two pebbles

Rosh haShan­nah ⁵⁷⁵⁶⁄₁₉₉₅

Ben walked home from school, his back­pack loaded with books, a bit of left­over lunch in his bag, and a cou­ple of peb­bles in his pock­ets. A jackrab­bit leaped out of the chap­ar­ral and across his path. For a fleet­ing moment he thought of try­ing to throw one of the peb­bles at it, but no. They were spe­cial peb­bles, he’d kept them for years. Every night when he changed into his paja­mas he first put the two peb­bles on his night­stand. And when he got dressed in the morn­ing, he put them back into his pock­ets again. They were almost indis­tin­guish­able, the same shape, size, col­or, and weight, and yet, each day, Ben put the same one into the appro­pri­ate pock­et. He could tell, like the par­ents of iden­ti­cal twins, some­thing about the tex­ture, or the faintest streak of col­or that only he had noticed helped him dis­tin­guish which went where.

As he walked to his bus stop each morn­ing, one day one peb­ble felt a bit heav­ier than the oth­er. He could almost tell what kind of a day he’d have based on which pock­et felt lighter. The day may be over­cast and gloomy, yet Ben felt a glow with­in. He could tell by the peb­ble in the pock­et. Now and then through­out the day, Ben would pause, think about his peb­bles, and move on with his activ­i­ty, he’d block on the foot­ball line­up with Steve and Den­nis the tack­les, count the num­ber of mea­sures rest before his next entrance in the band along with the oth­er clar­inet play­ers, read the next para­graph in the math or sci­ence textbook….

From where did he get these pebbles?

Years ear­li­er he found them. They seemed pret­ty plain at the time, but he’d just fin­ished read­ing about Alice and Gul­liv­er and that year at Yom Kip­pur his rab­bi (of course) had told him about a woman in San­ta Bar­bara, she (the rab­bi) even gave away some peb­bles. They shared no phys­i­cal resem­blance, but the peb­bles remind­ed him of the Yin/Yang sym­bol that Liz (who sat next to him in math) had doo­dled on her note­book. She had said some­thing about them being the same, yet opposite.

That scorch­ing after­noon on his walk home he recalled once again what had hap­pened to Alice when she went into the gar­den. She fell into a deep hole while chas­ing after a white rab­bit who was very late… for ser­vices (I think). There at the bot­tom of the rab­bit hole she found two bot­tles each labeled “Drink me.” We all remem­ber what hap­pened to Alice:

“Go ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall.”

Ben had recent­ly become bar Mitz­vah and he could clear­ly iden­ti­fy with some­times being gar­gan­tu­an. So big that he could­n’t move. And almost every time he turned around he need­ed new clothes. Or some­times oth­ers treat­ed him as the adult he tru­ly felt he was becom­ing, being giv­en and accept­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for a whole vari­ety of tasks, and then the next minute it was as though he’d drunk from Alice’s oth­er bot­tle and every­one ignored him as though he was­n’t even there. Or treat­ed him like a kid, as though every­one could­n’t already see that the fuzz on his upper lip was turn­ing into a mustache!

Ben remem­bered the pow­er and strength of Gul­liv­er when he found him­self ship­wrecked on Lil­liput. How Gul­liv­er had pre­vent­ed war and done all those won­der­ful things. He also recalled how Gul­liv­er had been to anoth­er land called Brob­d­ing­nag, where the peo­ple were to him as he had been to the Lil­liputians. There he felt as though a toy to these tremen­dous peo­ple. It all remind­ed Ben of what that weird bird the Chirk­endoose (part chick­en turkey duck and goose) had said so many years ago when he was a child:

It depends on how you look at things,

It depends on how you look at things,

Is the baby chim­panzee any pret­ti­er than me?

It all depends upon,

Begins and ends upon,

It all depends on how you look at things.

Ben reached into his pock­ets and took out the peb­bles, one in each hand, and exam­ined them once again. Which was he, how was he to know?

Rab­bi Janet told them that year about Lau­rie Gross who lived near San­ta Bar­bara and made fab­u­lous woven pic­tures often using groups of tal­li­tot. One year, Lau­rie remem­bered a sto­ry about an ancient rab­bi and decid­ed to write two phras­es one on each of two pieces of fab­ric that she kept in her pock­ets. Each piece of fab­ric had a dif­fer­ent verse from clas­sic Jew­ish literature:

One state­ment was based on the idea that God had made only one indi­vid­ual at the begin­ning of cre­ation so that if a per­son could save the life of even one oth­er indi­vid­ual, it was as though he or she had saved an entire world. The ancient rab­bis also taught from this that since we all have the same ances­tor at the begin­ning of time, no one can say “My par­ents are bet­ter than yours” And they also said that only one indi­vid­ual was cre­at­ed at the begin­ning of all time in order to pro­claim the great­ness of God. We’ve all seen coins all stamped from the same die, the rab­bis said; they all look iden­ti­cal. But even though God has stamped us all from the same mold as the orig­i­nal human being, each and every one of us is unique. And because of this each of us must say (and Lau­ra Gross wrote on her fab­ric): “For me, the world was cre­at­ed.” Such glo­ry we each car­ry with­in us! (Mish­nah San­hedrin IV, 5)

Yet, on the oth­er hand, or… in the oth­er pock­et, she car­ried a dif­fer­ent phrase, this one from the Bible, from the Book of Job (42:6b) expressed with absolute and utter, almost depress­ing, mod­esty: “I am dust and ashes.”

