Riddle: Which word which appears in both this and last week’s sidrot is not of Hebrew origin (clue, it’s in the shema)
A: Totafot – Acc. To Rashi 12.8 – Tot is Egyptian Coptic for “two” and Fot is African for “two” (according to Gem. Sanhedrin – this refers to the four compartments that make up the “shel rosh” – Head tefillin.
- 4th August: Nora Quiorin, aged 15 and having special needs, disappeared at the Dusan Eco Resort in Malaysia. She was last seen barefoot and wearing a nightdress. Her parents found her missing at 8.00 am and the bedroom window was open.
- 13th August: Nora's body was found. Initial reports suggest that she died from the results of prolonged hunger and stress.
- The case is still ongoing and the Police have agreed to a second autopsy, should the parents require this.
Presuming that, tragically, Nora wandered off on her own - what was it that might have made her leave the bedroom?
- 1928: Alexander Fleming, a bacteriologist had an interest in researching the influenza virus that had killed over 50 million people between 1918-19. He was carrying out this research in the Laboratory of the Inoculation Department at St. Mary’s Hospital in London.
- Fleming returned from a two-week vacation to find that a mould had developed on an accidentally contaminated staphylococcus culture plate. Upon examination of the mould, he noticed that the culture prevented the growth of staphylococci.
- “One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. When I woke up just after dawn on Sept. 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did.”
By a sheer fluke, it seems as though Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin! He continued his research for another three years, until 1931.
What was it that drove his interest?
Lexico (Dictionary.com & Oxford University Press )
curiosity:
-
noun A strong desire to know or learn something.
If we accept the findings of the first autopsy, both Nora Quiorin and Sir Alexander Fleming, vastly different people, displayed innate, conscious and subconscious behaviours that were powered by the "strong desire to know or learn something" that they had not been aware of previously. However, as a result of their actions, the results were drastically different.
Nora, who was naïve and severely impacted as a result of her disability, suffered a tragic fate and Sir Alexander became responsible for discovering penicillin - one of the key medical finds of the 20th Century.
Both, as a result of curiosity.
(14) I will grant the rain for your land in season, the early rain and the late. You shall gather in your new grain and wine and oil— (15) I will also provide grass in the fields for your cattle—and thus you shall eat your fill. (16) Take care not to be lured away to serve other gods and bow to them.
Mario Livio, Astrophysicist has written a book called "Why? What Makes us Curious" (2017) and examined different sort of curiosities:
"Mario Livio: Curiosity has several kinds or flavors, and they are not driven by the same things. There is something that has been dubbed perceptual curiosity. That’s the curiosity we feel when something surprises us or when something doesn’t quite agree with what we know or think we know. That is felt as an unpleasant state, as an adversity state. It’s a bit like an itch that we need to scratch. That’s why we try to find out the information in order to relieve that type of curiosity.
On the other hand, there is something that has been dubbed epistemic curiosity, which is a pleasurable state associated with an anticipation of reward. That’s our level of knowledge. That’s what drives all scientific research. It drives many artworks. It drives education and things like that..."
TAKE HEED to yourselves — since you will eat and be satisfied, "take heed to yourselves" lest you rebel for no-one rebels against Gd unless this is a result of being satiated as it states in Devarim 8.12-13 "lest when you have eaten and are satisfied and when your herds and your flocks multiply"...."then your heart will be lifted up and you will forget".
PerhasRashi is commenting on human nature here. It's easy to let your eyes and heart wander when you have everything you need. You can afford to let your curiosity lead you in directions that you would not have considered without first satiating your hunger and "living off the fat of the land".
Perhaps this is where epistemic curiosity comes in. Once satiated, you are looking for other "rewards", without risking what you already have. Gd has provided us with the rain that will help our crops grow and feed our animals. We can afford to focus our minds on developing our epistemic curiosity, looking for "rewards" in other cultures, forgetting our own. We leave our comfort zone and our curiosity gets the better of us.
Perhaps poor Nora, whose mind was unable to fathom the dangers that she was facing let her curiosity take over. Whether it was perceptual or not, the results were fatal, because she was unable to assess the danger.
Gd is warning us of a similar fate. It may be that the grass of the Canaanite land is infinitely greener, but there therein lay its traps.
Sir Alexander Fleming's curiosity however, came about as a result of an enquiring mind that knew the limits of what it could achieve. The discovery of pencillin is its crowning achievement.
Conclusion
Human beings are complex entities and our emotions are governed by many different factors. Curiosity is but one of these, but as I have discussed, it can have either positive or extremely negative results.
Nora's curiosity, unchecked and unguarded, led her to a terrible fate, whilst Sir Alexander Fleming's resulted in the discovery of Penicillin.
In the Parsha, Moshe was preparing the people to enter the land of Israel and in doing so, had to try to warn the people against following their emotions and natural tendencies - so as to minimise the dangerous situations that they would find themselves in. In a way, they were like Nora, quite naïve and unaware of the dangers that lay beyond the borders of the land of Israel.
By describing the advantages of creating a moral society, devoid of the trappings of a culture riven by idol worship, he addressed many facets of human nature.
Our nature is to be curious, but maybe the lesson we can learn from this week's parsha is that sometimes, our innate curiosity needs to be carefully channelled in the right direction. Not many of us will reach the intellectual heights of a man like Sir Alexander Fleming, but as long as we are aware of the pitfalls, we have a solid moral background to fall back on.
If we can master these emotions, we can be a positive contributor to the societies that we inhabit.
Shabbat Shalom