Storied Life, Illustrated.

Parashat Eikev

The blessing for lighting candles, Kiddush, reciting a memorial prayer on the Yahrtzeits of our loved ones — these prayers are fundamental to Jewish liturgy and Jewish ritual. Yet none of them are instructed by Torah. There’s only one blessing the Torah commands us to recite, and the instruction comes in Parashat Eikev:

וְאָכַלְתָּ֖ וְשָׂבָ֑עְתָּ וּבֵֽרַכְתָּ֙ אֶת־יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ

עַל־הָאָ֥רֶץ הַטֹּבָ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר נָֽתַן־לָֽךְ׃

“When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to Adonai your God 

for the good land which God has given you.”

(Deuteronomy 8:10)

This line of Torah is the cornerstone of Birkat Hamazon, the blessing we recite after meals. But, separate and apart from its mealtime context, in this passage we also hear the echoing voices of all the parents throughout the generations who have prompted their sons and daughters — at the end of a play date, when receiving a gift, after a lesson, a kind deed, a compliment. We hear that oh-so-familiar cue: “What do you saaaaay?” And the answer of every dutiful daughter and son who knows the routine and mumbles the expected response: “Thank you.”

But what exactly are we teaching with this routine? Or rather, we know what we’re trying to teach: Good manners and a sense of gratitude. But what are our children actually learning from it?

Two years ago, Larissa Kosmos wrote about these ubiquitous exchanges for The Washington Post. [1] The routine, she noted, felt just a little bit off. 

We’re coaching our kids to say thank you as merely a habit, akin to brushing teeth or clearing their dishes from the table, a behavior to be practiced at certain times. 

But saying thank you should involve more. Before our kids express appreciation, they should experience appreciation. The thank-you’s will always sound empty if they’re not weighted with gratitude. To that end, I, and it seems other parents, had been applying the wrong sort of effort: We were nudging our children to say words of thanks, but we weren’t nurturing feelings of thankfulness. It’s like sprinkling just the leaves of a plant when what’s needed is to water the roots.

When we return to this week’s Torah portion, we realize our tradition is sensitive to the need for gratitude beneath words of appreciation, as well. The Torah doesn’t say: “When you’ve eaten a sandwich, say a blessing.” Or, in more ancient parlance: “When you’ve eaten the equivalent of an olive or an egg…” — though the rabbis will develop Halacha in precisely this direction. But the Torah’s concern isn’t what we’ve eaten, or how much we’ve eaten, or even what specific words we say. What the text asks us to do is pay attention to how we feel. “When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to Adonai.” Are we satiated? Are we full? Then stop. Recognize all that allowed us to be so — the chefs, the farmers, the good land, and God who gave it to us. And when that feeling of fullness becomes a feeling of gratefulness, stop again, and express our thanks.

Realizing the importance of nurturing feelings over words, Kosmos changed her practice.

Expunging “What do you say?” from my parenting script years ago, I launched a new habit in situations when someone deserves thanks: I illuminate for my children what has just transpired. For example, I’ll say, “Dad spent time fixing your toy instead of relaxing” or “The librarian left the work at her desk to help you find that book.” Instead of cuing words to be spoken, I’m aiming to trigger something deeper and more meaningful — awareness.

To adults, these explanations amount to stating the obvious, but they are revelations to kids who take everything for granted, naturally, because everything is granted to them. Allowing my children a moment to process what they’ve just heard, to register that they’re the recipients of kindness, I follow with, “How does that make you feel?” My intention is to guide them from recognizing kindness to valuing it.

When they were younger, my kids usually responded to the question with a simple, if perfunctory, “Good.” From this humble seed, I tried to foster their appreciation. I’d suggest that they were lucky to have received that sticker from the pediatrician. Not every kid had just enjoyed a chocolate-chip-pancake breakfast at a restaurant with their grandpa. Whatever the circumstance, I’d point out that they had experienced special treatment, which was indeed something to feel good about — and thankful for. Then I encouraged them to share their thankfulness with the person who deserved to hear it.

I think we all share the author’s hope, that our children will develop into adults who don’t take others for granted; who recognize the kindnesses extended to them and take the time to articulate their appreciation. And it takes practice, intentional practice — not just for kids.

Author A.J. Jacobs set out on a gratitude journey, which he wrote about in the book Thanks a Thousand. It started when he paid attention to his cup of coffee one morning. Really paid attention. He really enjoyed that cup of coffee, and the local coffee shop in which he enjoyed it. He shuddered to think how his day might have gone without it. “How did I come to be able to enjoy this cup of coffee?” he wondered. He thanked his barista with kind words and a smile. And he thanked the proprietor of the shop, as well. And then he just kept going. He found the people who made the cup into which it had been poured, and that little protective cardboard sleeve that keeps us from burning ourselves — and he thanked them. He found the person who sourced and selected the types of coffee beans that would be used in his morning cup — and he thanked him. He went to the vast warehouse that stores the massive quantities of coffee beans imported into the country — and he thanked the workers there. He traveled to the coffee plantation in Colombia where the beans of the coffee he drinks are grown — and he thanked them. And the project just kept growing. “If something is done well for us,” he wrote, “the process behind it is largely invisible.” [2] So Jacobs sought to expose and recognize all that had been done to make this one, small, meaningful part of his day possible. “Gratitude is a discipline that needs to be practiced,” he says. “It doesn’t always come naturally, even to glass-half-full types.” [3]

But it is well worth practicing. Gratitude, thoughtfulness — it’s a gift to those we thank, and, sometimes, to ourselves, as well.

Rebecca Sabky was the director of international admissions for Dartmouth College. In her role, she would read applications from students all over the world — 2,000 applications, every year. The applicants, she notes, are always “intellectually curious and talented. They climb mountains, head extracurricular clubs and develop new technologies. They’re the next generation’s leaders. Their accomplishments stack up quickly. The problem is that in a deluge of promising candidates, many remarkable students become indistinguishable from one another, at least on paper. It is incredibly difficult to choose whom to admit.” [4] But in all her years, one particular student stood out — because of a letter of recommendation.

Letters of recommendation are typically superfluous, written by people who the applicant thinks will impress a school. We regularly receive letters from former presidents, celebrities, trustee relatives and Olympic athletes. But they generally fail to provide us with another angle on who the student is, or could be as a member of our community.

This letter was different. [It was from a school custodian.]

The custodian wrote that he was compelled to support this student’s candidacy because of his thoughtfulness. This young man was the only person in the school who knew the names of every member of the janitorial staff. He turned off lights in empty rooms, consistently thanked the hallway monitor each morning and tidied up after his peers even if nobody was watching. This student, the custodian wrote, had a refreshing respect for every person at the school, regardless of position, popularity or clout.

This student was exactly who Dartmouth College wanted. And it’s who we want our children to be, as well. What we really want from our children is not, first and foremost, the proper pro forma responses. We want them to feel, be aware, notice what is happening around them with a sense of appreciation. And this is what Torah wants from us all.

“When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to Adonai your God for the good land which God has given you.” And we are so filled with gratitude. In the words of our liturgy (Mishkan T’filah):

For the gift of life, wonder beyond words;

For the awareness of soul, our light within;

For the world around us, so filled with beauty;

For the richness of the earth, which day by day sustains us;

For all these and more, we offer thanks.

May words of thanks always flow from a grateful heart. And let us say: Amen.

