It’s A Small World After All:
Cosmology of Ancient Peru, the Torah and Today
A sermon on facing fear and the comfort of knowing we are all facing fear … together .
Ozi (breathe) v’zimrat yah (breathe) ve-yehi (breathe) yeshuah (2x)
God is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.
-Psalm 118:14
High atop the Peruvian Andes … I thought I would never see any of you EVER again. I was part of a hiking group through National Geographics G-Adventures, exploring the striking Vinicunca, also known as Rainbow Mountain, for its naturally colored stripes of red, yellow, pink and other hues -- kind of like Joseph’s Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.
There were hikers less impacted by the 17,000 feet elevation than me. Even with my aggressively chewing coco leaves and administered spritzes of something called Flora, I just could not catch my breath. I sounded like Darth Vader, (do Vader breathing) right before he says to Luke: “No, I am your Father.” (That was in memory of beloved Rabbi David Kaplan, z”l).
2
And so, alone to tackle the hike up and down the mountain, I sang unto God, declaring Him my strength, song and salvation.
Actually, I did not have the breath to sing the song, so I said it in my head until I safely arrived back at the bus.
And I thought this would be the religious experience I would share with you about my 22-day adventure in Peru with my wife, Elissa. For four months now, I have been trying to mine religious epiphanies from this trip – the longest I have ever taken without my children. It was my wife’s childhood dream to visit Peru. We tried to go for our 25th anniversary, but alas Elissa’s mother and then my dad died six weeks apart, so temporarily we had to give up on that dream. Then we tried again for our 30th anniversary, but my career trajectory unexpectedly shifted, fortunately resulting in me becoming your rabbi. And as we entered our 31st year of marriage, my wife said, “well, I’m going, and you can do as you please.” Thank God the TBE Board subscribe to that age-old maxim: “happy wife, happy life,” and off we went, as a couple.
3
In return for the Board’s kindness, and through extension, yours as a congregation, I felt like I owed you some amazing religious take-away from this adventure of a lifetime. From the Islas Ballestas – Peru’s version of the Galapagos, known for its penguins, sea lions and rich array of birds, to the mysterious extra-terrestrial Nasca Lines of the Peruvian desert, from the tropical Amazon rainforest to the awe-inspiring Machu Picchu sanctuary of the Inca Empire, there was clearly enough inspiration to last a lifetime.
But what was the takeaway for you – especially for this evening as we open the Book of Life, hoping and praying that we might be inscribed for another year? If you bear with me, I believe that question itself will provide us with an answer.
The cosmology of ancient Peru understands the world being divided into three distinct planes of existence: upper, middle (that would be this world), and lower. These worlds are represented by the condor above, the puma on our plane, and the serpent in the lower world, or afterlife. And of course, in pre-Catholic Peru, there were deities associated with each realm.
4
Inti, the sun god, was considered the direct ancestor of the Inca rulers and held a central role in state religion. Pachamama, the earth goddess, embodied fertility and the fruitfulness of the earth. And Viracocha, although not a deity specific to the underworld, was considered a creator deity, depicted as an old man and the master of change, though less involved in daily life.
For me, all this rich pre-Catholic religion had its most profound expression in Machu Pichu, located in the province of Cusco, high atop the Andes. Hiram Bingham, the Yale-based American explorer who rediscovered the citadel of Machu Pichu, got it right when he wrote back in 1911: “For the variety of its charms and the power of its spell, I do not know another place in the world that compares to it.”
I was NOT the only Jewish person attracted to this place of pilgrimage and self-discovery. Cusco, the closest gateway to Mach Pichu, is a well-known stopping place on what Israeli young adults, after their four years of mandatory army service, call “ha tiyul ha-gadol,” “the GREAT fieldtrip.”
At the third of our four Shabbatot in Peru, I found myself in Cusco. Elissa was on a several-day trek hiking in the Andes so she wasn’t with me.
5
Specifically, I found myself at the Chabad of Cusco, part of a Shabbat dinner for 200. 196 of the 200 guests were young Israeli men and women in their early 20’s. Now up until this moment, I was speaking fluent Spanish. But I learned something about my brain that night. It seems I have two sections of my brain – English and foreign languages. When I tried to get Hebrew out of the same part of my brain which had been providing me Spanish, I got stuck. Nothing would come out. I was verbally constipated. The hosting rabbi, seeing my dilemma, placed me with the three other Americans, a lovely young couple and a singleton all from Westchester, New York. Saved.
My point is that Machu Picchu was recognized for its spiritual powers, even for people from the Holy Land. When, amid persistent rain, Elissa and I made it to the highest point of this UNESCO-declared Center of Cultural and Natural Heritage of Humanity, we found an old, Incan-built wall, about 600 years old. And like that older, 3000-year-old Western Wall in Jerusalem, people used the crevices between the stones to hold special blessings and requests. But unlike the Kotel, rather than written notes, pilgrims to this site took three coco leaves, dedicated them in four directions to Pachamama, and then placed them inside the wall.
