BEING WHO WE ARE AMONGST OTHERS –MOVING FROM OUR COMFORT ZONE TO OUR COURAGE ZONE

Several weeks ago, I gave this D’var Torah for Parshat Shelach Lecha. As we are in the middle of the book of our travails and challenges (BaMidbar) in the cycle of weekly Torah readings in the Jewish community, I thought it appropriate to share the general contours of what I said then, with some changes appropriate for this setting as we all think about our difficult world today. Here is generally what I shared two weeks ago.

In our world today, we are painfully aware of the results of harmful reports. I was thinking of the many times I sit with different friends in my Orthodox Jewish world of observance and we talk about what has been going on in the world. I find myself in these settings too often sharing the need with others to constantly remain objective and to not vilify any group of people because of the actions of individual members of that group, a teaching that can indeed be found in our own code of language practices, Shmirat HaLashon. Obviously, there has been much in the media for some time about Islamicists, that is extremists and radicalists, not to be confused with good honest caring Moslems, of which I count quite a few amongst my personal friends and colleagues through the years. Within these discussions among my more religiously observant Jewish friends, I too often get challenged with something along the lines of “Tell me, Sunnie, you don’t really believe there is any such thing as a good Moslem, do you?” Sadly, I get this type of question way too often in my life, given the intersection of people in religious communities, political affiliations, ethnicities, etc. that are part of our personal and communal lives. I then proceed to share wonderful stories about people in my life who happen to be Moslem, and yes, they are quite good Moslems in the same way we hope to be good Jews but unfortunately not everyone in that grouping is necessarily practicing what is considered good and correct according to our sacred texts either!

Harmful reports. This is how we begin Parshat Shelach Lecha, with the Israelites sending members of their group to check out the land they are about to enter – Canaan historically, for our purposes today, what we call Israel. Nechama Leibowitz poses the question as to why the Israelites preferred to rely on the scary and off-putting reports brought by their chosen reconnaissance team as opposed to what they had already been told by G-d. She speaks of this adventure as an opportunity to check their own prejudices and fears, while remembering who they are as human beings and members of the Jewish Nation. We are left with many opinions regarding the degree to which they succeeded or failed in this undertaking.

“Send for yourself people [to scout]” Rashi makes a point that we must remember that these individuals had to be men of distinction (not just rank and file members of the group as אנשים might convey in other cases in which this seemingly non-descript term is employed). Nechama and many others also point to the fact that the people who were sent were indeed of known repute. As Nechama teaches, the preferred policy would have indeed for them to have relied on what G-d had told them; but given that this was the way they chose to go, G-d held back as G-d often did and did not interfere. Therefore, when these chosen leaders in whom the collective ישראל בני had placed their trust come back and talk about giants, and exceedingly huge grapes and terrible terrain, there is fear that might be expressed in the question, “So tell me, is there anything good about this land?” Even the two members of the reconnaissance team that did give a report that was not negative were not necessarily enough to dispel fears that had been mounting. Fear is definitely a most explosive element that leads to a tendency to believe in harmful reports.

Then of course, we have to look at the players who create and facilitate the chaos that can be caused by such harmful reports and their aftermath in this drama as reported in the words of our Torah. We have the people who choose the reconnaissance team, a piece of the story that we see in the version that is repeated later in Devarim (1:6 ff) but is not indicated here. Then there are the leaders who are chosen to go and check out the land; the people waiting for the report and the various circumstances that provide the backdrop in which these findings are reported. We could clearly have had a narrative that was cast quite differently, having the leaders return and talk about people who are so healthy and large, fruits that are large and sweet, and land that is just waiting to be tilled, but this is not the spirit in which the report is handed over nor how it is heard. Alternatively, the leaders could have returned having discussed and offering a strategy of how this people, the Israelites could go and settle the land that they knew was theirs and do so given that other nations knew about them and their G-d, their successes. This too did not happen, apparently.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asks the following question, almost incredulously, How is it that the Israelites of whom others were afraid feared them? What happened; what had they lost? How do we note that they even thought the grasshoppers could not be overpowered by either them, or even G-d, according to some of the commentaries distillation of what happened?

