But not only apples; that’s one little example. Everything in this world was created with variety. There’s not one type of tree; there are thousands! I’m not talking about fruit anymore. Trees! Oak, Maple, Birch, Spruce, Pine, Cedar. Thousands of different types of leaves. Various branches and trunks and barks and roots.
Flowers! When you walk down a street and you see that there are all types of flowers. Right here in Brooklyn! Here on one side my neighbor grows tulips; on the other side, violets. One house over, daffodils; across the street, lilies and carnations and roses.
And not just roses. Red roses and pink roses and yellow roses and white roses and purple roses and orange roses. Not spray painted; they’re not dyed – they grow that way in the wild.
So the question is why did Hakadosh Baruch Hu do that? There are no accidents. Everything is planned. Why did the Creator make it that way? We need so many types of fruits and grains and nuts and vegetables? Do we need thousands of varieties of grass and leaves and flowers and bugs and fish and birds? What’s the purpose? It seems to be superfluous.
Apples Aren’t For Eating
So pay attention now to the following because you’ll understand one of the secrets of the phenomena of the universe. Suppose there was only one kind of fruit; let’s say nothing but apples. Wherever you looked in a fruit store, nothing but apples. So you’d fall asleep. The senses become dulled and stultified when you see nothing but uniformed phenomena; your mind falls asleep.
But we’re not here to sleep! We’re here to see the kevod Hashem in His creations! And so in order to wake us up Hakadosh Baruch Hu therefore gave us a variety of objects in the world.
And so if you see a red apple and you don’t appreciate it – you should! The glory of a red apple, a regular Macintosh. What a beauty! What a miracle it is! An apple is a wonder to behold. I’m not talking now about eating it. Even on Tisha B’Av, on Asarah B’Teves, it’s a glorious sight.
A luscious package of food – nourishing and delicious – and it’s wrapped in a waterproofed peel. It’s a waxed, waterproof packaging to protect it. And it’s made attractive colored in order to attract your attention. Red with some green splotches; sometimes there are little dimples and dots on it to make it more interesting and attractive. It’s so interesting to look at; it belongs in a museum. A red apple should wake a man up, absolutely.
Still, if you’re obtuse enough not to notice that, if you’re thick headed, so Hakadosh Baruch Hu has rachmanus on you and He makes variety. The regular Macintosh apple didn’t do the trick so He made the Golden Delicious. Maybe someday you’ll see a Golden Delicious and it’ll hit you between the eyes, “Wooah, what a beautiful tint that is!”, and it’ll wake you up.
Colorful Roses
If you see red roses all the time it becomes monotonous and you stop thinking about them. But if they’re red over here and in another place they’re white and elsewhere they’re yellow and still further on they’re pink, so finally the message is brought home to you that there’s something called roses that require your attention.
After a number of times of being nudged, of our attention being solicited, finally we’ll wake up and say, “Oh, yes, look! I’ve been looking at it perhaps for ten, twenty, maybe thirty years, and I didn’t see it.”
Now, I’m not saying these things from my own head; it’s not me. Rashi Hakadosh says it in Mesichta Rosh Hashanah. With me you could say you don’t agree but this is a Gemara. There’s a question there, why is it that in the Beis Hamikdash on the fifth day the shir shel yom, the song that the Leviim sang – we say it still today after davening – was the kepitel of ‘Make song to Hashem’ (Tehillim 81). Why was that chapter chosen? And the Sages say the reason is because on the fifth day Hashem created birds and fish.
The question is, what does that have to do with singing to Hashem? So Rashi explains like this: When a person sees all kinds of birds and fish, each one different from the other, he notices; he pays attention.