 

[1] “I Stopped Forcing My Kids to Say Thank You, and They Learned True Gratitude,” Larissa Kosmos, The Washington Post, 9/29/17.

[2] A.J. Jacobs, Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey, p. 13.

[3] Ibid, p. 111.

[4] “Check This Box If You’re a Good Person,” Rebecca Sabky, The New York Times, 4/4/17.

Remarks at a press conference in support of H.R.1112 to close the “Charleston Loophole.”

“Do not stand idly by where your neighbor’s blood is shed.” (Leviticus 19:16)

In the three and a half years since the attack here at Mother Emanuel, in the four months since the attack at Tree of Life, synagogues, churches, and mosques have hired security guards; we’ve consulted with experts and fine-tuned safety procedures. We’ve followed the recommendations of “industry standards” and increased our insurance coverage in the event of an active shooter. 

In the six years since Newtown, and the twelve months since Parkland, students and teachers have practiced lockdown drills. We’ve put locks on doors, covered windows to classrooms. We’ve asked our children — in the places that are supposed to be safe havens — to visualize and anticipate the reality of an active shooter on the premises. Do we even yet know the long-term effects of such drills?

We do these things because it’s a matter of safety and security. Yet it’s supposed to be a BOTH-AND. 

While our children visualize shooters in their classrooms, while worshippers prepare for an attack in their house of worship, we have yet to pass a single meaningful piece of legislation that might have a real impact on preventing such an attack in the first place. 

We know that background checks work. And we also know that sometimes they may take longer than 3 days — particularly in the case where there is more data to sift through; an indicator that the completion of the background check is that much more essential, not less so. And the vast majority of Americans want to see this loophole closed.

Let’s get this done. And the next time our children come home from school, telling us they’ve practiced a code red to prepare for gun violence, we’ll be able to look them in the eye having done something of significance to protect them from gun violence, as well.

A few notes about this list: These were my favorites among the books I *read* in 2018. Several of them were published in previous years, though I was pretty good about getting on reserve lists at the library early and often and so many were new releases. Some (like The Sun Does Shine) I believe would hold up as favorites at any time and recommend without qualification; others just felt perfectly suited for a particular moment (Beatriz Williams, for example, is my favorite ticket for pure escape, and I picked up The Secret Game the day I walked onto the hallowed floor of Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham). And one warning: Between Only Child and A Place for Us, I think I used up an entire box of Kleenex.

Best Fiction: Only Child (Rhiannon Navin)

Fiction Runner-Up: A Place for Us (Fatima Farheen Mirza)

Also Notable:

• Little Fires Everywhere (Celeste Ng)
• The Great Believers (Rebecca Makkai)
• An American Marriage (Tayari Jones)
• White Houses (Amy Bloom)
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (Kathleen Rooney)
• The Art of Racing in the Rain (Garth Stein)
• The Story of Arthur Truluv (Elizabeth Berg)
• A Hundred Summers …and anything and everything else by (Beatriz Williams)

Best Non-Fiction: The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (Anthony Ray Hinton)

Non-Fiction Runner-Up: Becoming (Michelle Obama)

Also Notable:

• Educated (Tara Westover)
• Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor (Yossi Klein Halevi)
• The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph (Scott Ellsworth)
• Jackson, 1964: And Other Dispatches from Fifty Years of Reporting on Race in America (Calvin Trillin)
• Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death (Lillian Faderman)
• In Pieces (Sally Field)

The book I read in 2017 that, given current events, has stayed with me throughout 2018: Lucky Boy (Shanthi Sekaran)

Yom Kippur, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim

Sue Taylor Grafton, prolific author of mystery novels, passed away last year. She was 77 years old. Grafton published her first book 50 years ago, and another would follow two years later. In 1982 she published what would become the first in an extensive series of mysteries that followed detective Kinsey Millhone book after book after book. The first in the series was titled “A” Is for Alibi, followed by “B” Is for Burglar, then “C” Is for Corpse. Her obituary in the New York Times says she was inspired for the idea of an alphabetical series by The Gashlycrumb Tinies, “a 1963 rhyming book in which 26 children meet bizarre ends.”

Over the next 35 years, Grafton wrote 22 more books in the series. Her last was published in August of 2017, four months before her death. The book was titled “Y” Is for Yesterday.

Grafton’s canon fell one book, one letter, short of her goal.

Death, how well we know, doesn’t come on our terms. We die despite appointments and feuds. We die despite contracts and business trips and vacations we have planned. We die despite a long list of things to do. We die despite passions we cherish, despite marrying whom we love, despite children and grandchildren still growing before our eyes. We die at the tops of our careers, when we’re finally able to hear the accolades, or before our careers, or even the best parts of our lives, have even begun.^[1]

Kohelet wrote: “The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.” (Ecclesiastes 1:8) “Young or old, those who depart this life never see enough of the world, never complete their task, never cherish their loved ones enough, before they are called home. … Whenever parting comes, it comes too soon.”^[2]

The ritual of Yizkor doesn’t gather us together because it can impart some special, secret knowledge about death. It gathers us together — we who have loved and lost spouses, parents, dear friends, children — because it can teach us who carry permanent scars on our hearts something about life. It’s a lesson everyone is meant to internalize as we face our mortality throughout this fearful day of Yom Kippur — in its liturgy, its scripture, its fasting. But we in this club of which no one wants to be a member, but everyone is eventually admitted, are naturally open and receptive to hearing it.

As we cherish the memories of those we’ve loved and lost, we know the message of Yom Kippur in our bones:

Take nothing for granted. Live every day to its fullest. Do not delay until tomorrow the love, the forgiveness, the changes that can be resolved and demonstrated today. And even as we make and aspire to achieve goals, remember that our biggest accomplishments may never have a finish line.

Why does the book of Deuteronomy, the last in the Torah, end with the death of Moses, asks Rabbi Louis Rieser. After all, the first chapters of the book of Joshua tell more of the wilderness story and see the Israelites enter, finally, the Promised Land. Perhaps to teach — as Zola Neale Hurston writes in Moses, Man of the Mountain — that though Moses may have felt he “had failed in his highest dreams, he had succeeded in others. Perhaps he had not failed so miserably as he sometimes felt.” It wasn’t deliverance to the Promised Land that sealed his stature as the greatest prophet of Israelite history; it was everything else he had done and given and achieved along the way.

“And so we understand,” writes Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, “that ordinary people are messengers of the Most High. They go about their tasks in holy anonymity, often, even unknown to themselves. Yet, if they had not been there, if they had not said or did what they did, it would not be the way it is now. We would not be the way we are now. Never forget that you, too, yourself may be a messenger. Perhaps even one whose errand extends over several lifetimes.”

With the memories of our loved ones as an abiding source of strength and inspiration, may we give all that we can to each and every day we are granted. May we build upon the achievements of those who came before us, fulfilling their dreams and continuing their pursuits into lifetimes beyond their own. May we reach for our own dreams, knowing, as our liturgy reminds us, “that victory lies not at some high place along the way, but in having made the journey.” May we live and love fully beginning with the only day we are guaranteed — may we live our very best lives starting today.

 

^[1] Inspired by the readings in Mishkan HaNefesh, p. 550.

^[2] From CCAR Rabbi’s Manual, p. 137.

