Dust, Ashes, Everything

Since my childhood, I have struggled with “Pride.” In Catholicism, pride is a sin—a grave one. And when I was just six years old, a nun implied that I danced dangerously close to committing that grave sin.

I can’t remember what prompted the conversation, but this nun—who was well-meaning, I am sure—warned me not to discuss my academic accomplishments in front of other children, but she warned, too, that I must not earn anything less than an “A” in every class or activity. “God gave you a gift,” she said, “and you shouldn’t waste it. But God didn’t give all the other children the same gift, so you shouldn’t brag.”

I am fairly certain that, at six years old and already fairly self-critical, I had no real notion of the difference between proudly acknowledging my “gifts” and sinfully bragging about them. The conversation left me ashamed of my “natural” abilities and terrified of noting when I had, indeed, worked hard to achieve something. Every hard-earned milestone in reading and writing came to feel like an amazing gift I did not deserve.

Over the past year in Jerusalem, I have learned much about pride from my colleagues in rabbinical school—many of whom seem to have been, like me, self-critical and extremely bright children. One, with whom I share a joy (and I suppose a fear) of “grades,” introduced me to a famous Chasidic teaching. I am sure she did not know she was introducing me to the teaching, and I am positive she knew nothing of how much it has influenced my thinking about the upcoming year at the New York campus.

Here is the story: A Chasidic rabbi taught that a man ought to carry two slips of paper, one in each pocket. “I am but dust and ashes,” one reads; the other, “The world was created for me.”

Perhaps humility, awe, and gratitude are better words than “pride” to describe what this rabbi was getting at. The phrase “I am but dust and ashes” is taken from the story of Abraham confronting God about the plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham approaches God and God’s power with humility, with an awareness of his humble beginnings and of his mortality. Even in his moment of audaciously challenging God, Abraham knew his limits. We are here temporarily, and we are small. Yet, “The world was created” for each of us. This phrase appears in the Talmud (a long and complex work of rabbinic literature edited around the year 600 CE), and it is part of a longer discussion about Adam, the first human being, and about what it means to be human. Human beings were created from one original creation, Adam, in order to teach all human beings several lessons about our place in the world. For example, we learn that, while human beings use a single stamp to produce many identical coins, God used one image (Adam, created in the image of God) to produce many human beings who are far from identical. The Talmud concludes, “For this reason, every individual must say, the world was created for me.”

I am trying to approach the coming year, and my own studies and growth, with these two pieces of wisdom in mind. I am indeed but dust and ashes, and no matter how clever or accomplished I am, I am but one person trying to approach the world in humility, in awareness of my own limitations. But the world was created for me: I need not sink into self-deprecating despair at my small place in the universe but instead celebrate my uniqueness and indeed take responsibility in the world. If the world was created for me, what I am asked to do in that world? I am not utterly powerless. I have a role to play. And I want to approach the year with gratitude to the One who created this world for me and who created me from dust and ashes.