6. What’s the Goal? (Sloths and Moths)
The meaning of life, according to the Battalion perspective
Opening Up the Torah
Where does the Torah weigh in on this fundamental question, how to “win the game” of life? According to what we have been describing, we would expect it to be one of the first things we’re told — first, how do you win? And in fact, according to Rav Samson Rephael Hirsch and Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, the very beginning of the Torah provides an answer. This perspective reappears in a number of other “beginnings”: Hashem’s choice of Avraham to be the forefather of Bnei Yisrael and Hashem’s charge to the nation at Har Sinai.
Rav Hirsch: The Circle (and Symphony) of Life
The Torah starts by describing the ten stages through which Hashem created the world. Over the course of six days and culminating with the seventh, Hashem first built an infrastructure for the world, and then populated it with creatures. The last thing made, the apex of Creation, was man. What is the relationship between the different elements of creation?
Rav Samson Rephael Hirsch addresses this question with the benefit of an understanding not just of the Torah’s account of creation, but of creation itself.1 By observing the natural world, we can gain insight into Hashem’s intention when He created that natural world. One most striking characteristic of the natural world is the interdependence of all its parts; some even claim that the entire world consists of one ecosystem, where a change in one element triggers tremors throughout the rest of the system.2 This point can be made in any number of ways, on both the macro and micro levels. Consider this example on a global scale: Incredibly, massive clouds of dust containing essential nutrients from the Sahara Desert are responsible for the continued growth of the Amazon Rainforest, which outputs twenty million tons of water a year. That output forms a “river in the sky” — the longest river in the world — which provides water for countries as far away as Canada.3 My favorite illustration, though, is on a far more micro scale, involving some strikingly adorable animals: sloths.
Sloths and Moths
Sloths are the world’s laziest animals. They seem to have been perfectly designed for sloth — hence the name. They spend 90 percent of their lives in tree canopies, hanging from a branch — but not using their muscles, because that would be far too taxing. Instead, their hooked claws dig deep into the branch they’re hanging from, allowing them to totally relax their muscles and simply dangle. Their necks can turn up to 270 degrees, allowing them to scan for predators without using any other parts of their body. When sloths travel on the ground, they move at the molasses pace of ten feet a minute. It’s pretty obvious why they spend so much time up in the trees — with a pace like that, they’d be easy pickings for just about any predator that wanted a quick meal. Finally, apropos for such a slow animal, sloths have the superpower to slow down their heart rate on demand, allowing them to stay underwater for forty minutes at a time.
There is one anomaly in a sloth’s standard schedule: once a week, sloths descend from their safety up in trees, slowly climb down the tree trunk, go to the bathroom at the base of the tree, cover the deposit with leaves, and slowly climb back up. For them, this is a most dangerous activity; they are exposed to predators with no way to escape, and for what? For years, scientists were baffled as to why sloths take on this weekly pilgrimage to the forest floor; would it be so terrible to go to the bathroom while hanging from their perches up in the trees?
Eventually, scientists discovered something incredible. The sloth deposits actually serve as nourishment for a very specific type of moth that happen to live in sloth fur. While the sloth is going to the bathroom, its resident moths lay eggs in the feces, which gives them protection and nourishment (along with the leaf cover provided by the sloth before he leaves). Once the larvae develop into adult moths, they fly straight up the trunk of the tree and ensconce themselves in the fur of the host sloth. These moths eventually die in the fur of the sloth, feeding algae that grows on the moth. When food gets scarce, the sloth has the backup option of feeding on the algae! Sloths provide for moths which provide for algae which provide for sloths — and around and around again.4
This tiny example of a three-organism partnership is a very basic demonstration of a truth which holds at the most macro of levels: Everything takes in order to give. Nothing in the circle of life exists strictly for itself; everything contributes in some way to the others in its orbit.
Man as Conductor
There is one exception, however: Man. Humans are the only creatures not naturally part of this circle of life; we have no natural predators, nor uniquely distinct prey. According to one study, if humans were to somehow disappear from the world tomorrow, the world would correct all of the damage we did to it — deforestation, species on the brink of extinction, depleted natural resources — over a couple hundred years, and then flourish as it never has before.5 (According to the study, humanity’s longest-lasting impact would be tiny particles of plastic choking the ocean, which may take millions of years to finally disappear.) If we are not naturally part of this symphony of the natural world, how do we fit into Creation?
The answer, Rav Hirsch explains, is that we are not members of the orchestra; we are the conductors. With our free will, we are meant to proactively involve ourselves in protecting and supporting the world that Hashem created, giving significance and value to what would otherwise be a fantastically complex but inherently meaningless machine.
