“It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” While at first this proverb feels like something Yogi Berra may have said, it is actually credited to Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist.
By all measures, Niels Bohr had a predictable life. For starters, he was a physicist. His job was to predict how the universe would interact. He was so good at this predicting that he won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on atomic structures.
His mother was Ellen Adler, a member of a prominent Jewish banking family. Bohr did not necessarily consider himself Jewish, having been christened in the Lutheran church. His wealth and privilege afforded him an education though, which would have been a good enough indicator of his future success. Paired with his innate ability, perhaps it was predictable that he’d achieve such academic and public success.
But what made him remarkable is what happened after the predictable timeline. As the Nazis rose to power in the 1930’s, Bohr chose to use his prestige to save many Jewish lives. As you may be aware, in 1933, the Rockefeller Foundation created a fund to help support refugee academics – particularly Jewish ones - who were at greatest risk. Bohr met with the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Max Mason, during a visit to the United States and secured a plan. Bohr offered the refugees temporary jobs at his institute, providing them with financial support and arranging for them to be awarded fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation. Ultimately it was all with the goal of placing them at institutions around the world, shepherding them to safety. He saved hundreds of lives.
Predictably or not, in 1940, his own life came into danger. The Nazis invaded Denmark and Bohr got word that the Nazis considered him Jewish on account of his mother. Like many Danish Jews, he fled to Sweden by way of fishing boat and he was able to find passage to the US. Yet he refused to leave Sweden until he had had an opportunity to meet with King Gustav V, whom he helped persuade to make public Sweden’s willingness to provide a refuge to Danish Jews. Soon after, in early October 1943, the great exodus of 7,800 Jews across the Oresund Sea took place.
When Niels arrived in the US, he became part of the Manhattan Project. Yet even from there he took yet another unexpected turn. He was an early defector from using nuclear technology for weapons and directed his energy toward peaceful applications.
If Niels’ life is any indicator, it is indeed hard to make predictions, particularly about the future. His life story is an example of how one may try to predict a great many outcomes, but it is the choices we make in the face of unpredictable challenges that dictate what the future will hold. The future cannot be predicted, it can only be directed by our actions.
Judaism, ancient and modern, follows this wisdom. Time and again, our texts reject divination and magic. These fantastical shortcuts, tradition says, seek to access the Divine realm in order to understand God’s design. Any human who claims to be able to do this is nothing more than a charlatan. Even the prophets - who “saw” the future - were really just mouthpieces for God. They had no innate power. Even Joseph, the great predictor, was a dream interpreter, not some magical seer.
But there’s a wrinkle to this logic in this week’s Torah portion. In it, we receive a description of Aaron the High Priest’s uniform - an ornate and essential get-up that is as full of symbolism.
Central to the uniform is “the breastpiece of decision:” a metalpiece with 12 stones mounted in a grid. Each stone represents one of the 12 tribes. Wearing this, “Aaron shall carry the names of the sons of Israel on the breastpiece of decision over his heart, when he enters the sanctuary, for remembrance before GOD at all times.” The point is clear: Aaron, or any High Priest, is just a vessel. In doing his holy work, he should never forget the people he represents before God. The power lies with the people, not within him or in the sacred objects he handles.
But then the wrinkle: “Inside the breastpiece of decision you shall place the Urim and Thummim, so that they are over Aaron’s heart when he comes before GOD. Thus Aaron shall carry the instrument of decision for the Israelites over his heart before GOD at all times.”
Scholars and sages alike are stumped when it comes to these Urim and Thummin. On a basic level, we know that they are two stones that help the community make decisions. The physical maneuvering and how they functioned remains a mystery though. Many believe that they served as a sort of proto-Ouija board. There are theories that the stones were peered through, and something about the light’s shining off or through them held significance. However they worked, it seems safe to say that the Urim and Thummim stones were some sort of mystical tools to decode prophecy and help point the community in the right direction.
Somewhere along the way, they fell out of vogue and their function was lost to history. Maybe because our ancestors felt, much like many of us, that this feels like a whole lot of superstitious gibberish.
But let’s give them a little bit more credit. Rather than being just primitive, ancient magical divination tools, perhaps the Urim and Thummim were symbolic in the way the priest’s breastpiece was symbolic.
Perhaps more than a physical lens, the stones were a “values lens,” encouraging humans to weigh their choices before them and choose wisely. By sanctioning the handling of the Urim and Thummim stones, perhaps God is saying, “the future is literally in your hands” - weigh it, wave it, handle it carefully.
Monday night, the holiday of Purim will begin. The word Purim means “lots.” It refers to the lottery system the villain Haman used to determine the date for annihilating the Jews. The Persian Jews’ future was literally determined in a crapshoot. And for most of the Purim story, it looks like the future has been irrevocably predicted by these inanimate objects. The lots fell a certain way and the Jews’ fate was sealed.
And yet, that’s not how the story goes. Fate flips. The 14th of Adar becomes not a day of annihilation, but a day of exaltation and joy. And most notably, it does not turn because of Divine intervention - not explicitly at least. God splits no seas. No, fate turns because of the actions of the story’s humans! Mordechai overhearing the plans to kill the king. Esther, bravely deciding to disclose her identity. It is the choices we make in the face of unpredictable challenges that dictate what the future will hold. Purim teaches loudly: the future cannot be predicted, it can only be directed by our actions.
Niels Bohrs’ contemporary, Albert Einstein famously said that "God does not play dice with the universe.” He and Niels often disagreed, mainly because Einstein objected to the inherent randomness that Bohr promoted. Einstein believed in order, not chance.
Perhaps God doesn’t play dice with the universe, but whatever God’s plan is, we certainly don’t know it. No matter the scientific breakthroughs, no matter the art and philosophy we develop, we can only catch glimpses of the Divine plan - if there even is one. So let us use the tools we have - our hearts and minds and hands - to take the chaos thrown at us and resolve to make a future of our choosing. A good future, a just one, full of compassion and repair. We may not be able to predict it, but we can create it.
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