If you are reading this it means you are on a computer, not only that it means you are on the internet. so the chances are you heard the news, no i'm not talking about the credit crunch or even the military coup in Honduras, the biggest news probably of the decade so far, judging on how the press has reacted was the death of the King of Pop, a Mr. Michael Jackson.
Facebook exploded, Wikipedia slowed down, websites simply broke. People cried tears of sorrow, Radio stations played his songs repeatedly, the only thing on peoples lips was the passing of MJ.
Now, i loved him when i was younger (using the word love freely here) i remember rushing out to buy his album HIStory and repeatedly listening to all his other albums. I drank any information on his i could and i was so eager to see him live in concert.
However when the news filtered through, initially on TMZ, and then the major news sites my response was a mere "oh" i wasn't taken aback, i wasn't in shock, and i most certainly believed it. many people twittered, (which also crashed) and changed their facebook statuses (statusii?) expressing their disbelief that he could die. I had no such quandry, over the past few years i got over my MJmania, (i didn't even try to book tickets for his London shows) and just saw him as a person, albeit a very talented person. And just to let you into a little secret, people die, no matter how many albums sold, or how many moonwalks walked.
But its not only the fact he was a person, its just he was so frail, he was not the superman people made him out to be, he was clearly not the most secure of people, with his plastic surgery and his skin bleaching, not to forget the private rides on his train in his private fairground. Of course one must not forget he led a clearly unique life, robbed of his childhood and thrust into the spotlight of superstardom, i cannot claim to know what it must be like, not really having any privacy and having everystep i take being reported in the media, but at the end of his life, he really showed us all a darker, frailer side of him, of what all of us could be like if we weren't in control.
On the flipside there has been one occassion on someones passing when i wouldn't and couldn't believe it, earlier this year a giant passed away, a torah giant. On one hand the secular world looked at Michael Jackson as their pinnacle, at the zenith of all that could be achieved, he was talented rich and famous, everything everyone in the world seeks and craves. However in the Jewish world our gedolim are at the top of the heirarchy, they are the "people" we are in awe of, those we seek to emulate. I wrote people in inverted commas because if anyone has spent any time around them, they were not people like you or me, rather they were giants amongst us.
When i got the phonecall that morning telling me of this certain Gadols passing i brushed it off, i didn't pay it much attention, because he couldnt die, dying is too human, and it wasn't a person we were talking about it was a great. Greats dont die. It took it a while for it to sink in and when it did the world changed. In my eyes the world got a little darker. You see our Torah Giants transcend the physical, they see the body as a vessel to something more important, the Godly spark in all of us, our roots, our souls. We can live our life focusing on the body which is finite, or we can focus on and uncover our eternal side, our neshama. The Gedolim i have met around the world have an aura, not because we place one on them but because they actually have one, their soul shines through. I will never forget meeting one Gadol HaDor in Bnei Brak and being lost in his eyes, they gateway to his eternal soul, the connection to the infinite. When these people die, we can't believe it because the spiritual doesnt end, its meant to live forever and we all know that.
When people spend their lives living in the physical, no matter how good they are, be it at singing, dancing, basketball etc. they remain physical, they are breakable, they are limited. They die quite easily.
In the Torah world children dont trade football stickers or baseball cards, our children don't grow up wanting to be Ronaldo or A-Rod. Our childrens superheros are the great Rabbis of our religion, the ones who defy all odds, and make a kinyan in the limitless, acquire Torah. We revere those who were in control their whole life, of body and soul, they controlled the body to shackle it, to restrain its animalistic desires. They sought to let their soul shine through, because given free reign the soul can take us to greater levels that any of us can imagine. The soul can take us, if we let it, to those lofty reaches where we can live forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment