A brief writeup of my remarks before my Shabbat HaGadol shiur, given on April 13, 2019, in memory of my uncle Rabbi David Younger z"l.
Werner Heisenberg first introduced his uncertainty principle in 1927. One of the foundational principles of quantum physics, Heisenberg’s principle asserts that any observation has an effect on the observed.
The same can be said to be true of any human interaction. Whenever two people come together to interact with each other, even in the most perfunctory way, they necessarily observe each other, and each one comes away affected and changed in some way by the interaction. In chaplaincy, even the mere act of visiting a patient and taking a spiritual history has an effect on that patient (as well as on the chaplain) and can be considered an intervention. There is no such thing as non-interventional human interaction.
This idea is expressed in Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5, which discusses how witnesses in a capital case are “sworn in.” Unlike taking an oath or affirmation which we might be familiar with by dint of serving on a jury or even watching “Perry Mason” or “Law and Order,” being a witness in a capital case before a Jewish court was a serious business. The court engaged in a process of being “me-ayem” the witnesses - a process of inducing a feeling of awe in them so that they would realize the gravity of giving testimony in a capital case. Rather than thinking that they were innocent bystanders, only reporting what they saw, the witnesses were encouraged to realize that their testimony might possibly have a devastating effect on the accused, or on them.
The mishna goes on to make a homiletical point: Man was created alone to teach us that when one destroys a single life, Scripture holds that person accountable as if they had destroyed an entire world; when one sustains a life, Scripture considers it as if that person had sustained an entire world.
My uncle David Younger z”l spent his entire adult life as a rabbi and teacher. Good teachers know that material must be tailored to the needs of the student, and my uncle was a teacher par-excellence and knew this well. By tailoring the material and interacting with each student as an individual with potential, my uncle provided a Jewish education and spiritual sustenance to his students. He affected countless lives in a positive way, and was affected by those students. Truly, my uncle David was a sustainer of not only one world, but of many worlds.
As Jews, we believe in an immortal soul, and thus, it can be said that this observer effect continues even after death. Any time we honor the memory of those whom we love who are no longer with us, we affect them and allow them to continue to affect us, even though they are no longer physically here. It is my hope that in some small way, this shiur, given to commemorate my uncle’s fifth yahrtzeit, will affect him, and allow him to affect us and help to bring about the ultimate redemption.
