Why I Will Not Watch for The Solar Eclipse

Hype is building around the solar eclipse that will be visible in the
United States on April 8, especially for those who live along the “path
of totality.” Many people intend to make a pilgrimage to take the
“total” look, and some ceremonies planned have all the earmarks of
religious observances.

The media are warning people to leave photographing the eclipse to
professionals with special equipment that protects both the human eye
and camera lenses. Many official alerts have been issued against using
cameras or cell phone cameras, which can literally burn out. 

As for me, I have no intention of eclipse-chasing.

Photo credit: Wooter van Reeten CC BY-SA 3.0 license

My decision this year, as in years past, is not based solely on the
warnings of possible eye damage if one looks in the direction of an
eclipse, even with special glasses that might somehow fail. 

One can certainly make a case from Jewish Law (halachah) that one
should not look in the direction of a solar eclipse because of the real
danger of risking one’s vision. After all, the Hebrew Sages interpreted
the biblical verse, “Guard yourself, and guard your soul diligently”
(Deut. 4:9) as prohibiting anything that might pose a risk to physical
health and well-being.

True, the Prophet Isaiah urges us to look to the heavens in order to
appreciate our Creator: “Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who has
created these…[and] calls them by name.”(40:26) But sometimes the most
profound message of religion is not to look.

Among synagogue rituals, a noteworthy mandate to refrain from looking
occurs during the Priestly Blessing, when descendants of the cohanim or
priests, garbed in their talitot (prayer shawls) bestow the ancient
benediction (Numbers 6:24-6, “The Lord bless you and keep you,” etc.)
with chant and choreography. This ceremony is known in Yiddish as
“duchening,” from the Aramaic for the “platform” upon which the cohanim
perform the blessing.  There are strong traditions that one should not
gaze upon them, but should listen intently to every word that they
intone.

A Talmudic dictum suggested that those who gazed at the cohanim
during their blessing in the Temple of old would suffer diminished
eyesight, perhaps because the Sacred Name of God, which requires the
utmost attention, was uttered. (Chagiga 16a) Some Sages taught that one
should not look because the Shechinah, the brilliant and loving Divine
Presence, shines forth from the “lattices” (Song of Songs 2:9) of the
special priestly finger formations. 

Later sages emphasized that one should not look because the spectacle
would distract the onlooker from proper concentration on the blessing.
That is why it is also customary for many Jews to cover their eyes when
they are reciting the Shema (Deut. 6:4, etc.), the declaration of Divine
unity and uniqueness and sovereignty in our lives through acceptance of
the “yoke” of the mitzvot or commandments.

My own longstanding no-look approach to solar eclipses derives from
my stance that we need to regard these events as incentives to reaffirm
the Creator and the importance of privacy to the dignity of humanity’s
Divine image. (Gen. 1:26)

Adoring the creation more than the Creator is not a new problem. I am
not the first to associate it with a solar eclipse. The Hebrew Sages of
the Midrash speculated that God created eclipses as a seeming
one-upsmanship between sun and moon so that humanity might be
discouraged from deifying sun or moon or both. But still, these rabbis
observed, people worshipped the sun and moon instead of God, burning
incense to created objects instead of to the Creator. 

Some sages went so far as to conclude, on the basic of Scriptural
verses, that the sun and the moon reluctantly go forth on their
respective daily orbits, prodded by God, because they are embarrassed
that people might worship them!

Shorts Relax: 

One best appreciates the earthly and heavenly spheres not by rushing
to exalt the movement and concealment of heavenly bodies, but by
resisting the impulse to venerate even the most magnificent and
awe-inspiring natural phenomena and processes.

Only the Creator is worthy of our veneration and offerings as the One
Who, in the words of the daily Hebrew prayer, “arranges the stars in
their courses in the sky according to Thy will,” Whose miracles “are
every day with us,” in the consistent laws of nature upon which we can
rely and in which we continually find wonder. 

Eclipses can inspire us to more fully appreciate the daily miracles
that surround us in the normal processes of heaven—and earth. A good
photograph of an eclipse can accomplish this, especially if we refrain
from congregating along the “path of totality” and make our way instead
to a regular worship service, choosing to affirm the path of Divine
guidance. In Hebrew, Divine commandments are the basis of halachah, the
“path” of religious law. Along earth’s paths, conservation of natural
resources is a religious duty (Gen. 2:15) that must not become a
religion of earth-worship, displacing the sacred bond between humanity
and the Creator and thus the unique dignity and preciousness bestowed
upon humanity by God.

A little boy cried to his grandfather, who was a Hasidic rebbe, that
he was playing hide and seek with other children who walked away and did
not look for him. The rebbe’s empathy for the boy extended to God, Who
hides in order to be sought out by people who choose not seek the
Divine. Rabbi Samuel Dresner observed in the Prologue to Prayer, Humility and Compassion that
“just as the radiance of the sun, reaching everywhere, can be closed
off by the palm of a hand before the face, so can the glory of God be
shut out by the wall of the will before the soul.” 

With regard to God and human beings, certain forms of not-looking
help us to respect and love other people as God lovingly bestows dignity
and infinite worth on humanity. The Hebrew Sages taught that the
Gentile prophet Balaam admired that the tents of Israel were set up so
that no dwelling impinged upon the privacy and the dignity of
neighboring tents. Not-looking is essential to privacy, decency and
morality. If anything, suggests the Talmud, an eclipse should prod us to
look inward, to what within ourselves and society bolsters darkness
when there is normally light. (Sukkah 29a)

In writing about “Privacy in Jewish Law and Theology,” Rabbi Norman
Lamm made the striking observation that we must also respect God’s
privacy: “The unknowable Essence or Absoluteness is the inner boundary
of God’s privacy.” (Faith and Doubt, p. 302) Human beings, made
in the Divine image, must appreciate the importance of privacy and
restraint. Even the sun and the moon, as praised in the midrash cited
above, would rather not be gawked at by human beings who violate, as it
were, their celestial privacy by worshiping them. 

 God’s hiding is an invitation to seek out, with humility and
restraint, the One Who “sees but is not seen,” to cite the Talmud
(Chagiga 5b). Could it be that gawking at peek-a-boo events in nature,
which are dangerous to the naked eye, anyway, will distract us from
looking for the One Who seeks to be closer to us, and from the
importance of the choice of not-looking, which is increasingly important
in an age when privacy and restraint are constantly challenged?

By Rabbi Elliot B. Gertel