What makes things happen?
Kim Treiger-Bar-Am
What makes things happen: mazal, chance, fate – or freedom?
This is how I entitled my recent book. The book carries the message that people consider luck, chance, fate, and freedom to be forces that bring about events. We seek certainty, but don’t have it. Yet we ourselves can make things happen.
Mazal is everywhere in people’s thoughts, and all around us. Sayings about mazal, and practices like tying red strings on the door of one’s house or wearing a hamsa necklace, are so common. But while “mazal” was heard all the time before October 7, the word “goral” seemed to replace it. Everywhere, everyone — soldiers and civilians in the north and the south and central Israel — spoke of goral. This term hinted at people’s fears about what will be our end.
The uncertainty that life brings our way is signified by quantum theory in science. While the rule of cause-and-effect pointed to our knowing which way things will go, quantum mechanics points to randomness. Perhaps we don’t know what will be our end.
Here we are approaching the Days of Awe. Everything — in prayers and in our thoughts — will be about where we might turn from here.
We can make a difference. We can make things happen.
With wishes for the new year, here is hoping that we can change our world.