Both this and that were the words of the ever-liv­ing God, Ben under­stood! How could he know which was which at any giv­en moment!?!

As he walked along Ben saw some torn papers lying in the dust and picked them up. He could throw them away in the trash at home. A group of mid­dle-school kids left the side­walk and ran across some­one’s yard, tram­pling some flower beds in their path. A car slowed into a four-stop inter­sec­tion and cruised on through. When he final­ly got close to his house he saw his lit­tle sis­ter out­side play­ing with his ball. She had lots of balls of her own, but she always played with his. It both­ered him, so as he walked by he gave the ball a kick that caused it to bounce against the wall and then back to him so that he caught it and he took it into the house with him. Whose ball was it anyway?

“Ben­ny… why did you do that?!” She cried after him.

He felt pret­ty big and strong, as he walked into the house, till he caught his moth­er’s eye. He could tell that she had seen what hap­pened with the ball. Ben put the ball down and slunk away to his room to do his home­work with­out get­ting a snack. He did­n’t feel much like sit­ting in the kitchen just then. He reached into his pock­ets, pulled out the peb­bles, and stud­ied them again.

Ben stud­ied hard for the exam. He spent extra time in the library fol­low­ing up on leads for ques­tions he had. Often, when he walked into that col­lec­tion of books he felt over­whelmed, some of the books were even phys­i­cal­ly out of reach, and oth­ers, when he opened them, were writ­ten in Eng­lish, but in sen­tences he could­n’t pen­e­trate. So many peo­ple know so much that’s accu­mu­lat­ed in this room! How could he ever get to know even a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of it? Ben reached into his pock­ets, pulled out the peb­bles, exam­ined them, then returned them to their places. He was an insignif­i­cant kid try­ing to know the world; he had the abil­i­ty to under­stand. He focused on the prob­lem he had to solve and found that as he explored more his knowl­edge rip­pled out into new areas. Ben became aware of new thoughts that led in dif­fer­ent direc­tions through var­i­ous aisles of the library.

Ben learned. He enjoyed the process and he shared his new knowl­edge with his par­ents. He even explained the sub­ject to his sis­ter. A num­ber of details along the fringes of the mat­ter still elud­ed his com­pre­hen­sion but he felt a thrill of joy know­ing that he could make the issue mean­ing­ful to others.

The day of the exam Ben dressed, put the peb­bles in his pock­ets, swung his back­pack over his shoul­der, picked up his clar­inet, and went off to school much the same as any oth­er day. His chem­istry class did­n’t hap­pen till late in the day. In math, they start­ed a new unit and the dust peb­ble grew heavy as he strug­gled, try­ing to under­stand the strange con­cept of cosine. Their his­to­ry teacher had been dis­cussing one of Ben’s favorite sub­jects, about which he’d read a num­ber of his­tor­i­cal nov­els and he could feel the oth­er peb­ble grow light and almost glow as the char­ac­ters he’d come to know seemed to come alive in their discussion.

Final­ly, the hour arrived. Ben sat with his pen­cil ready. They had to piece togeth­er var­i­ous atoms to cre­ate mol­e­cules that made sense. Like one tremen­dous puz­zle, they had the build­ing blocks and their task was to make sense of it all. Ben pulled the peb­bles out of his pock­et and placed them on his desk for a moment. He looked at them care­ful­ly. He remem­bered how he felt when he first went to the library. He then recalled how he had felt when he explained the mate­r­i­al to his fam­i­ly. He put the peb­bles away and thought­ful­ly shift­ed the pieces around till their mean­ing seemed clear. He fin­ished. The bell rang. Ben start­ed for home.

Den­nis, the tack­le, approached him. Den­nis was big. Big­ger even than Man­ny Paster­nack, and not near­ly as nice. In fact, Den­nis was mean. Den­nis had his fists clenched in front of him almost as though he was ready to hit Ben.

“Hey, smar­ty. I’ve got a real puz­zle for you. If you get it right, I won’t hit you, you lit­tle speck of dust. I caught my sis­ter’s para­keet this after­noon. What do you think, is it alive or dead?”

“Great. Some puz­zle. All I have to do is say it’s alive and he’ll crush it in his hand, then bash me. And if it’s not dead yet and I say that it is he’ll let it loose and his sis­ter’ll lose her bird, and I’ll still get hit.”

Ben paused, put his hands into his pock­ets to think, and pulled them out with the peb­bles, one in each hand. The two of them stood fac­ing each oth­er, fists clenched, look­ing almost as though ready to fight.

Ben knew that he could­n’t hurt Den­nis, not even with the peb­bles in his hands. That was out of the ques­tion and not a solu­tion to the puz­zle in any case. He held his hands out, fists clenched, but with the fin­gers up. He looked from hand to hand as though study­ing them. Then sud­den­ly he real­ized, he had the answer in his hands. He was­n’t dirt, nor was Den­nis. For him and also for Den­nis, the world had been cre­at­ed. And he had to express this to Den­nis in some way.

Putting the peb­bles back into his pock­ets Ben looked straight into Den­nis’s eyes and said:

“Den­nis, I’ll tell you whether the bird is dead or not. The answer is in your hands.”