Only Breath, Being Human, Created in Six Days

Farnoush Safavi: Okay, so now we’re going to do some interactive activities. So what I’m going to do quickly is I’m going to spend a few minutes, talk about the last talk, and then we’ll turn it in into how we’re going to wrap up this discussion among all three of us and Rabbi Linda.

So now let’s do some exercise. If you guys can stand up, we’re going to take a deep breath, inhale and exhale, and then take a deep breath, hold and then exhale. So I’m going to open up a discussion for quite a few minutes. How do you feel when you stop breathing when you hold it?

Dizzy.

Farnoush Safavi: Right, dizzy. Okay, so now, besides being dizzy, you end up having to start breathing again.

I don’t have a choice but to breathe again. I can’t hold my breath forever, though I did see a video of Kate Winslet holding her breath underwater for over seven minutes, and she had to figure out how to do that. But nonetheless, eventually she had to come up to breathe.

Farnoush Safavi: That happens automatically. We are programmed to do that. So. Yes, sit down. Sorry. Okay, so just again, going to quickly review the breathing process. As you know, we inhale, we take oxygen in, and it goes through our lungs. And with the help of the muscles, first, the muscles contract, and the chest cage opens up so we can put oxygen in. And then when we exhale, muscles relax and the air is pushed out. And the balloon exercise we did outside sort of explains it, similar to that, in a simple way. So we take oxygen in, and we send carbon dioxide out.

So I went over this in detail last time – I just wanted to spend one minute here and talk about how complex the respiratory system is. And every single item here does extremely complex activity. One of the things we talked about last time, one of the main parts of the lung are the alveoli, and that’s a complex – that’s where everything happens, where capillaries exchange information from oxygen to carbon dioxide. And I mentioned last time, this is a very complex process, and there are 150 million of these in this system.

In each human?

Farnoush Safavi: Yes. So again, the physiological system is vast, and there is a lot that happens. One other thing I talked about quickly, just to simplify the respiratory system – it starts from the nose the mouth to pharynx, larynx, throat, the trachea right here, and then the muscles are the diaphragm, and thhe accessory breathing muscles are muscles surrounding the ribs, abdomen, neck muscle and shoulder muscles. And then we discuss the inhaling and exhaling.

Only Breath

So I want to talk about this poem again because it’s titled Only Breath, and this is a very famous poem. And a lot of philosophers discuss this poem. So I wanted to read this before we go to the next part, [in] which we’re going to connect spirituality with the reading.

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen.

Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the east or the west, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all.

I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story.

My place is the placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner,

only that breath breathing human being.”

Jelaluddin Rumi

So I guess everyone knows the “one” he’s talking about is Adonai or God, or, in his religion, Allah. So I now want to talk about – I wanted to tell you guys, as I was preparing for this, I reviewed our Shabbat services Siddur, and between Friday services and Saturday service and morning services, the word “breath” is repeated at least 250 times. So I want to recite this with you. I’m going to read it, and then we can repeat it maybe two or three times, one last time.

Elohai neshamah shenatata bi tehorah.

The soul you place in me is pure.

The soul is pure.

My God, you create form and breathe in me.”

Another quick example is this is from mindfulness: “Know that every breath is a departure from the familiar and entry into a new place.”

Viktor Frankl and Logotherapy

So as I was doing research about connecting science and medicine, especially breathing, to spirituality, I found Viktor Frankl – Viktor Emil Frankl, who was born in 1905 and he died in 1997 in Vienna, Austria. He was a prominent physician who bridges both Jewish thought and modern science, who’s a psychiatrist and neurologist. He was a Holocaust survivor. And he developed logotherapy, actually, when he was in the concentration camp. And that gave him a purpose. And he has written many books. He has – I looked – about 33 publications and books about this, logotherapy. So basically, his understanding of human dignity in the face of suffering draws inspiration from Jewish ethics and spiritual views.

In his view, every breath became a spiritual act of defiance and testament of human survival. And so, I’m not going to read every single line – I’m just going to read the highlighted, and then Rabbi is going to wrap this up in more detail as a spiritual leader.

Frankl, in his writings, also often reflected on the idea [of] breath and spiritual resilience – breathing was one of the few things that no one could take away from us, in life and in the most horrible circumstances. And so his philosophy centers around the meaning of life. And he viewed breath as a symbolic life continuation, a precious reminder of human existence in the midst of suffering.

So he’s a well-known psychiatrist and well-respected psychiatrist, and one of the top 10 psychiatrists in the world. He’s focused on mental health as a part of his spiritual well-being. It echoes Jewish teachings about how the mind and body are intimately connected – that the breath, both physically and spiritually, sustains the connection.

So in conclusion, breath is a unifying force in Judaism and medicine, as I mentioned in the Siddur and our Shabbat prayers. In both Jewish mysticism and modern medicine, breath is seen as the essence of life. And both worlds view breath the center of healing, life and divine. And they intercept intersections between the sacred and scientific. It invites us to see breath as more than just a biological function. It’s a gateway to a deeper understanding of both ourselves and the universe.