Yom Kippur Evening, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim

The year was 1827 and the place was right here in Charleston. While the details of what happened are unknown, an outline remains: One Dr. Edward Chisolm, presumed to be “a gentleman of respectability and honorable feeling,” made an “illiberal expression” to a certain G. P. Cohen (most likely a member of this very congregation) which left the latter feeling dishonored and insulted. So Mr. Cohen demanded an apology and, if that was not promptly given, then “the only redress that Honor [has] long established as the practice in these cases” — he demanded a duel.

Yes, this really happened. Charleston’s own Hamilton and Burr. But Dr. Chisolm would not engage. Mr. Cohen, he explained, was a Jew and he did not “conceive any Jew to be on [equal] footing with him!” Well!

Mr. Cohen posted a Notice to the Public in the Charleston Courier, the preeminent local paper.

It therefore becomes my painful duty — he wrote — to intrude these remarks on the public, in order to expose [Dr. Edward Chisolm] to the community in which I live, the place of my nativity. The Constitution of the U. States, and of my native state, give me and every citizen, of every religious denomination, equal rights and equal privileges. Religious distinctions are not known in this country. Members of the same community are valued only according to their conduct in life, and none but a bigot and a Coward, like Edward Chisolm, would attempt to insult a whole nation, by refusing that satisfaction which every gentleman is ready to give, and to receive.^[1]

Oh, my! Mr. Cohen is “a Jew;” Dr. Chisholm is “a bigot and a Coward.” Something transpired between these two individuals — an offense of some sort, an insult — and the result was this: Both parties turned into something “Other” to one another — and, rather than strides toward reconciliation, tension, animosity, and division only grew.

There’s a lot of that going around right now, isn’t there? Rather than our common humanity, otherness is being emphasized wherever we look. “Others” based on religion, race, or sexuality. “Others” based on nationality, culture, or creed. “Others” on the socio-economic spectrum. “Others” on the political spectrum.

How many times does Judaism implore us to do away with this sense of Other-ness? To see the common humanity in both our neighbor and the stranger alike, to love him as ourselves, recognize her hopes and fears as our own? And the more fractured society is, the more vital it becomes to be able to look into the face of both neighbors and strangers; citizens and immigrants; someone with whom we tend to see eye to eye and someone with whom we invariably disagree; and recognize in that person a brother or sister whose humanity is completely equal to our own.

 Yet, as important as this mitzvah is — loving the stranger is the most repeated commandment in all of Jewish tradition — that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. When it isn’t — when those we encounter seem wholly Other and unloveable to us — we do well to remember that curiosity, empathy, and a touch of mercy go a long way.

Albert Einstein wrote that one should “never lose a holy curiosity.” The holy curiosity that led Abraham to see the ram in the thicket, Pharoah’s daughter to notice a baby floating in a basket on the river, Moses to gaze upon a burning bush. Holy curiosity helps us go deeper into the world around us, including our interactions with the people we meet — even those whose demeanors do anything but encourage us to draw closer.

Atul Gawande shared the following story with UCLA’s graduating medical students:

One night, on my surgery rotation, during my third year of medical school, I followed my chief resident into the trauma bay in the emergency department. We’d been summoned to see a prisoner who’d swallowed half a razor blade and slashed his left wrist with the corner of the crimp on a toothpaste tube. He was about thirty, built like a boxer, with a tattooed neck, hands shackled to the gurney, and gauze around his left wrist showing bright crimson seeping through.

The first thing out of his mouth was a creepy comment about the chief resident, an Asian-American woman. I won’t repeat what he said. Suffice it to say that he managed in only a few words to be racist, sexist, and utterly menacing all at once. Understandably, she turned on her heels, handed me the clipboard, and said, “He’s all yours.” …

The man’s vital signs were normal. [He’d done damage, but not too much.] … I’d heard that inmates sometimes swallowed blades wrapped in cellophane or inflicted wounds on themselves that, though not life-threatening, were severe enough to get them out of prison. This man had done both.

I tried to summon enough curiosity to wonder what it had taken to push him over that edge, but I couldn’t. I only saw a bully. As I reluctantly set about suturing him back together, … he kept up a stream of invective: about the hospital, the policemen, the inexpert job I was doing. I don’t do well when I feel humiliated, [and] I had the urge to tell him to shut up and be a little appreciative. I thought about abandoning him.

But he controlled himself enough to hold still for my ministrations. And I suddenly remembered a lesson a professor had taught me about brain function. When people speak, they aren’t just expressing their ideas; they are, even more, expressing their emotions. And it’s the emotions that they really want heard. So I stopped listening to the man’s words and tried to listen for the emotions.

“You seem really angry and like you feel disrespected,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “I am. I am angry and disrespected.”

His voice changed. He told me that I have no idea what it was like inside. He’d been in solitary for two years straight. His eyes began to water. He calmed down. I did, too. For the next hour, I just sewed and listened, trying to hear the feelings behind his words.

I didn’t understand him or like him. But all it took to see his humanity—to be able to treat him—was to supply that tiny bit of openness and curiosity.^[2]

 “Regarding people as having lives of equal worth means recognizing each as having a common core of humanity. … To see their humanity, you must put yourself in their shoes. That requires a willingness to ask people what it’s like in those shoes. It requires curiosity about others and the world beyond your boarding zone. … Curiosity is the beginning of empathy.”^[3] And empathy is the key to seeing a situation from another’s perspective, to being open to hear and feel another’s story. There is always another perspective.

There’s a wonderful cartoon by Paul Noth that appeared in the New Yorker a few years ago.^[4] Two medieval armies are drawn facing one another; shields in front, swords and spears at the ready. “There can be no peace until they renounce their Rabbit God and accept our Duck God,” declares one fighter to another. Their army marches beneath banners with pictures of a duck, while the other army marches beneath banners with pictures of rabbits. However, the reader sees that the banners look exactly the same: a circle head with two bars — a rabbit’s ears or a duck’s bill, depending on your perspective. Of course, not all disputes are simple misunderstandings (though it’s amazing how many are). But when we find ourselves looking at someone, treating someone, like an “Other,” if we take a moment to try and see things from their perspective, it can do much to help us remember our common humanity.

This is the most significant contribution of Yossi Klein Halevi’s recent book on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, entitled Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. “A helicopter crosses your hill,” he writes. “I feel an involuntary relief: We are being protected, especially on this day [Yom HaAtzma’ut – Israel’s Independence Day], a tempting time for terror attacks. But then I think of you: How frightening it must be for you and your children to hear helicopters hovering over your home. This is the curse of our relationship: My protection is your vulnerability, my celebration your defeat.” To be sure, there’s a long journey from empathy to peace — but empathy is nonetheless a vital, significant, and powerful first step.

So curiosity and empathy can help broaden our perspective. But what about when it’s not a matter of perception? When a person has clearly done or said something so terrible that considering them to be “Other” feels not only right, but just? After all, they’ve brought our condemnation on themselves. Here we would do well to remember the sage insight of Bryan Stevenson, echoing Jewish tradition: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” Let it be our goal to temper our judgment with mercy.

“We’ve divided the world into us versus them,” says Gawande, “an ever-shrinking population of good people against bad ones. But it’s not a dichotomy. People can be doers of good in many circumstances. And they can be doers of bad in others. It’s true of all of us.” The worst thing we have ever done can never sufficiently describe us, nor can the best. Good and bad — whatever we have done, we are all of it.

