‘The First Atomic Layers’: Yom Kippur 5787

This week marked the third anniversary of the death of my father, Edward Sacher[1]. My father was a distinguished scientist. I always knew that. He authored close to four hundred peer-reviewed publications over the course of his career. What I did not fully realize was just how distinguished he was. After his death, a respected scientific journal, “Molecules,” dedicated a special issue to his work, and my brother, also a distinguished scientist, contributed a biographical essay describing my father’s career and scientific legacy.

My brother succeeded in capturing something essential about our father. Our father spent more than 50 years studying adhesion – how things stick to each other – by asking a deceptively simple question: What happens when two things meet? The materials might be a metal and a polymer, a nanoparticle and graphene, or a biomaterial and living tissue. In every case, the decisive events occur not deep inside either material, but at the interface, within the first few atomic layers. There, atoms bond, crystals form, and two separate substances either remain separate or fuse into one system. My father helped transform surface chemistry from a discipline that described materials into one that explained them. His great insight was that the performance of an entire system is determined by what happens at its boundary.

Perhaps I learned more from him than I realized. I have spent much of my career integrating stores, such as missiles, with platforms, such as aircraft and military vehicles. Here too, the interface is where the interesting things happen. The electrical connections must communicate correctly. The mechanical connections must bear the required forces. The software must understand the commands it receives. The timing must be just right – a launch signal that is received before the weapon is armed will be disregarded. Everything must mesh perfectly so that two independent systems can operate as one.

I read my brother’s article between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and so I inevitably read my father’s science through the lens of repentance. Repentance asks a difficult question: Can a human being really change? How can I stand before G-d and promise with intellectual honesty that next year will be different?

Psychologists teach that our responses are shaped by nature and nurture. By adulthood, most of that wiring is permanent. We know our weaknesses, tempers, resentments, and reflexes too well. A resolution made in a moment of clarity often disappears in a moment of pressure. Character reveals itself not when we have time to think, but when we are forced to react without thinking.

The Rambam addresses this challenge directly. Writing in Hilchot Teshuva [7:3], he warns us not to think that repentance applies only to sins expressed in actions. Rather, a person must also search out and repent from destructive character traits such as anger, hatred, envy, frivolity, and the pursuit of wealth and honour. Quoting the prophet Isaiah [55:7] he offers a prooftext: “Let the wicked abandon his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts”. He concludes that these traits are often harder to abandon than actions because they become woven into a person’s identity. At first glance, the Rambam seems to be assigning an impossible task. It is hard enough to stop committing a transgression. How are we supposed to stop being angry, jealous, or resentful? We are who we are.

I suggest a different reading. We do not first change our character and then change our behaviour. We change behaviour at its point of origin. Character is expressed in the first instant after something happens to us. Everything important happens in the first atomic layers.

The tragedy of Air France Flight 447 illustrates this idea. In 2009, an Airbus A330 flying over the equatorial Atlantic Ocean from Rio de Janeiro to Paris encountered a thunderstorm which led to ice crystals obstructing its pitot tubes. The airplane could not measure its airspeed and so the autopilot disconnected, forcing the crew to fly manually under confusing conditions. In the crucial moments that followed, the copilot pulled back on the stick with all his might, forcing a climb but sending the airplane into a deep stall. His reaction was understandable. He wanted to get as far away as he could from the ocean. But his response doomed the airplane. The official investigation emphasized the absence of effective training for precisely this kind of situation and the failure to establish the correct response under conditions of stress and surprise. All 228 people aboard were lost.

When my son first heard the story while serving in the army, he asked a simple question: Why did the pilots not have an emergency contingency response engraved into habit? Military training is built around repetition. A soldier confronted by danger does not begin an intellectual discussion with himself. Training creates an immediate response that takes over before panic can. The point is not to eliminate thought, but to ensure that panic never occupies the space where thought needs to begin.

Perhaps this is the real secret of repentance. We make our resolutions too grand. We promise to become patient, compassionate, humble, and generous. These aspirations are admirable, but they are not procedures. When the insult comes, when jealousy flares, or when someone places a demand on our time, our old reflexes reach the controls first. Instead of promising to become a different person overnight, perhaps we should train a different first response. When I hear an opinion I dislike, I can pause before speaking. When I hear that someone has died, I can stop and ask myself whether there is something I can do for the family. When I feel anger rising, I can lower my voice instead of raising it. When I feel envy, I can practice offering praise. None of these actions completes repentance, but each of them changes the interface between stimulus and response.

The Mishna on Tractate Avot [4:2] teaches that one good deed leads to another good deed, while one transgression leads to another transgression. Habits reinforce themselves. The first pause makes the second pause easier. The first act of kindness makes the next act more likely. Character is not simply revealed through action. Character is built through action.

The Torah [Devarim 30:19] commands us to “choose life.” We often imagine that choice occurring during the great crossroads of life. More often it is exercised in tiny intervals: between hearing and speaking, between feeling and acting, between noticing another person’s need and moving on with our day. This is where repentance lives. My father taught that we cannot understand systems merely by examining their largest components. We must study the place where they meet. A missile and an aircraft may each function flawlessly in isolation, yet the combined system will fail if their interface is defective. In the same way, good intentions and sincere beliefs will not govern our lives if the interface between event and response remains unchanged. G-d does not ask only what we did after careful deliberation. He asks what kind of person we are becoming through the responses we repeatedly choose.

Three years after my father’s death, I find myself learning Torah from his science. A requiem should do more than describe the person who is gone. It should identify what remains because he lived. My father taught me that the largest outcomes can be determined by the smallest surfaces. He taught me that if we want to understand why a system succeeds or fails, we must examine its first points of contact. The same is true of repentance. We may not be able to transform our entire personality in one day, or even in a lifetime. But we can change one response. Then another. And then another. Change the immediate response and over time we change ourselves. The person we are and the person we hope to become begin to adhere. Everything happens in the first atomic layers.

May my father’s memory be a blessing.

Shabbat Shalom and Gmar Chatima Tova,

Ari Sacher, Moreshet, 5787

Please daven for a Refu’a Shelema for Rachel bat Malka, Iris bat Chana, Sheindel Devora bat Rina, Esther Sharon bat Chana Raizel, Meir ben Drora, Golan ben Marcelle and Hodayah Emunah bat Shoshana Rachel.

[1] My father had a PhD and he was also a professor at the University of Montreal. But he hated honorifics. On our wedding invitation, he signed it simply “Ed Sacher.”