From The Bimah: Jewish Lessons For Life

Icarus has so much to say to us now, a few weeks before Rosh Hashanah.According to Greek mythology, Icarus flew too close to the sun with wings made of feather and wax. The sun’s heat melted the wax, and Icarus fell into the sea and drowned.In 1560, the Netherlandish master Peter Bruegel the Elder painted a masterpiece entitled Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. This painting is now displayed in a museum in Brussels. The title is so evocative. To Icarus, no story was more important than Icarus. To Icarus, his flying so high, falling so low, and meeting an untimely end in a cold sea in a cold world was all-important. It was THE story. But there is a broader landscape where the fall of Icarus was not only not the story. It was not noticed at all. There are three peasants each doing their thing, plowing, herding and fishing. They are totally absorbed in their own world. They neither see nor care about Icarus.The pathos of the painting—the desperate pain of one, utterly unseen by others—has inspired poetry by Wil