Imagine if Abraham were known only for binding Isaac; Moses for killing an Egyptian; David for his adultery with Bathsheba, or killing her husband, Uriah. People in Torah study always like the patriarchs and matriarchs, because they’re fallible. Their transgressions make them relatable, accessible. Why then do the human sins of others do the opposite, make us strip away their humanity?

There’s a story in the Talmud about some neighborhood ruffians who were causing Rabbi Meir a great deal of trouble. So he prayed — that the young men would die. His wife, Beruriah, noting his disproportionate, extreme response, asked him: “What is [the scriptural basis for this prayer]? Is it because of the verse ‘may sin disappear’? Does the verse say chot’im (sinners)? No, it says chata’im (sins)! Moreover, look at the end of the verse, where it says “and the wicked be no more.” This means: because their sins will cease, they will be wicked people no more. So pray not against them, but for them that they should repent and be wicked no more.” Rabbi Meir did, and they repented.^[5] And is not such repentance and acknowledgment that all of us are capable of changing our ways what this day of Yom Kippur is all about?

 A rabbi once asked his students: “How do we know when the night has ended and the day has begun?” … The first and brightest of the students offered an answer: “When I look out at the fields and I can distinguish between my field and the field of my neighbor, that’s when night has ended and day has begun.” A second student offered his answer: “When I look from my fields and I see a house, and I can tell that it’s my house and not the house of my neighbor.” A third student offered another answer: “When I see an animal in the distance, and I can tell what kind of animal it is, whether a cow or a horse or a sheep.” And a fourth student offered yet another answer: “When I see a flower and I can make out the colors of the flower, whether they are red or yellow or blue, that’s when night has ended and day has begun.”

Each answer brought a sadder, more severe frown to the rabbi’s face. Until finally he shouted, “No! None of you understands! You only divide! You divide your house from the house of your neighbor, your field from your neighbor’s field, you distinguish one kind of animal from another, you separate one color from all the others. Is that all we can do—dividing, separating, splitting the world into pieces? Isn’t the world broken enough? Isn’t the world split into enough fragments? Is that what Torah is for? No, my dear students, it’s not that way, not that way at all!”

The shocked students looked into the sad face of their rabbi. “Then, Rabbi, tell us: How do we know that night has ended and day has begun?”

The rabbi stared back into the faces of his students and with a voice suddenly gentle and imploring, he responded: “When you look into the face of the person who is beside you, and you can see that person is your brother or your sister, then finally the night has ended and the day has begun.”^[6]

It’s time for a new day to begin. A day in which we are guided by curiosity, empathy, and mercy to recognize the common humanity of every person we meet. A day in which we treat everyone as sister and brother; and stand up for those who have been condemned as someone “Other.” It’s been said that the bottom line of all conflict is about simply not making the table bigger. So, in this new year, let us make space, for everyone — at our tables, in our sanctuaries, in this country, and in the world. Amen.

 

^[1] Charleston Courier, July 25, 1827, with gratitude to Dr. Gary Zola and the American Jewish Archives for the introduction.

^[2] Atul Gawande, “Curiosity and What Equality Really Means,” New Yorker, June 2, 2018 (adapted).

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] “An Army Lines Up for Battle,” Paul Noth, New Yorker, December 1, 2014.

^[5] B’rachot 10a.

^[6] As it appears in Friedman’s Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Acceleration, from Rabbi Jonathan Maltzman at Kol Shalom in Maryland, pp. 388-389 (adapted).

Rosh Hashanah Morning, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim

Shanah Tovah. To each of you — to the members of our KKBE family, and your visiting family and loved ones; to those traveling in Charleston and members of the wider community who are here to celebrate with us this Rosh Hashanah morning — to each of you, I wish you blessing and good health, abundant joy and enduring peace, as we enter the new year of 5779.

5779 — what does that number represent? According to tradition, it’s the number of years that have passed since the creation of the world. Five thousand, seven hundred, seventy-nine years since God separated heaven from earth, darkness from light, land from sea. Five thousand, seven hundred, seventy-nine years since God hung the moon, sun, and stars in the sky. Five thousand, seven hundred, seventy-nine years since plants began to sprout, birds began to fly; since human ancestry began.

Of course, few of us here subscribe to the ancient story as a literal accounting of creation. We understand that nearly every component of the created world goes back not thousands, but millions and billions of years. Yet there is one part of creation that is much more recent than the others. One that didn’t exist until Jewish tradition brought it into existence. One that may very well be five thousand, seven hundred, seventy-nine years old — and the only creation in the entire story described as holy: “God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God rested from all the work of creating that God had done.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches: “The first holy object in the history of the world” was time. Judith Shulevitz, author of The Sabbath World, writes: “The first week was the first temporal division not tethered to the sun or the moon.” The concept of a week, and a Sabbath at its end — to be mindful of the idea of time, to keep one week from simply bleeding into the next — had to be created. Shabbat, and its unique way of helping us to value and sanctify time, has been described as the greatest gift God has given to the Jews, and the Jewish people, in turn, to humanity.

So how are we doing with our gift? Are we cherishing time, savoring it, keeping it holy? I think we know the answer. I think our souls feel it. How many of us have commented that, in one way or another, time continually feels like it’s slipping away, like we’re racing to keep up with our own lives? The speed of life is one of the biggest spiritual challenges we face as we enter this new year.

“When will today’s fast be tomorrow’s slow?” an advertising banner asked at the top of a webpage I was looking at recently — and I felt my pulse quicken, terrified. I already feel like life is moving faster than I can sometimes handle — how much faster can time possibly go? Thomas Friedman says we’re living in an age of acceleration. Think about how it feels to ride in a car, a plane: When we’re cruising, we often don’t feel the speed, or if we do, it’s the pleasurable sensation of wind in our hair, the landscape rolling by. But when we accelerate, everything tenses. We’re thrust back against our seats. We physically feel pressure — and it takes a toll. When two people greet one another on the street, the phone, at services, what’s the universal refrain we hear? “How are you doing?” “I’m so busy.” Or, if we can’t afford time for a complete sentence: “Busy, hectic, tired, stressed.” The Chinese pictograph for ‘busy’ is composed of two characters: heart and killing. That is exactly what “busy” — what today’s speed of life — is. [1]

We need to slow down, every single one of us. No one is exempt, and there’s no guilt or shame in doing so. We need to take a break, stop, catch our breath. Especially when we’re bombarded with messages encouraging us to go faster, to increase the busy-ness of our lives, how important it is to remember that five thousand, seven hundred, seventy-nine years ago we were commanded to: “Slow down… you move too fast.” Yes — Simon and Garfunkel are right there in the Torah! We need, every seven days, to let go of at least some of the stress in our lives and accept the freedom Shabbat has always granted. We need the three forms of respite from speed Shabbat offers, if only we reclaim our holy gift.

First, we need Shabbat’s respite from the speed of knowing. Matte Barón works with corporate executives. “I teach them how to be present,” he says. “Stress and anxiety happen when you’re managing the future.” [2] Can we hear the chutzpah in that phrase, “managing the future”? Humans plan, God laughs. Yet how much energy do we expend, how much stress do we incur, in our racing to know what things mean and how they’re going to turn out… right now!

There’s an old Taoist story about a wise man on the northern frontier of China:

One day, for no apparent reason, his son’s horse ran away and was taken by nomads across the border. Everyone tried to offer consolation for the man’s ill fortune, but his father said, “What makes you so sure this is not a blessing?”