As you saw, the universe – Daniel discussed the outer space and everything that happens outside of our Earth. And how we discuss the universe, and how we contribute the evolving process of the life – and now, all of this with the human body. These all are connected and extremely sophisticated, and we need to bring all of this together to have a meaningful life. And therefore this becomes spirituality. So I’m going to give it now to Rabbi Linda to wrap all of this up for us. Thank you.

Rabbi Linda Shriner-Cahn Brings It All Together

Linda Shriner-Cahn: So I really have to say thank you to Farnoush, because she put this last slide up. She found it. And I want to talk about the breath,“Elohai n’shama she’natata bi t’hora hi,” for a moment. That phrase which, we love singing together, has this notion that when we were born, the breath that was breathed into us was pure. We started on our journey as human beings. We sweetly began the my friend era. We began with purity. And some people continue life with complete purity of the soul, right? But for the rest of us, we have little sidebars along the way that take us out of where – I don’t want to say we “should,” because all of us have these little sidebars, except for a few very extraordinary people.

And so acknowledging that we started on a particular road, how do we get back to it? So this act of breathing, which we all did together, is a way of saying “thank you. Thank you.” Whenever the moment comes when our breath stops, it’s not up to us, is it? Unless somebody does self-harm. But really, other than that, it’s not up to us. It’s fate, it’s an accident, it’s war. It’s something that’s outside of ourselves for many, many, many of us. So that’s one piece.

And so my question, of this quote that Farnoush gave me: “it’s a sacred force that differentiates a human being from lifeless matter, instilling life in spiritual essence.”

But after what Howie gave us, I don’t know that what’s going on underneath the ground with those fungi is really lifeless. And I don’t know if what Daniel was talking about with the ionic atmosphere is really lifeless. We are surrounded with life. Only we have the ability – as far as we know – to be conscious of the breath that we have.

And that consciousness gives us responsibility. Although I have to say, Howie, I do like the trees in the Wizard of Oz. And one of my favorite characters in the Tolkien trilogy are the Ents. I love the Ents, they’re very slow-moving trees. I love them.

So, yeah, but it’s all around us. And then ruach – spirit, wind. In this time where we’re going through so much  the world feels more out of control than it ever has in my lifetime – my mantra, which most people here have heard me say, is every day I say Zeh hayom asah Adonai, “Every day, this is the day that God has made.” Because when I say that, I take a step out of myself and into the greater beauty. The light shining into this room right now is miraculous. This is a holy moment. We’re talking about science and systems and all of that. And gathering together, this is a holy moment. And let’s acknowledge it. Let’s hold it, let’s breathe into it,

Viewing the breath as a bridge between body and spirit, emphasizing that each breath is a reminder of God’s presence and the preciousness of life. We can only bring our best selves to the table at any given moment, whatever that is, whatever that is.

So for Daniel, I really – persistence, stubbornness, yeah – it’s so important. And Howie has been my partner as a teacher for a long time. We’ve been having this conversation since I first came to Tehillah about “Science and God and the environment. Where do they meet?”

We’ve been having this conversation, and I think we finally found the places in which indeed they do meet. And Farnoush telling us how complicated, how beyond our non- medical capacity to understand how many different systems are at work for us to have a single breath. So with every breath, it is miraculous.

You may not like that word. I like that word. I like the fact that with every breath it’s miraculous, because, we have all been with people for whom every breath is truly a miracle – whether it’s because of a breathing tube or a trach, or something else, or an oxygen mask. We’ve been there, we’ve seen it. The fact that they continue to breathe is a miracle. But you know what? It’s a miracle for every one of us here as well, always, if there’s something about it.

So, Francis, [to your] question about cognitive reality: all I can say is that in our tradition, we went from having – outside of our tradition, and historically speaking – having a tradition of seeing cultu

res about gods fighting each other and parents killing children to create the world. That’s all that mythology. We don’t have that myth. Our mythology of creation is very different. And if we look at the first creation story – I have a lot of trouble with the second one. We’re not going to go there right now. But the first creation story, with the world being created in this process, always aligns me with science. I always think they knew something, but they didn’t know that they knew it. They knew something. They knew there was a process. It didn’t happen all at once. And the fact that day and night weren’t created right away always strikes me.

So we have that as a part of our tradition. It’s there, it’s non-cognitive, it’s embedded, and it’s kind of miraculous. This is the end of what has been an amazing, amazing year of study with three wonderful members of our Tehillah community. I want to just tell you that other people who got this grant went outside and brought people in. We went inside and brought people out. And so we are really so grateful to Daniel, Howie and Farnoush, not only for their individual presentations, but for their ability to work together.

And I just want you to give them a round of applause. Thank you all very, very much. There are cookies and water out there, and have a great afternoon on this beautiful, sunny, warm day.