Rabbi Sacks clarifies what he believes is going on according to a teaching that he hands over from the Lubavitcher Rebbe:

The spies were not afraid of failure, he said. They were afraid of success.

What was their situation now? They were eating manna from heaven. They were drinking water from a miraculous well. They were surrounded by Clouds of Glory. They were camped around the Sanctuary. They were in continuous contact with the Shekhinah. Never had a people lived so close to God.

What would be their situation if they entered the land? They would have to fight battles, maintain an army, create an economy, farm the land, worry about whether there would be enough rain to produce a crop, and all the other thousand distractions that come from living in the world. What would happen to their closeness to God? They would be preoccupied with mundane and material pursuits. Here they could spend their entire lives learning Torah, lit by the radiance of the Divine. There they would be no more than one more nation in a world of nations, with the same kind of economic, social and political problems that every nation has to deal with.

Isolationism is something we are seeing more and more in our world today – religious isolationism, political isolationism, socio-economic isolationism; and it is too often this isolationism that breeds fear. While taking the approach that the King does in the 1946 film Anna and the King of Siam, it is so much easier to think that you are the only one who is right, who is best, who is the most, who simply is! It is much more difficult to listen to the “OTHER” who Anna is taken to be and to learn about other nations who are bigger than you, who have different ways than you and who may look differently than you. How will you negotiate with them? How will you live with them? Will you become lesser by doing so?

Interesting enough, I am quoting a screenplay that clearly told a story of a world in which this dynamic of collective whole and individual sovereignty were playing out as dynamics that were not necessarily complementary to each other. And here we are 70 years later watching this old battle play out yet again. So how do we as Jews today think about this dialectical relationship and the balance of the maintenance of our collective while joining other communities of faith in shared visions and goals?

Rabbi Sacks continues by teaching as follows:

But that (isolated sovereignty) is not the Jewish project, the Jewish mission. God wanted the Israelites to create a model society where human beings were not treated as slaves, where rulers were not worshipped as demigods, where human dignity was respected, where law was impartially administered to rich and poor alike, where no one was destitute, no one was abandoned to isolation, no one was above the law and no realm of life was a morality-free zone. That requires a society, and a society needs a land. It requires an economy, an army, fields and flocks, labour and enterprise. All these, in Judaism, become ways of bringing the Shekhinah into the shared spaces of our collective life.

The receiving and settling of this land is a responsibility and a privilege to be earned, not a right to be assumed. Gunther Plaut and so many others point to the failure of the B’nai Yisrael to acknowledge that their time had come to grow and mature and take on the next part of their journey. They were just not yet up to the task. Perhaps G-d had to pull back a bit and not make it so easy for them, you know, take incremental steps of teaching them how to fend for themselves. We will continue to see this play out in the weeks to come.

So, here we are, with an opportunity to look deep into ourselves, and our fears, and not take the easy way of saying “We are right, they (whoever they may be) are wrong!” As David Hartman and Nehama Leibowitz constantly teach in their various drashas, to look at ourselves with the myopic view of always being right and righteous is to MISS THE POINT of what Jonathan Sacks has identified as our mission. WE ARE TO BE PART OF THE WORLD and to interact with others, work through challenges, accept that there will be hard and difficult steps along the way and always stay true to the mission of being involved with the nations of the world, not be afraid of them.

Just as the B’nai Yisrael had to NOT BE AFRAID and report generalizations that were indeed daunting, so too we today have a responsibility to not react with fear in a similar manner to what we hear and pass on harmful reports. Let us instead be true to our mission to be a light amongst all of the nations who have lights of their own to shine for us as well and recognize the good that G-d placed in all of us. Further, let us remember that people such as Balaam, who will bless the nation of Israel in two weeks in our Torah reading, Jethro who was a treasured advisor, and so many others DO SHOW US DIFFERENT WAYS OF HOW TO remain who we are and interact with others who are different than we are. This does not TAKE AWAY from our identity but can add immeasurably to it. THIS IS MOVING FROM OUR COMFORT ZONE TO OUR COURAGE ZONE and to take ALL THAT WE ARE into that zone as we work to better understand others.