Months later, the son’s horse returned, bringing with her a magnificent stallion. Their household was made richer by this fine horse, which the son loved to ride, and everyone was full of congratulations for the son’s good fortune. But his father said, “What makes you so sure this isn’t a disaster?” 

One day the son fell off the horse and broke his hip. Once again, everyone offered their consolation for his bad luck, but his father said, “What makes you so sure this is not a blessing?” 

A year later the nomads mounted an invasion across the border, and every able-bodied man was required to take up his bow and go into battle. The Chinese frontiersmen lost nine of every ten men. Only because the son was lame did father and son survive to take care of each other. [3]

The moral of the story is not that nothing is as it seems, or that it’s utter futility to try and understand our lives and the world around us. But everything is always changing. Our limited vision yields a picture that is never complete. Under those circumstances, what is lost in taking a one day break? A day on which we admit we’ll never really know, so let’s, just for this one day, let it go, and anchor ourselves firmly in the present. 

“Every person needs to take a day away,” Maya Angelou wrote. “A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future … a day in which no problems are confronted, no solutions are searched for.” Shabbat is our day of freedom from knowing how things are going to get done or turn out. And we need this freedom now more than ever.

Sometimes that from which we need freedom seems like a good thing. But the old adage is true: Everything in moderation. Mindful of every sermon in which I’ve emphasized how important it is to be engaged in tikkun olam, repairing the world — even from this, we need a break. Specifically, we need Shabbat’s respite from the speed of today’s activism. 

Marches, rallies, protests. Speakers, films, book discussions. Town halls, vigils, council meetings. If we care about today’s world, tikkun olam can easily become our full-time job. Yet “the frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace,” in at least two ways, says Muller. “It destroys our own inner capacity for peace.” And it shields us “from the actual experience of suffering.”

In 1973, two social psychologists, John Darley and Daniel Batson, conducted an experiment with students on the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary.

First, the researchers ran tests to determine each student’s personality type. Then they announced that the students would have to give a talk. Half of them were asked to deliver a sermon on the Good Samaritan [the parable in which Jesus encountered a wounded man, had compassion for him, and paused in his travels to care for him]. The other half were told to discuss the job prospects that faced them as future ministers. All were instructed to report to another building, where their audiences would be waiting for them. 

As the students left the first building, a researcher urged about a third of them to hurry, because they were already late. He assured another third that they were right on time but shouldn’t dawdle. He told the last third that there was a slight delay in the proceedings but that they should wander over anyway.

As the students walked to the second building, they passed a man slumped against a doorway in an alley. They didn’t know it, but this was the real test. As each student approached, the man coughed and groaned. If the student stopped, the man told them in a confused and groggy voice that he was fine but he had a respiratory condition; he had taken medicine that would begin to work any minute now. If the student insisted on helping the man, he allowed himself to be taken into a building nearby.

After the data was weighted and the variables analyzed, only one thing consistently predicted who would stop to help and who wouldn’t. The important factor was neither personality type nor whether a student’s career or the parable of the Good Samaritan was foremost in his mind. It was whether or not he was in a hurry. … Those who felt themselves to be in a rush didn’t realize that he needed help until after they’d passed him. Time pressure narrowed their “cognitive map,” and they raced by without seeing. [4]

Ask yourself, for all that you care about, and care deeply, in this world — for all the urgency you feel behind the need for change — are you willing to sacrifice recognizing your fellow suffering right beside you? If the experience of life increases in direct proportion to being present in the moment, is there anywhere that a break from the speed of life is more important than in the realm of compassion and justice? On Shabbat, one day in seven, we need to slow down, caring for our own souls as well as those around us.

And what is it that fuels so much of the busy-ness that occupies our time? What is overwhelmingly responsible for the rate of acceleration we feel in so many areas of our lives? The speed of technology. From this, more than anything, we desperately need the respite Shabbat offers. 

Thomas Friedman tells the story of a king who was deeply impressed with the man who invented chess and offered him any reward for his achievement. The inventor asked for rice, one grain of rice, placed on a corner square of a chessboard. “One grain?” the king asked. “That would hardly feed a mouse, much less your family.” One grain, the inventor insisted, but if the king would, double the amount on the next square: Two grains of rice. “Certainly!” the emperor agreed. “In fact, I’ll double the amount on each of the board’s squares.” The inventor agreed, but little did the emperor realize — doubling one grain of rice 63 times would yield something like 18 quintillion grains of rice by the end of the board — enough to feed not only the inventor’s family, but the whole village.

This kind of acceleration is precisely what we’ve experienced in the realm of technology. For one generation, the singular defining advancement was the telephone; for another the TV. But “because of the explosive power of exponential growth,” Friedman writes, “the twenty-first century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress.” [5] When advancement happens this fast, how can we not feel out of control — and it just keeps coming. There’s nothing inherently bad about technology; far from it. Look at all that humankind has been able to achieve. Yet in 1951, long before the invention of smart phones and tablets, Abraham Joshua Heschel already understood: “In spite of our triumphs,” he wrote, “we have fallen victims to the work of our hands; it is as if the forces we had conquered have conquered us.” We don’t have to renounce the technologies and gadgets at our disposal, he taught, but we do need to attain some degree of independence from them.

Five thousand, seven hundred and seventy-nine years ago, we were given permission; this year, more than ever, we need to take it: A respite from the speed of life. “The Sabbath is the most precious present mankind has received from the treasure house of God,” wrote Heschel. Israeli poet Chaim Nachman Bialik called Shabbat, “the most brilliant creation of the Hebrew spirit.” (p. xviii-xix) And we miss it. “When we pine for escape from the rat race; … when we fret about the disappearance of a more old-fashioned time, with its former, generally agreed-upon rhythms of labor and repose; when we deplore the increase in time devoted to consumption; … whenever we worry about these things, [our souls] are remembering the Sabbath….” [6]

But all we have to do is reclaim it; it’s ours for the taking. Shabbat “does not require us to leave home, … go on retreat, or leave the world of ordinary life. We do not have to change clothes or purchase any expensive spiritual equipment. We only need to remember.” (Muller, p. 8) And the seventh day doesn’t have to be the arduous “picture-perfect” observance we imagine, either. “In the poetry of the prayer book,” writes Shulevitz, “the Sabbath is a bride greeted by an impatient bridal party with an almost anguished relief. In the more prosaic dominion of my house, the Sabbath sees herself in and sits down to wait.” [7] And. That’s. OK. Shabbat is all about embracing freedom, including freedom from a perfect Shabbat. Stress over Shabbat would defeat its purpose. Candles, Kiddush, challah? You’ll decide. A home-cooked meal? Maybe, but not necessarily. Most important is that you carve out time; how you decide to fill it can evolve later. 

Begin by keeping your calendar open. Make it a personal practice not to schedule meetings or commitments on Shabbat — even for something fun like dinner or a movie. Give yourself the ability to do what your soul tells you it needs to do when you take the time to pay attention to it. Meet a friend on Saturday afternoon because you feel like doing so — not because you’re keeping a commitment that you would. Refrain from doing things which fulfill a goal or purpose, complete something begun before Shabbat, or prepare for something that will conclude after Shabbat is over. With practice, the chores of daily life — folding laundry, grocery shopping, bill paying — will drift away on Shabbat, and what could get done on Saturday will be content to wait until Sunday. And you will, too.

