WORKS IN PROGRESS
There is another side to the coin of personal healing which is equally central to our work as klei kodesh. In addition to our efforts to take care of ourselves and to encourage and support that same effort in other individuals, there is being a presence and advocate for healing in the collective. While it is crucial that klei kodesh be as healthy as possible, it is not possible for societal healing to be accomplished solely person by person. There needs to be a shift in the collective consciousness to accomplish the structural changes which are absolutely necessary if we are to have a creative future as a species.
Accepting this premise requires that we learn to embody courses of action which may be difficult, unpopular, and frustrating. Among other things (and in no particular order) these include:
• Actualizing the adage of thinking globally and acting locally. This is the essence of the halachic process wherein we decide which choice to make based on its connection to the relationship with the Divine which we agreed to at Sinai and the flow of events leading to the redemption.
• Reaching out beyond the choir. While it is helpful to us as individuals, sharing our ideas and concerns only within our own mailing lists and congregational newsletters, it is also insulating and supports the feelings both that we are doing something and that there is reason to throw up our hands in frustration with those who disagree with us. So often I hear a variant of this: “I just can’t understand how someone can think that way” or “How can any sane person vote…” My response and encouragement to you all is that we better understand how these things are possible if we can hope to change the suicidal path we are on. For me, this means bringing the best and most universal parts of my Judaism to my life on an island with few Jews and great need. In other words, there is no one path for all of us to take. Each of us needs to find the interface between our Judaism as spiritual practice and the needs of those who are as yet unaware or resistant to the consciousness that spiritual practice can elicit.
• We need to embody the changes we are advocating and do so publically. If airplane travel is disproportionally polluting, then we need to model this awareness by at least reducing our air travel. It is, in my view, a shame that it took the pandemic to get us to do what we should have been doing for years. Each of us has parts of our lives where change can be made going beyond the symbolic emcouragement of readers not to print out emails.
• I learned recently that there are two kinds of hope. There is hope that (passive) and hope to (active). I can hope that vegetables will grow in my garden and I can hope to plant my garden so that vegetables will grow. It is crucial that we consent to be agents (Thomas Homer-Dixon). In the words of Greta Thunberg: “Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people to give them hope. I don’t want your hope; I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. To feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.” We are indeed walking on Reb Nachman’s narrow bridge; we are walking that line where the next thing we do can tip the world one way or the other.
When I shared the beginnings of this essay with the students in the ALEPH Ordination Program, the parshah of the week was Va’era. Reading this portion within the frame of personal and collective healing and growth, I’ve already pointed out how Moshe’s willingness to postpone the brit milah of his son in favour of his larger mission was not the right decision. And once Moshe gets to Egypt and begins talks with the Israelite and Egyptian leadership, things do not get any easier for him.
He had asked God during his job interview, “What if the Israelites don’t believe me? What if they say that I’m wrong, that God didn’t appear to me?” So God gives him three signs and assures Moshe that even if the people reject the first two, they will for sure accept the third as real. And the people do accept Moshe’s testimony, at least at first. Pharoah, however, immediately rejects Moshe’s call for a three day holiday, labels him a bearer of fake news, and makes things worse for the Israelites. At that point, the Israelites turn on Moshe.
As the story unfolds, the people do come to accept the truth of Moshe’s message as they witness the plagues which befall the Egyptians while sparing them. Pharoah, on the other hand, refuses to acknowledge fact, preferring to think that each plague is a unique event, an act of God as it were, and insists on trying to maintain the status quo in spite of the evidence to the contrary. This reminds me of stories of people who, while dying from Covid-19, continue to believe that that pandemic isn’t real and that they are not dying from this virus. It would seem that healing from trauma, individual or collective, requires time, many small steps, and also setbacks. Just as it took the Israelites a full generation of transition before they could truly put their collective trauma in the past, so we are learning that the trauma of the holocaust and the addictive effects of our indulgent life styles cannot be transcended simply by an act of will, as the work being done by R. Tirzah and others demonstrates.
Don’t forget that even healers have doubts and setbacks and need reassurance and support. Moshe needed Aharon to help him articulate his message and to stand by him as an anchor. You are not obligated to carry your burdens alone. Further, we need to be honest about our own mistakes and accept ourselves as flawed leaders whose deepest darkness can best be revealed by a trusted friend and/or mashpi’a. Reb Zalman talked about this in his wonderful teaching on Yom Kippur Kattan. He called on all of us to have a mashpi’a as he also had. This person does not need to be from our chevre and certainly should not be a congregant. My first such relationship was with an Anglican priest with whom I co-chaired a conference on family in British Columbia decades ago. Remember, as well, that Eastern European Hassidut harnessed joy in the service of self improvement, of mussar, as Reb Schneur Zalman made clear in his introduction to the Tanya.
We often refer to our tradition’s comfort with revealing the flaws of our founders and leaders. For us, the fact that our klei kodesh wrestle with the same temptations and desires as do the people they serve is a plus. Putting klei kodesh on pedestals which protect them both from the difficulties of daily life and from being relevant is a serious error of both mainstream Judaism and the Jewish religious right. What made many of our spiritual leaders what they were/are is the fact that they participated in the same lives as their followers. Rabbis of the Talmud practiced trades, some of which were quite humble and involved manual labour, as Hillel the water carrier attests. The maggid, Dov Ber, had serious health issues and died young. Reb Nachman lost family members at a young age and suffered from TB. Reb Schneur Zalman had to flee his house to avoid the French army and lost manuscripts in the process. Reb Zalman had circulation issues that made it hard for him to sit for long periods. There is no requirement that one attains perfection first in order to be a kli kodesh nor is it necessary to pretend that we have answers when often the best we can do is help ourselves and others live with the questions and uncertainties as best we can.
I love the story Reb Zalman would tell the audience at the semicha ceremony. One day, the president of the shul and a big donor were walking down the hall and passed the rabbi’s study, whose door was open. The donor looked in and saw the rabbi reading from a book. He asked the president what the rabbi was doing and the president responded that the rabbi was learning. The donor asked, “I thought we were getting a finished product!”
We are, always, works in progress.