsters his contention with an observation garnered from his experience with modern man. He writes, \u201cThere are those who think that reflection upon the wonders of nature can bring one to faith in the Creator. They therefore find great value in physics and biology and the like and thereby fail to discern that contemplation of nature without a basis in religious faith swiftly leads to paganism, heresy, and falsely deifying nature itself, a kind of pantheism\u2026 At best it leads to aesthetic pleasures, to the exclusion of true spirituality.\u201d<\/p>\n

I recommend that you, the reader, consult the full passage in Rav Aviner\u2019s work. I didn\u2019t write this column to disabuse you of the great wisdom of Rabbenu Bahya and Maimonides. I merely suggest that by writing so long ago, they were not yet aware of the abuse of nature-worship which typify our modern and postmodern world, the world in which we now live, and the world which Rav Aviner knows so well.<\/p>\n

Food for thought, for sure. I look forward, dear reader, to your response.<\/p>\n

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