Rabbi Daniel Siegel

Being inspired

Socrates: The gift you possess… is not a skill but an inspiration. There is a divinity moving you like the force contained in the stone Euripides calls a magnet. This stone not only attracts iron rings but also imbues them with the power of attracting other rings. Sometimes you may see a number of pieces of iron and rings suspended from one another, forming quite a long chain—and all of them derive their power of suspension from the original stone. This is like how the Muse first of all inspires men herself, and from these inspired ones is suspended a chain of other people who take inspiration…They are inspired and possessed, like bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind.

This week’s parashah, BeHa’alotcha (“When you raise up”), introduces the 70 elders, enlisted to assist Moshe, with the following words:

“Gather for Me seventy elders, bring them to the Tent of Meeting, taking their place there with you … I will draw from the spirit that is on you and put it upon them… And, when the spirit rested upon them, they experienced inspiration, in the moment.”

The elders are moved by the spirit of Moshe, but only momentarily. Soon they return to their “right mind”.

The very next passage speaks of 2 individuals, Eldad and Medad, who are not at the Tent of Meeting with Moshe, “yet, the spirit rested upon them and they became inspired”. When Yehoshua, Moshe’s deputy, seeks to restrain them, Moshe replies: “Would that the Lord put His spirit upon all the people”.

Unlike the 70 elders, these 2 individuals are not deriving their spirited state from Moshe but, through their own being, directly from God. Accordingly, they are themselves inspired and this state is not momentary, if and when the spirit moves them. It is who they are, in “their right mind”. Inspired living informs one’s being and is not a magnetic force being exerted from a source without. Moshe’s calling upon all to be like Eldad and Medad is reflective of the statement of God to Moshe: “And you, remain here with Me”, in an ongoing inspired, dedicated state.

As parents and educators, we strive to encourage and guide our children and students to live inspired lives. But, can anyone but a Moshe remain up on the “mountain”? The story of Eldad and Medad, who attain and maintain their inspired being within the Israelite camp, not in the Tent of Meeting or upon Mount Sinai, suggests that we each can live inspired lives.

I end with the story of James Harrison who, by virtue of his unique circumstances, quietly lived an inspiring and inspired life.

For 6 decades, ‘the man with the golden arm’ … saved 2.4 million babies.

Amy B Wang

In 1951, a 14-year-old Australian boy named James Harrison awoke from a major chest operation. Doctors had removed one of his lungs in a procedure that had taken several hours — and would keep him hospitalised for 3 months. But Harrison was alive, thanks in large part to a vast quantity of transfused blood he had received, his father explained. “He said that I had 13 units of blood and my life had been saved by unknown people,” Harrison told CNN’s Sanjay Gupta decades later.

At the time, Australia’s laws required blood donors to be at least 18 years old. It would be 4 years before Harrison was eligible, but he vowed then that he too would become a blood donor when he was old enough. After turning 18, Harrison made good on his word, donating whole blood regularly with the Australian Red Cross Blood Service. He disliked needles, so he averted his eyes and tried to ignore the pain whenever one was inserted into his arm.

Meanwhile, doctors in Australia were struggling to figure out why thousands of births in the country were resulting in miscarriages, stillbirths or brain defects for the babies. “In Australia, up until about 1967, there were literally thousands of babies dying each year, doctors didn’t know why, and it was awful,” Jemma Falkenmire, of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, told Gupta. 

The babies, it turned out, were suffering from haemolytic disease of the newborn, or HDN. The condition most often arises when a woman with an Rh-negative blood type becomes pregnant with a baby who has Rh-positive blood, and the incompatibility causes the mother’s body to reject the fetus’s red blood cells.

Doctors realised, however, that it might be possible to prevent HDN by injecting the pregnant woman with a treatment made from donated plasma with a rare antibody. Researchers scoured blood banks to see whose blood might contain this antibody, and found a donor in New South Wales: James Harrison. By then, Harrison had been donating whole blood regularly for more than a decade. He has said he didn’t think twice when scientists reached out to him to ask if he would participate in what would become known as the Anti-D Program.

Before long, researchers had developed an injection, called Anti-D, using plasma from Harrison’s donated blood. The first dose was given to a pregnant woman at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1967. Harrison continued donating for more than 60 years, and his plasma has been used to make millions of Anti-D injections, according to the Red Cross. Because about 17 percent of pregnant women in Australia require the Anti-D injections, the blood service estimates Harrison has helped 2.4 million babies in the country. “Every ampul of Anti-D ever made in Australia has James in it,” Barlow told the Sydney Morning Herald. “He has saved millions of babies.”

Scientists still aren’t sure why Harrison’s body naturally produces the rare antibody but think it is related to the blood transfusions he received as a teenager. And through the decades, Harrison has brushed off excessive praise regarding his regular trips to the blood donation center from his home in Umina Beach, on the Central Coast of New South Wales.

He had “never” considered stopping, he told the Daily Mail in 2010. In interviews, Harrison has said by far the most fulfilling part of his unwavering commitment to donate plasma has been the babies he has helped save — including his own grandchildren.

On Friday, Harrison made his final trip to the blood donation center. At age 81, he had already passed the age limit allowed for donors, and the blood service had decided Harrison should stop donating to protect his health.

 “We’ll never see his kind again,” Barlow told the Sydney Morning Herald. Harrison told the Red Cross that he is eager for his legacy of 1,173 donations to be surpassed. “I hope it’s a record that somebody breaks, because it will mean they are dedicated to the cause,” Harrison said.

Source: The Washington Post , May 12, 2018.

“We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day.”

Richard G. Scott