Proportions are nice. Putting things in proportions is an important thing. Often it makes us feel a bit humble, causes us to think a little about the world around us. Thinking, you know, may promote unwanted actions :)

Consider for example the rocks and stones in Jerusalem. The Western Wall – one of the most important places for Jews – was built from them, similarly to Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is sacred to Muslims. Allegedly there is also the Foundation Stone, from which – if we believe our sages – the world “was founded”. Alas, most of these stones are merely made of compressed skeletons of trillions of marine creatures, which were born and died in the sea that was here. The time we’re talking about is 30 to 40 thousand times (!) more ancient than King David’s time. Proportions.

Light, you know, is the fastest thing in the universe. In the speed of light one can circle the Earth about ten times per second. Roughly 20 thousand times faster than our fastest spaceships… Yet the same Sun light seen by King David – has barely made the distance of 3% of our Galaxy since that time. Just to remind you: There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in our universe. And yes, the distances between them are typically much greater than them. In fact, if “the world was created” about 6000 years ago, we would only be able to see a tiny fraction of our own specific galaxy. Proportions.

The human body… a marvelous machine. Our body has about 10 trillion cells. On top of all this, our body hides 10 times more bacteria, thousands of different species. What does it mean, say, for eating kosher food? Proportions.

Man is the “crown of creation”. However this “crown” has been around for only one thousandth of a percent of the universe’s age. During the rest of the 99,999 thousandths, everything worked perfectly fine without this strange creature. The ancient dinosaurs’ situation is not much better: All of them spent their life at some time in the beginning of the recent 2 percents. From King David’s time till today – the lunar cycle increased by about half a second per month. Since the dinosaurs’ time, that cycle increased by many hours, but measuring it back then would have been odd, as the day of those dinosaurs was significantly shorter than 24 hours. So, does the Hebrew ‘Talmud’ make a good job of exactly specifying the lunar cycle? Put things in proportions!

The Jewish people are said to be “the chosen people”, yet for every Jew there are about 500 “gentiles”… Hmm… And the vast majority of this handful of Jews are secular or “Reform Jews”. The famous “Jewish bookshelf” also fits entirely in one modern computer disk, and becomes tiny-to-invisible in comparison with the modern “scientific bookshelf”. But still… we are the oldest, no? No we’re not. Really not. Just for example: The Aborigines and their culture have been around for 15-20 times more than the Jews and their culture, depending how you count. And they’re far from being the only ones. Proportions.

The 20th century… full of horrors: World War I, World War II with the Holocaust, Hitler, Stalin. Well, in almost every century since the time of our “sages”, we’ve witnessed a *decrease* in the percent of people killed by people. Yes – this also includes the 20th century. In fact, during the 20th century, for every Jew murdered in the Holocaust, there were about 30 non-Jews who died from war or other violent actions. For every person who died from war or other violent actions, about 7 more died of infectious diseases and about 5 others dies of cancer or heart diseases. Proportions.