6
Based on your potential generous financial response following our synagogue president’s Kol Nidrei Appeal, we will see if my dedicatory coco leaves did their job.
Peru, like my native California, is subjected to earthquakes. They may be on different tectonic plate boundaries, but the devastation wrought by these earthquakes can be massive – and you never know exactly when and where they will hit. Peru is also vulnerable to floods and droughts, and from colonizing Incas to marauding Spanish conquistadores, manmade disasters could be just as horrible as natural disasters. Understanding these vulnerabilities helped me understand and appreciate Peruvian native religion, from occasional human sacrifice to structures built to honor the sun god, and appeals to Pachamama.
From the second day of Passover through Shavuot, in biblical Israel, a daily omer of grain was brought to the Temple as a sacrifice. Later, this omer period was known as a sad time to remember the deaths of Rabbi Akiba’s students during the Roman occupation of Judea. But in the early biblical period, something else was threatening. It was the weather.
7
During this early spring period, which corresponds to the time between Passover and Shavuot, Israel was, and still is, subject to dry, hot, winds called Hamsim, where our ancestors could easily lose their entire crops, leading to hunger and financial ruin. In fact, you can hear in the word, Hamsim, the Hebrew word for 50, chamishim, the number of days between Passover and Shavuot.
The daily offering of an omer of grain, as described in the Torah, is not that different than sticking coco leaves in the temple walls of Machu Picchu, or making heartfelt offerings to Pachamama, the pre-Incan goddess of earth and fertility.
After Yom Kippur, we almost immediately throw ourselves into the very physical holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, a Jewish Thanksgiving Festival --- in fact, I’m convinced that the Torah-inspired Pilgrams were attempting a Sukkot Festival in their first year at Plymouth Plantation, but it took them an extra month to pull off a harvest – which is why Thanksgiving is a full month after Sukkot.
8
Have you ever wondered why we take the arbah minim, the four species of the lulav, hadas, aravah, and etrog, and wave them in the four cardinal directions, and then up and down, or why we use them to circle the bimah in seven hakafot? We tell our kids in the Sunday School that it is to worship God, who we find everywhere. While that is not incorrect, it does miss the earlier, pre-rabbinic, agricultural explanation. To get a good harvest in the spring, you needed a good rainy season between the end of Sukkot and the beginning of Passover.
While the ancient Egyptian civilization could be assured of a reliable water source with the spring-time flooding of the Nile River, and the ancient Mesopotamian civilization could be assured of a reliable water source with the fall flooding of the Euphrates and Tigres Rivers, ancient Israelite civilization could only rely on the heavens for their water – and they could not be counted upon. The lulav and etrog consist of water-based vegetation, and the circles of the hakafot were a rain dance. Even the often-repeated phase during the circling of hoshiah na – save us now, speaks of the desperate situation our ancient agricultural ancestors found themselves in at this time of year.
9
Which brings us to you and me. We are about to start the year 5786, and we have no idea what will happen. The Una Tana Tokef prayer our Cantor will sing tomorrow during Musaph, with its haunting questions – “who will live and who die, who by fire and who by water,” perfectly sums up our perilous situation. For all the modern notions we may profess, still, more Jews come to synagogue at Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, than at any other time of the year.
True, some come for the music and others for the nostalgia. Some come to be with their family and others to reunite with old friends. But we all also know that this holy day is called Yom Ha Din, the Day of Judgement, and that vulnerability cannot be lost on us. There is no control over things like random car accidents, slipping in the bathtub, randomly-applied tariffs, downsizing of a company, or any of the other tumultuous uncertainties of life.
We just have no idea what the future holds. And that lack of control is what I sensed driving the native religions of Peru. Earlier in the sermon, I asked you a question: how could my experiences in Peru provide a spiritual message for us in shul this evening?
10
I experienced the majesty of the Andean Mountains, the vast expanse of the desert, and the brilliant flora and fauna of the Amazonian rain forest. I was struck with both awe, and an awareness of how many of the fears and vulnerabilities expressed in Peruvian religion found expression in our own biblical religion. And, looking around the synagogue this evening, I am perfectly aware that you and I share some of those same fears and vulnerabilities today.
And I find comfort in that. We are not alone. We have God. We have each other. And we are part of a larger humanity which throughout the millennia also shared these same fears and vulnerabilities. How we cope with these existential challenges are of course different – ancient Peru to the ancient biblical religion of Israel, to us sitting in this sanctuary this evening. Our music, liturgy, images or lack of images, are of course different. But perhaps what makes a place like Machu Picchu so universally holy, is that we can find kedusha, or holiness – and perhaps an answer to our fears and insecurities everywhere.
11
Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, Adonai tsevaot mi kol ha-aretz k’vodo.
Holy, holy, holy, the Lord of Hosts fills the entire world with his Glory.
Gemar chatima tovah – May you all be inscribed in the Book of Life for a healthy and happy New Year.
Ozi -- v’zimrat yah -- ve-yehi --- yeshuah (2x)