Practice not answering emails on Shabbat — and since you’ve committed to not answering them, why read them either? Phones, television, social media — these are tricky and personal. Each can bring joy, connect families, lift one’s spirits. But they can also make demands, help us to pass time rather than inhabit it, deplete our souls and spirits, as well. So pay attention to how you feel, and remember that, if you wish, Shabbat grants you permission to turn it all off.

This New Year, as we hope and pray that our names will be inscribed for blessing in the Book of Life, let our reclaiming of the sacred gift of Shabbat be our first commitment toward that end. As the poet Marcia Falk has written:

Three generations back

my family had only

to light a candle

and the world parted.

Today, Friday afternoon,

I disconnect clocks and phones.

[But] when night fills my house

with passages,

I begin saving

my life.

 

[1] Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delightful in Our Busy Lives, pp. 2-3.

[2] Teddy Wane, “The 7-Day Digital Diet,” New York Times, February 9, 2014.

[3] Muller, pp. 187-9 (adapted).

[4] Judith Shulevitz, The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time, p. 24ff (adapted).

[5] Thomas Friedman, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, p. 201.

[6] Shulevitz, p. xxix.

[7] Ibid, p. 3.

Not every student is excited for the first day of school.

 

Not everyone is inspired by the blank pages of a brand new notebook.

Not everyone easily relinquishes shapeless summer days for the confines of a set schedule.

Not everyone looks at ten months on the calendar as a glass more than half full.

No, not every student is excited for the first day of school.

 

But, oh, the excitement when one corner of the world suddenly shines in the light of new understanding. 

The pride of a hard earned Way to Go! and Job Well Done!

The inspiration of a book, a subject, a skill you never even knew how much you would love.

That extra inch taller you feel when, even as you look up to older students, you realize there are younger students looking up to you.

 

So to all reluctant students on their first day of school:

May these joyful moments so fill each of the days of the school year to come that, before you know it, you really will be excited—celebrating the glorious last!

Parashat D’varim

This Shabbat we begin D’varim, the book of Deuteronomy — “Moses’ Last Stand.” Not a military campaign, though this final book of the Torah certainly has those, too. But Moses isn’t remembered as a warrior. He’s Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our teacher. And in just a few months’ worth of parashiyot, the Israelites will be continuing their journey without him. The Israelites will enter the Promised Land; Moses will not. Graduation, if you will. So Moses, the teacher, digs his heels into the wilderness sand and commits to making sure they take the most important educational lessons and values of their journey with them. He wants to ensure that these teachings are not just stored somewhere in their memories, but etched upon their hearts — it’s that important, they need to be. So he pulls out all the stops…

For the audio learners, he repeats virtually everything he’s said and taught in the other books of the Torah — and sometimes, as we well know, he repeats it again and again and again. For the visual learners, he uses props — carving the Ten Commandments into tablets of stone, for example, and fashioning an ark in which they can be carried with them always. And for the kinesthetic learners, Moses gets their whole bodies engaged — pronouncing blessings from Mount Gerizim and curses from Mount Ebal; six tribes on each mountain, with the Levites in between, like a camp-wide game of Red Rover.

All of the tactics Moses deploys are for a purpose: So that the narrative of the Israelites’ journey — their degradation in slavery, their deliverance to the wilderness, their covenant with God, and their hopes for the future in the Promised Land — will be remembered and serve as inspiration from generation to generation to generation.

Never again will there be another prophet like Moses, we are told. And that’s probably so. Every prophet is her own person; has his own style and techniques. But there have been inspired orators, courageous organizers, masterful teachers who, if not made from the same mold as Moses, seem to be cut from similar cloth. 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., bore the comparison more often than most, and seemed to embrace it — never more fully than when, on the day before he was assassinated, he declared, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And [God’s] allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not be there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!” And the fact that King’s words, like Moses’, endure — the narrative he told, the way he encapsulated history, the success with which he turned the past into abiding courage for the present and inspiration for the future — tells us the comparison might have been warranted indeed.

I believe there’s another who deserves consideration, as well. Have you heard the name Bryan Stevenson? Civil rights lawyer, Bryan Stevenson? If not, you should. Get your hands on his book, Just Mercy. Look up his organization, (EJI) The Equal Justice Initiative. Listen to his TedTalk, “We Need to Talk about an Injustice.” Read the memoir of his client, Anthony Ray Hinton, called The Sun Does Shine. (Oprah made it her summer book club pick, and we’ll be discussing it this fall in Adult Ed.) And if you’re as inspired and blown away by all of it as I’ve been, then take a trip to Montgomery.

Last weekend, a friend and I made what might be described as a pilgrimage to Montgomery, Alabama. It was from Montgomery that I had flown back to Charleston in 2015, following the terror that infamous June night at Mother Emanuel. So while I had been to Atlanta and Selma, Jackson and Memphis, I had not seen the civil rights landmarks of Montgomery — and there are several. Last weekend we toured the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Memorial Center. We saw Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, the only church Martin Luther King, Jr., ever served as solo pastor. (He preached from his father’s pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.) Only one block from the Alabama State Capitol — nearly in its shadow — we saw the footprints painted on the street outside the church’s doors, commemorating the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March for voting rights. And we walked around the grounds of the Capitol building, noting the Confederate flags that have come down; the statues that remain — the discussion of which was prompted by the same devastating event that had necessitated my flying home three years ago. 

But the main reason we had felt called to Montgomery didn’t exist three years ago: A new museum and memorial established by Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative that, to paraphrase the New York Times, are unlike anything this country has ever seen. And both, in the tradition of Moses, employ a wide range of educational and technological tools to exceptional effect.

The Legacy Museum, established on the site of a former warehouse that once imprisoned enslaved blacks, traces our nation’s foundational history from enslavement to mass incarceration. It tells this single story in four chapters: Kidnapped. Terrorized. Segregated. Incarcerated. But it’s one story; four iterations. Eventually (though with a stunning lack of speed) our legal system outlawed slavery, lynching, and segregation. But laws have merely sublimated certain expressions of white supremacy, allowing others to take their place; they haven’t eradicated its existence. And if there’s any doubt there’s a straight line connecting each chapter back to slavery, consider one image in the museum: A prison in Louisiana. The prison is built on the grounds of a former plantation. In the photo, a supervisor, on horseback, drives a line of dark-skinned prisoners performing labor farmed out for cheap and for which they will never receive a cent. As disturbing as the scene is, it finds grounding in the Constitution, whose Thirteenth Amendment outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude “except as a punishment for crime.”

So how do you teach a narrative in which we are still so immersed as a nation? The EJI knows there’s only one effective way: You immerse the learner in your teaching. 

The first chapter of this story is slavery. After a film that dramatizes the emotion of a father torn from his daughter, and an animated map that conveys the rapid growth of the domestic slave trade and its widespread displacement of parents and children, husbands and wives, visitors descend a dark ramp. Behind bars, in 5 or 6 cells, holograms, white as ghosts, share firsthand accounts of their imprisonment in the space in which you stand. As a mother begs the listener to, “Please find my children… I know they’re here somewhere; I can feel them,” and a brother and sister a few cells down call out for their mother, the connection to our present moment in history is immediate and visceral. Once in the main warehouse space, quotes are not merely displayed on walls, they’re printed on panels of silk mounted from floor to ceiling — and so you have to weave your way among descriptions that alternate between a slave trader’s catalogue of his “stock,” and testimony of those torn from their families and “sold down the river.”

