Night in the Sinai: a sky brimming with stars, positively pulsing with light and energy. A spectacular sensation of vastness and interconnectedness, of being at once miniscule and at the same time part of the endless Universe.
Not far away but lifetimes before, our patriarch Abraham buried his feet in that sand and looked up at a similar sky. “Turn your gaze toward the heavens and count the stars, if you can count them! And [God] promised him: So shall your seed be (Genesis 15:5).” We are the seed of that seed; there was a star for each one of us up in that sky, shining down on him.
So too are we like the specks of dust at his feet. “I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth. Only if one can count the dust of the earth will it be possible to count your descendants (Genesis 13:16).”
God shares two visions of the Jewish people: that we, descendants of Abraham, will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and also as the dust of the earth. We human beings are grand and, at the same time, nothing. We partake of infinity but our lives are brief candles. Somehow, we bridge the gap between the two extremes.
What is it to be human? To be poised between the speck and the spectacular. We are dust that dreams of the stars.
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