Sunday, September 29, 2013

Breishit - Big Thoughts On The Moon

I thought of something during the leining of Breishit.  It says that there were two big luminaries. Then it says there was a big one and a small one. Rashi famously says that the moon couldn't handle sharing the crown with the sun, saying, two kings can't share a crown.  So G-d made the moon smaller. It dawned on me that there's a straightforward explanation that avoids the question of why it says two were big and then one was big and one was small. Maybe they were both big but one was bigger than the other.  Rashi is, perhaps, hinting to a certain kind of psychology.  The moon felt smaller than the sun because in size it looked smaller.  But in terms of importance they were each great.  The result of feeling small was to be small. If we could learn to realize that whatever size we appear to be we are all big in terms of our significance, we will never have to feel small.

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