In the second chapter, the widespread terror of lynching is made tangible through a display of earth collected in clear jars on long shelves. Each jar’s contents, ranging from near black soil to red rock, were collected from sites where the Institute has documented a lynching took place. Individuals’ names, the county and date of their lynching, are printed in white. In this way, the scope of more than 4,000 documented lynchings, 185 in the state of South Carolina, begins to sink in… 3 in Dorchester Country, 9 in Florence County, one in Georgetown County — in 1941! But there’s even more immersion at the nearby National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Here there are 800 steel monuments, one for each county in which lynchings are documented to have occurred. Visitors walk between the monuments — reading states, counties, names, and dates — until the floor descends and the monuments appear to rise up, invoking the physicality of the lynchings themselves. And then you’re walking beneath the monuments, reading now the “reasons” for which the lynchings took place: Participation in a protest, speaking to a white woman, “standing around” in a white neighborhood, daring to cast a vote.

Back in the museum, in the third chapter, the utter absurdity and deep entrenchment of segregation takes shape. Another floor to ceiling display reproduces the wide ranging laws that kept blacks and whites separate in this country, from water fountains to barber shops to card games. Another display, resembling a periodic table, catalogues Supreme Court cases whose decisions either expanded civil rights or contracted them. Complicated court history is distilled down to literal black and white: 20 landmark decisions upheld the civil rights of minorities in this country; 47 ruled against them.

And then in the fourth chapter, the current chapter, we confront our era of mass incarceration. Here there are reproduced letters, desperate, written to the Equal Justice Initiative by prisoners. There’s a film that takes you inside notoriously violent St. Clair Correctional Facility, against which the EJI filed a successful class action suit on behalf of its prisoners. But most powerful are these: Reproduced visitation booths in which you, the visitor, sit down in front of a screen, pick up a black wall-mounted phone, and listen to former prisoners tell you their stories of wrongful imprisonment, juvenile life-sentences, and harrowing prison treatment. 

With each of these immersive teaching techniques, the data of each chapter — the narrative — not only emerges, but sticks. Ivy League colleges selling enslaved Africans to fund scholarships for white students. An advertisement by the Dallas County Citizens Council in a Selma, Alabama, newspaper: “Ask Yourself This Important Question,” the headline reads, “What have I personally done to maintain segregation?” (The implication being, have you done enough?) The findings of a 1960 report that “if school integration in the South were to continue at its 1959 rate, it would take 4,000 years for all Southern Negro children to achieve their right to educational opportunity.” (Remember that the next time you hear a public official imploring a minority population to just be patient.) The statistic that 13 states have no minimum age for prosecuting a minor as an adult, including sentences of life imprisonment without parole and the death penalty (South Carolina included). Or that 2/3 — two thirds! — of those sitting in jail on any given day are awaiting trial.

Rabbi David Novak says of Moses: He dealt with people who came from many perspectives — those who accepted the covenant (their history), never looking beneath the surface; those who refused to affirm they were part of the covenant; those who affirmed the covenant, but who struggled to understand what that means, what it demanded of them. Yet Moses never gave up on his people. Martin Luther King affirmed his faith in humanity and their arrival in the Promised Land. And with the Equal Justice Initiative’s museum and memorial, Stevenson isn’t giving up either. It’s hard to imagine any American encountering these immersive exhibits and not leaving changed, charged, challenged in some way. 

As you exit the museum, a series of photos summarize much of what you’ve seen. But this time, they ask questions, as well. Do you believe all slavery should be abolished? Why does it say about us as a society that we imprison – that we execute – both the old and the young? And as you reflect upon their answers, there’s one more exhibit: A large interactive touch-screen that asks: “What Do I Do Now?” At this display you can sign a petition to change the Thirteenth Amendment and abolish all forms of slavery, once and for all. You can sign a petition to integrate schools in Alabama. (That’s right, integrate schools in Alabama. According to the Alabama state constitution, integrated schooling is still illegal — and state referenda to change the Constitution have failed, in 2012 most recently.) And perhaps most important of all, there’s a tab on the screen where, if you have not already, before you leave the museum, you can register to vote. 

When I told people I was going to Montgomery, they asked, “Why?” When I told them I was going to learn about slavery and lynching and mass incarceration, they said, after a beat, “Have fun?” And, no, it wasn’t fun. But it was incredibly empowering — because that’s what good teaching, from a good teacher, does. Armed with knowledge of the past, you can impact the future. Understanding the story, you write the ending. 

Ultimately, I came home from Montgomery with everything the National Memorial for Peace and Justice asks us to hold dear:

With hope because hopelessness is the enemy of justice.

With courage because peace requires bravery.

With persistence because justice is a constant struggle.

With faith because we shall overcome.

Parashat Balak

This week’s Torah portion is one of those gems — a hapless king, a grand mission, a bumbling prophet. There’s even a talking donkey. The whole thing has a Princess Bride-like quality to it; with perhaps a touch of Shrek. And words we find toward the culmination of the story have made their way into our daily liturgy, so that whenever we gather for worship we maintain a connection to this Torah portion and its bold prophecy.

Balak, king of Moab, hires the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites. After Balaam’s donkey does his part to thwart the mission (and I do totally imagine him doing so sounding like Eddie Murphy), Balak succeeds in taking Balaam to an overlook where he can see a portion of the Israelite encampment. But when Balaam opens his mouth to pronounce the curse he’s been hired to deliver, lo and behold, words of blessing emerge instead. So Balak tries again, taking Balaam to a different spot. “Maybe it’s the view that was the problem,” Balak reasons — “try here.” But when Balaam begins to speak this second time, his proclamation is even worse — blessings for the Israelites, and now curses for those who seek their harm, as well. “Stop, just stop!” Balak says, now doubting the wisdom of this great plan. And then finally, from yet another overlook where Balaam can see the entire encampment of Israelites, his “curse” comes out as the famous phrase: 

“Mah tovu ohalecha Yaakov, mishk’notecha Yisrael — 

How good are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.” 

Clearly it’s a blessing, as has been everything that’s come out of Balaam’s mouth. But what is the prophecy saying? What does that one little word “good,” so key to the blessing, mean? Perhaps if we look to other places where we see the word tov in our sacred texts, we might gain a better understanding.

So let’s begin with Psalms (133:1) — much like Mah Tovu, another popular opening song:

“Hinei mah tov u-mah na’im shevet achim gam yachad — 

How good and how pleasant it is for brothers and sisters to dwell together.”

As the Jewish Study Bible teaches, we often think of this verse as a reference to brotherly harmony in a broad, general sense; the good feeling of a group of people — any people — coming together in a warm and joyful spirit. But the verse actual has a very specific context: Against the backdrop of a deep civil divide in ancient Israel, it’s “a hope for the reunification of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms.” It’s a call for two sides — two factions, a split nation — to come together. 

Ordinarily, this is where I would draw parallels between the ancient text and our own day. But there are just too many examples from which to draw, too many ways in which we each feel the divisiveness of our time. So suffice it to say: Is there any doubt we could desperately use a prophecy for this kind of restorative, healing goodness right now?

