What Do DNA and Ancient Texts Have in Common?

Identical twins are born with the exact same instruction manual, the same DNA letter for letter, >> [music] >> and yet almost every pair of identical twins grows up to be two different people in health, in appearance, and in tendencies. If the book is identical, where does the difference come from? The answer lies within the body of each one of us. In almost every one of our cells sits the exact same DNA. A cell in the eye and a cell in the liver carry the same text word for word. The only difference is which pages are open. Tiny mechanisms turn on certain genes and silence others, and that is how from the exact same text an eye, a bone, and a heart are built. And in 2005, researchers examined dozens of pairs of identical twins from childhood to old age. In the early years, there was almost no difference between [music] them. The same pages were open, the same pages were closed. But in the older twins, striking differences were found in the markings on the DNA and in the pattern of genes that were active. The book hadn't changed [music] by even a single letter. What changed is what was read from it. Friends, how many times have we heard the same verse, the same lesson, and nothing happened to us, and years later with the exact same words, something opened up? We think the text has changed. It hasn't changed. [music] We have changed. And it is precisely about this that the sages said, "The prophet Jeremiah spoke of the word of God as a hammer that shatters rock." And in the Gemara in Sanhedrin, they taught in the study hall around by Ishmael, "Just as this hammer splits into [music] many sparks, so too does one verse emerge with many meanings." And pay attention to the imagery. The hammer is one, and the blow is one, but the sparks fly in every direction, and each one lands in a different place. The scripture does not split into several texts, it remains one. What multiplies is what comes out of it. One scripture, many meanings, and they all stem from the same blow. This is exactly the secret of the genes. The same book in every cell and the same book in two twins [music] and what builds one person differently from the other is which pages are opened in it throughout life. And so it is with the Torah. The same letters for everyone and in each of us at every age it opens a different page. Faith is not about looking for a new text when the old one has stopped speaking to us. Faith is returning to those exact same words and knowing that they haven't run out, that the page that will light up within us today wasn't opened yesterday [music] and might only be opening now. So the next time we hear a familiar verse and think we've already heard it, let's pause. Let's not close the book. Let's read it again and discover that the very same strike today sparks a light we haven't seen yet.