Living on the River: Nate Silver’s ‘On the Edge’ and the Mythical Waters of the Sambatyon

While waiting to catch a flight to Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon a book caught my eye. I'm not sure if it was the catchy title, or flashy green book jacket. I'll go with the title. "On the Edge." Yeh that's right, we ARE on the edge. All of us. The world. The political establishment. The stock market. The international Jewish community has been on edge since October 7th. Our eyes are red with tears, our hearts torn asunder, and our nerves shot as we are indeed sitting on the edge praying, hoping for a miracle—to awaken from a fitful sleep to learn of a daring rescue pulled off by Israeli commandos.

It's then that I notice and recognize that the author is the pollster Nate Silver, and I say to myself, not another book on politics. But I crack it open anyway. In the prologue he quickly makes the disclaimer that it's not a book about politics. It's him going back to his roots as a professional poker player. He says "So with this book I'm going back to my origins. I've spent the last three years immersed in a world that I call the river....a sprawling ecosystem of like minded people that includes everything from low stakes poker players just trying to grind out a living, to crypto kings and venture capital billionaires. It's a way of thinking and a mode of life."

I didn't spring for the ridiculously overpriced hardcover but I got it on Apple Books and might read it on my flight home Sunday evening. I didn't need Nate Silver to tell me I'm on the edge. I know that already. I liked the idea however in the same prologue—of a world, peopled with people like the above mentioned and more, who not unlike the Jewish people, seem drawn to and inexorably linked to the high octane universe that he dubs "The River." The conceptual framework he describes seems to offer some imperfect but different thought tools with which to approach the current unprecedented on-edge-ness.

The Jewish people are quintessential river people. We flow along the river of our shared history. It's twists and turns lend shape and meaning to the unfolding of our shared collective imagination. We can tap into our niche Jewish experiential flow within the vast flow of its all encompassing emotional, spiritual, and intellectual waters.

Similarly, it's ebb (s) figures prominently in our places of decline, disregulation, and backward flowing movement.

Our moments of catastrophic tragedy, are at once the dangerous places where the waters overflow and the embankment is dangerously weakened, where we are at our most vulnerable—as well as the very source of our solace, hope, and fortitude.

The high holidays are upon us. They too are a river that can take us up to our higher places of faith, renewal, and the rediscovery of the true joy that has eluded us since Simchat Torah last year.

Of course wherever we are, and whenever it is, we have the possibility to launch ourselves into tne river of Shabbat. Or to use the River of Shabbat to launch us into a space of "non launching."

I'll explain and conclude with the story of the Sambatyon— a legendary river across which part of the ten tribes were exiled by the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser, and which rested on the Sabbath.

Pliny the Elder (24–79 C.E.) described the river in his Natural History. He claimed that the river ran rapidly for six days and rested on Shabbat, This characteristic of the Sambatyon prevented the ten tribes from leaving their place of exile, since they could not cross the river during the six days of the week, and though it rested on the seventh day, the restrictions on travel on the Sabbath rendered the crossing equally impossible. Josephus, however, described this river in a different fashion, claiming that it was quiet on weekdays and flowed only on the Sabbath.

The magic of Shabbat works in both versions of the River. We emerge from it vivified from the holiness of its currents and calmed by its stillness as well—primed to relaunch with vigor and drive in the upcoming week.

Shabbat Shalom,

Much Love,

Rabbi Yossi