Of course, we encounter the word tov much earlier than Psalms in our biblical text; we find it throughout the very first story of the very first book of Torah — the story of Creation —  culminating in Genesis 1:31:

“Vayar Elohim et-kol Asher asah v’hinei tov m’od — 

God saw all that God had made and, behold, it was very good.”

Here “good” might mean “beautiful” or “pleasing,” but more precisely it seems to indicate “everything working the way it was meant to.” We get a picture of God surveying all that has been created, and then consulting the blue prints while declaring “tov” — everything is in fine working order.

Nathan Albert, a pastor and storyteller, writes: “Our call as people of God is to be a community where everything is good, beautiful, and working the way it was created to. We are to be tov in a world that desperately needs to get a glimpse of tov; of heaven and earth. … We are to be a community that looks like God. A community where all people have their needs met, where there is no inequality, where injustice cannot have its way, where forgiveness, peace, and joy reign, where mercy always supersedes judgment, and where people lay down their lives for each other. We are to be a community that is so peculiar we actually look a little like heaven on earth; a community where everything and everyone is tov.”

What a beautiful thing it would be if this prophecy of goodness, too, came true.

And both of these ideas of tov, of goodness, seem to fit with what the many rabbis and sages have written about our verse in the prophecy of this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Balak (Numbers 24:5). Once again:

“Mah tovu ohalecha Yaakov, mishk’notecha Yisrael — 

How good are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.”

What exactly does Balaam see when he ascends to a lookout one last time and can finally take in the entire span of the Israelite camp? A community living close together, the sages say, in more than just physical proximity. A nation that clearly cares for one another, protects each other. And — observing the fact that no single tent opening apparently looked into the sightline of another tent opening — a community that respected one another, as well. A community of goodness, worthy of blessing indeed.

Like many of you, I imagine, I’ve been struggling with the lack of this kind of goodness in our community — in our society, in our country — as of late. As I’ve found myself preparing for the Fourth of July this coming week, and an All American, patriotic Shabbat at KKBE next weekend, those descriptors haven’t felt good. It pains me to say it, but America just hasn’t felt like something worth celebrating right now. But then I reread a story, written by Ede in New Mexico a couple of years ago:

Yesterday, my daughter, Karly, had a tough day—Ede wrote. She learned that she had just lost her job. It was a new role as a project lead and she was very excited about it. Due to funding cutbacks, however, the grant money that she had been promised had to be taken back by the state. So, too, Karly’s position. She was devastated.

But life goes merrily along its way and so we must do what we must do. And off Karly went to get groceries.

A short note about my girl here. From day one, Karly has been the kind of human that has never met a stranger. She is Native American and Anglo. She has deep brown/black eyes and dark brown hair (well, most of the time—she is twenty-five; it gets colored quite often). But there is something about her that is approachable, attractive, and friendly. People of all kinds talk to her, randomly, often, and about all kinds of things, young and old.

Yesterday, as she approached the store, there was a gentleman outside the store, who was cold and hungry, who asked her for money to get some food. Karly told him she wouldn’t give him money, but she would be happy to buy him something to eat. She didn’t say anything to him about the fact that she had carefully planned out her shopping list so that she could get everything she needed with the cash she had just withdrawn from the credit union. Instead, she asked him what he would like to eat. 

He said it would be really nice to have a rotisserie chicken since it was already cooked and hot; it was so cold outside. Karly said she would be right back and went in to buy his chicken. When she came back out, she gave him the food. She also went over to her car and got out a coat and gave it to him. She then went back into the store to do her shopping.

She carefully went through the store checking off each item on her list and adding everything up so she did not go over the total dollar amount she had in cash. As she proceeded to the checkout lane and was getting ready to cash out, the gentleman behind her in line told her he was going to pay for her groceries.

She was completely caught off guard.

He told her he had seen her act of generosity and kindness to the man in front of the store and he wanted to pay it forward by buying her groceries. He insisted and paid for everything.

This, Ede writes, is the America I choose.

Where we craft lives of service toward each other with simple acts of grace and dignity. A meal and a warm coat. An acknowledgment of a kindness.

In the rumble of our differences there are all manner of similarities, all manner of commonalities. All we have to do is show up and pay attention. We only lose if we give up. 

This is the America I choose, not red or blue, but a rainbow of possibility.

As I look ahead to the patriotic commemorations of the coming week, this is the America I choose to celebrate, as well. To be sure, we have a lot of work to do to expose and magnify her goodness. One thing we know tov can never mean — whether in regards to our country, the ancient Israelite nation, or anyone — we know it can never mean perfect. 

“What is the difference between true and false prophets,” asks Toledot Yaakov Yosef, who considered Balaam to be a false prophet. “True prophets in most cases come to rebuke the people. They point out the blemishes and the deficiencies of the people and seek to have them mend their ways. False prophets tell the people how wonderful they are, and that there is nothing that needs to be rectified. True lovers of their people, though, are the true prophets.” Victor Frankel wrote: “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

Well, in that case, I guess the good news is the stage is set and conditions are ripe. We have tension. We have striving and struggling. There are many ways in which we need to mend and repair our collective ways. This Fourth of July and throughout the coming weeks and months, may we create the harmony of “Hinei mah tov u-mah na’im…”. May we demonstrate the kindness and mutual care of “Mah tovu ohalecha Ya’akov…”. And may the society, the country, we restore with true patriotism cause God to look down upon us and say once again of these United States of America: “V’hinei tov m’od.”

—

naytinalbert.blogspot.com, 1/22/13

Pantsuit Nation, Libby Chamberlain (editor), pp. 240-241 (adapted).

A prayer for our country.

1,995 minors seeking safety and asylum in this country were separated from their parents between April 19 and May 31 of this year, a period of 6 weeks — and 2 weeks have passed since then.

1,940 adults were separated from their children, in this country, during the same period.

Years ago, during a visit to Yad Vashem — not my first visit to Israel’s Holocaust Memorial, but my first as a parent — I stood utterly devastated in front of a small display of toys and cards with which children were sent on trains as part of the Kindertransport — these small mementos their only enduring connection to the safety and loving embrace of their families.

I put myself in the shoes of a parent and cried. How could one make the impossible choice of sending their child away? I imagined selecting a single toy to accompany my son, and just dissolved in tears. Then I put myself in the shoes of a child and cried. How could a young child even remotely grasp what was happening, the desperation of a parent who would make such a choice? Would they even be aware that a choice had been made?

Never, while I stood there, did it even occur to me to consider that the shoes I might someday wear would be those of a citizen in a country where the inhumane practice of forcibly separating parents and children — asylum-seeking refugees — would be the sanctioned law of the land. Like so many in our country tonight, I face this unconscionable reality… and I cry.

“Thoughts and prayers” don’t even come close to touching the desperate urgency of this moment. But this is the time in our service when we pray for our congregation, our community, and our nation — and this is the space to which we come to recalibrate our moral compass. And so we must pray:

On this Shabbat of Father’s Day Weekend — still feeling the echoes of Mother’s Day celebrations, as well — may the leaders of our nation speedily and clearly see the unequivocal error of their ways. Let the rising indignation of religious communities throughout our country crescendo into a singular, resolute voice declaring Your sacred command — the most repeated in Scripture — “Do not wrong a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Indeed, as long as children are being torn from their parents and parents left to anguish over the wellbeing of their children, it would seem we are all still in Egypt.

Having desperately lost our way, this Shabbat may we speedily find our way back to being a Promised Land.

And let us say: Amen.