I like to picture this with a Rube Goldberg machine. I was fascinated by these things growing up; in fact, I made one for myself to shut off my alarm clock in the morning at some point in elementary school. Rube Goldberg machines, named after comic artist Rube Goldberg, are intricate, complex productions that take hours to set up, solely to accomplish the simplest of tasks — to turn the page of a book, or crack an egg into a frying pan. What is so engaging and delightful about these creations? To me, part of the appeal is the opportunity to witness something so multifaceted operate in unison. Every piece must work together; every marble must follow the correct path, every tire must roll to the right place, every projectile must hit just so, in order to accomplish the objective. We find beauty in observing harmony. While these arrangements are fun to watch, if all it did was run its course without accomplishing anything, it would be functionally meaningless. The ultimate objective completed at the end gives significance to rest of the parts. The world, in a certain sense, is a Rube Goldberg machine; by taking its raw materials with their interconnections, synergies, and mutualisms and using them to accomplish significant things, we give the machine as a whole purpose and meaning.
Similarly, the Torah describes the completed creation as “Va’yechulu ha’shamayim v’ha’aretz v’chol tz’vaam — And the heavens and the earth and their whole host were brought to their destined completion.” The word “tzava,” most familiar from descriptions of an army, but used in other contexts as well, denotes a group of individuals who have dedicated themselves to one Commander. In the words of Rav Hirsch:
Only such a multitude that submits itself to the will of a leader who has to command the spiritual and bodily forces of those that have joined the “host,” is called a tzavah…Everything created in heaven and on earth forms one great tzavah, one great host whose center point is its Creator and Master, its Lord and Leader. Everything is placed on its post by Him. Everything has to do its part on its place with the powers given to it to accomplish its allotted task… Ha’lo tzavah l’enosh al aretz — everyone on earth is in ‘military service’ (Iyov 8:1)… It is deeply significant that the activity of Man mastering the earth is called “avodah, service.” “Eved” is being completely engulfed in the purposes of someone else. At Man’s mastery over the earth he himself is directly in the service of God, but indirectly in the service of earth…By his work on it Man raises its purely physical nature into playing a part in the sphere of the moral purposes of the world.6
Every individual should see himself as a member of the tz’vaos Hashem, Hashem’s “hosts.” Every individual has a role to play, a mission to accomplish on behalf of the army. The Creation story teaches that Hashem’s intention was for every person to figure out what their unique contribution could be — and then to go out and do it. Behold the Great Battalion!
Rav Lichtenstein: To Work and Protect
Along similar lines, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein zooms in on the charge given to Adam and Chavah to understand how mankind is meant to “win the game.”
Let us open a Chumash to the chapter describing the creation of man and see what task was assigned to him. “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and to guard it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you are to eat; but as for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die.”7 God placed man (Adam) in the garden “le-ovdah u-leshomrah,” to work or cultivate the Garden and to guard it. Here we have two distinct tasks. One, “leshomrah,” is largely conservative, aimed at preserving nature. It means to guard the world, to watch it…At the same time, there is the task of “le-ovdah” (to cultivate it), which is essentially creative: to develop, to work, to innovate. This applied even in the Garden of Eden, which, according to some of the midrashim, was already a perfect environment… I think that we would not be stretching things too far if we were to understand that this mandate applies far beyond that particular little corner of the Garden where Adam and Eve were placed. What we have here is a definition of how man is to be perceived in general: as a shomer and as an oved.8
Rav Lichtenstein continues to develop this idea, marshalling more sources that reinforce this point. One aspect of the l’ovdah perspective comes from a Midrash, again drawing from the Torah’s account of Creation:
“Rabbi Yehuda ben Rabbi Simon said: [The verse states,] ‘After the Lord your God you shall walk’ (Devarim 13:5)… [What does this mandate of imitatio Dei entail?] At the beginning of the world’s creation, the Holy One occupied Himself first with planting, as it says, ‘And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden’ (Bereishit 2:8); so too, when you enter the Land [of Israel], occupy yourself first with planting — and thus it says (Vayikra 19:23), ‘When you enter the land and plant all fruit bearing trees’ (Vayikra Rabba 25:3).” Of course, the trees are symbolic of man’s contribution to this world, to nature — something which is planted by human agency, rather than something which appears spontaneously.
To say it differently, God proclaimed that He intended to create man in His image (Bereishis 1:26). At this point, the only thing we know about God is that He has the ability to create; presumably, this is the ability that He instilled in humanity. And just as Hashem did not create for Himself, but for others, so too, He blessed and charged man with the ability to create not for himself, but for others: “Pru u’revu u’milu es ha’aretz.”9
Rav Hirsch and Rav Lichtenstein identify a similar goal at the heart of creation, dovetailing with the attitude of Rav Soloveitchik’s Halachic Man. The ultimate purpose of man’s creation, the way man is meant to “win the game,” is to contribute to and thereby redeem the world around him. Rather than living for himself, he is meant to dedicate himself to others: “The earth was not created as a gift to you — you have been given to the earth…”10
See Letters 3 and 4 of his Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.356.6335.258
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants/
https://royalsociety.org/news/2014/sloths-moths-mutualisms/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/what-would-a-world-without-humans-be-like/p078352j#:~:text=Global%20temperatures%20and%20sea%20levels,Animals%20and%20plants%20flourish.
Commentary on the Torah, Bereishis 2:1, 5
Bereishis 2:15-17.
By His Light, pg. 2–3.
Bereishis 1:28.
Letter 4.