My Memories of Elie Wiesel

Motzei Shabbat (this past Saturday night) we all heard that a giant for all of us, Elie Wiesel, passed from his sojourn on this earth. In the obituary that appeared in the New York Times, people were asked to share memories, so here I go. While this is a name that is known to all, I have the particular Zechut (privilege) of having had several meaningful interactions with Elie Wiesel through my life and I would like to add these little snipets to what we know about this amazing human being who was truly G-d’s gift to us all, not just for his memories of how horrible mankind can experience but how honorable and amazing we can aspire to be.

My first experience was in 1970 during one of the huge Soviet Jewry rallies and protests in Washington D.C. I was staying with my girlfriend (Hi JK, if you are reading this) in Silver Spring and we were planning to go to the rally. My parents did not know of my plans but there was no way I was not going to be part of this important event. So off we go, at the age of 17 to this amazing and very emotionally charged gathering. Elie Wiesel was one of the leaders of the march and as it turns out I was standing not too far behind him. This was one of the famous (infamous?) gatherings at which everyone sat in the middle of the street and the police arrested every fourth person they counted. It turns out that while I was actually involved intimately in one of the planning committees for this Rally, I was rather young and looked younger, so no one was carting me off to jail. However, friends of mine told me that I was on the television because they were filming exactly where I was standing behind the man that was leading our very large and noisy group. I called my parents to tell them not to worry and lets just say they were not pleased, actually more than that! I will not even repeat what my sweet father said to me on that occasion! But I remember being so taken by the commitment of the crowd and the stature of this quietly powerful man who was rallying us on.

A few years go by and it is the winter of 1972-73 (I think I have that right). Elie Wiesel was being awarded a citation by B’nai Brith International, and they chose the Presidents of the Hillel campus organizations of University of Maryland and George Washington University to present the award to him. I was the President of the GWU Hillel at the time and therefore was chosen to be able to honor him. I remember snipets of the event, his wife, Marian who was a rather striking woman (and taller than him in high heels) with a great deal of class in a beautiful fitted red dress with her hair in what would now be called an up do. The other student and I were standing with Elie and Marian Wiesel after the presentation and were able to have a conversation about life and their perspectives. I distinctly remember them telling us they would NEVER have children because as survivors who had seen what they saw, they could not subject a child to the horrors of this world. I was so sad because I thought they more than deserved the joy of bringing a new life into the world. So, as the saying goes, “man plans and G-d laughs.” At the time, Marian was already pregnant and their son, Shlomo Elisha would be born later that year. I remember thinking how glad I was that these two soulful people brought another soul into this world. I am pretty sure that this would be what G-d had in mind, if I could be so presumptuous.

More years pass and it is now the mid-eighties. I am being given an award by the Second Generation Children of Holocaust Survivors for curriculum I had written and programs I had created for meaningful Holocaust education. Guess who the speaker is! You guessed! After the program, I had the opportunity once again to stand with Elie Wiesel and I shared my story with him. I asked him, “Do you remember when you received your award from B’nai Brith International?” Of course, he replied, I remember it was one of (if not) my first awards and it was in Washington D.C. I then asked if he remembered who presented the award. He did not but remembered there were students there. So I explained who I was and what I remember him saying and then wished him Mazel Tov on Elisha’s Bar Mitzvah because he would have been 13 by now. At this point, Elie Wiesel was in tears and hugged me. One friend wanted to know what I did to the poor man because as he put it, “He makes others cry, what did you do to make him break down in tears?”

Some years after that, in the later 90’s I was a speaker at a conference in Baltimore, where Elie Wiesel gave the Keynote Address. Afterwards, we spoke and again acknowledged our passing connection in the shared space that brought us together in earlier years. That would be the last time I would see him.

Elie Wiesel was indeed a soulful and important voice for all of us, our children, and for those not even here yet as well. He was and will continue to be a most important voice for our collective memory as we consider the terrible injustices mankind can inflict on us if we are not careful. This was precisely why he led that Soviet Jewry Rally so long ago and why he has continued to be a voice for all injustices that are inflicted on various groups in our human family. It is now on all of us to continue to tell his stories and to continue sharing his voice with others. In this way, WE WILL NEVER FORGET!

Elie Wiesel, thank you for all that you have been and done and will continue to do through those who have learned so much from you. Now rest in peace and may your memory always be for a blessing.