My Dear Friends

There we were last month, just before a regular Shabbat Shacharit service and we had no idea that we were about to enter a minefield of synchronicity.

Now, all you psychologists calm down; I am only speaking generally about seemingly “meaningful coincidences.” But general or not, the minefield lay before us. It began when a couple of us were discussing the then upcoming “Classical Reform” service. Yes, there would be more English than we usually find in our services and yes, we would use the old (c1940’s) Union Prayer Book. We also would be singing melodies that were sung in Reform congregations years ago.

I was asked if we would sing “G is in His Holy Temple.” I replied that we would not, but that got us trying to remember the lyrics of that venerable old song (written, I believe, by a British minister at the end of the 19th century). We couldn’t remember the second phrase of the first verse but finally got it. This is the full first verse:

G is in His Holy Temple, Earthly thoughts be silent now, While with rev’rence we assemble, And before His presence bow.

The opportunity for pride in our elephant-like memory was fleeting as it was time to begin our service. About halfway through the service, though, just before the Amidah, I noticed some people in the congregation looking down at the carpet, smiling and pointing. It was a cricket. There was a cricket that had joined our service. Now, in some cultures, a cricket is good luck; however, in the middle of a Shabbat morning service, it can be a distraction. And so it was. It was so much of a distraction, that in the middle of the Amidah, as we were singing “Nikadeish et Shimcha ba’olam…” “We sanctify Your Name on earth, even as they (the angels) sanctify Your Name in the heavens,” several worshipers were looking down toward the cricket.

In light of that old song, the irony just jumped up and bit your nose! “Earthly thoughts be silent now”??? Here, we were praising G with angelic language and symbolically raising ourselves up onto our toes at the words “Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh,” and we seemed to be focusing our attention on a bug on a rug!

For some reason, at that moment (or rather, when the Amidah was over) I was reminded of a smart-aleck line by a comedian. In response to someone marveling at nature that no two snowflakes are alike, he said, “No two cockroaches are alike, either; what’s the big deal?”

In my mind, in that setting, I turned his biting humor around. Rather than his proving that the uniqueness of each snowflake is an insignificant matter, it showed me that the uniqueness of even a cockroach is Divine. Or the uniqueness of a cricket.

And if we can see divinity even in a cricket, then why can we not see it in each other? Or in ourselves? And if we do see the Divine in each other, then why don’t we act like it?

At the end of the service, as we all headed toward the Kiddush, I looked back and saw the little cricket folding up its tiny tallit and putting it in a little embroidered bag. I suppose it was going home to its family to have lunch and take a little nap.

Good Shabbes, little cricket. Thanks for the lesson in divinity and humanity.

Rabbi Michael Davis