This article was cross-posted at the Rabbis Without Borders Blog at myjewishlearning.com
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Last Saturday night, for our pre-Selichot service study and discussion, I presented the animated shorts of Hanan Harchol, found at www.jewishfoodforthought.com Not only are these charming, they are wonderfully thought-provoking, and generated a great deal of conversation. We watched ‘Forgiveness’ first.
I will speak for myself when I say that, despite my understanding that forgiveness is creating an internal change that allows another person’s acts to no longer keep a grip on my thoughts and emotions – to, as we hear in the animation, no longer let someone ‘live rent free in my head’ – it is an incredibly difficult thing to do in practice. At times, often unexpectedly, I find myself replaying painful scenes from my life when someone’s words hurt me, or I felt wronged, or someone acted in a way that was dismissive or condescending toward me. I have no desire for these scenes to occupy space in my memory banks. But they seem to have an uncanny ability to maintain their grip.
Mindfulness practices can help combat the power of these thoughts. While I may not be able to neutralize them completely, a greater self-awareness can at least enable me to notice when my mind is in that place, and I can then consciously let it go and try to clear the picture in my head. Sometimes that is as good as it gets. I don’t believe that forgiveness is a one-time thing. It is a process that we need to repeat over and over when a particular moment of our past swims back into view, churning up old emotions with it. And then, perhaps, over time, the more we find ourselves able to notice and dismiss the memory and observe rather than be drawn in by the emotions, the more we are able to neutralize the intensity of the memory when it arises the next time.
Why is it so important to forgive? I’ve been thinking a lot during my preparations and sermon-writing for the High Holydays, that our entire orientation to life – our outlook, our motivation to engage in purposeful acts in the world that make a difference to the community we live in, and the ways that we engage with others on a day-to-day basis, are all driven by the things that we marinate our minds in. There are many ways that we can marinate the mind in something that is burning with negativity. Painful memories from the past are some of the ways. And I know that, for me, when those memories arise, I feel myself get tense and my teeth grit, and my brow furrows, and I’m more likely to be sharp with someone or impatient, and I’m more likely to want to shut myself off from interactions and just hibernate in my own, private space.
But when I do those things, how can I make a positive difference in the world? How can I contribute in a meaningful way to the life of my family, friends, or community? How can I be open enough to give and receive love, to act compassionately, to create space for a different kind of interaction next time around?
Forgiveness is the key. When we read Jonah on Yom Kippur afternoon, that is the message. Jonah wants to see strict justice applied to Nineva. When we dredge up past scenes of hurt, isn’t that what we want? We want to know that person got their comeuppance. We want to know that someone gave them as good as they gave. We want to see them fail at something. But what does that achieve? If we recognize that when we feel miserable we are less likely to do good in the world, why would we hope for someone else’s misery? Yes, there are times when acts are committed that require societal justice to be done. But, on an individual level, forgiveness and legal justice are compatible and can co-exist, because one is an internal state of mind, while the other is a social system for maintaining some controls over the worst excesses of human behavior.
Forgiveness is the key.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
A few years ago, I saw a young woman, Susan (a pseudonym), in my office for a follow up exam. I had diagnosed an early melanoma on her skin about five years before, when she was 27. At the time, she was just about to be married. Soon after her marriage, I also diagnosed her husband with a very rare and aggressive cancer that had spread to his skin. After a short but intense battle, he succumbed to the disease. Susan came regularly for follow up exams and was physically healthy, but was understandably finding it hard to resume any semblance of a normal life.
As I examined Susan I was startled to see the Hebrew word “R’faeinu” tattooed in bold black letters onto her lower back. Susan is not Jewish, her former husband was not Jewish, and the tattoo was a new
acquisition. I thought carefully how to frame a question about the tattoo. I asked her if she knew what it meant and how she came to get that particular tattoo. She told me that she had gone to a tattoo artist. Susan told the tattoo artist that she had gone through some tough times and needed to make a dramatic change in her life in order to move forward. Susan felt that getting a tattoo would be a tangible
reminder to herself that she couldn’t remain stuck in the past. I asked her if she wanted me to tell her what the Hebrew word meant; I told her that it was only used once in the Torah. It was the word uttered by Moses when he plead with God that Miriam be healed (from leprosy). I explained that Miriam was not only Moses’ sister, but the one who found water for the wandering Hebrews, and that without her, the newly freed slaves would probably perish. Miriam was healed and the Jewish people survived. I told Susan that I couldn’t have come up with a more appropriate sentiment than artist had tattooed on her.
Susan decided to move back to her home state to be closer to her parents and the rest of her family, and I have lost contact with her. Every week that we recite a healing prayer with the word “r’faeinu”
and every year when we read Kedoshim I think of Susan. I wonder at the combination of luck, intuition, and presence of God that led the tattoo artist to come up with that particular word on that particular person, and whether the artist had any idea of how perfect the choice was. I hope that Susan is further on her road to wellness, and wish her a r’fuah shleimah, a full healing of the body and soul.
- I love myself.
- I have immense potential to grow.
- I appreciate my quirks as well as my gifts.
- I am proud of both big and small accomplishments.
- I express love generously and often.
- I approach disagreements from a loving perspective.
- I give without expecting anything in return.
- I extend courtesy and respect to both superiors and subordinates as part of my work.
- I extend amazing service to clients or customers as one of my many goals.
- I act naturally and honestly to promote a great environment.
- We welcome all who visit the congregation from the parking lot, to the phone, in meetings, services, and all written correspondence.
- We respond with immediate compassion and caring to those in need.
- We recognize special events such as birthdays, anniversaries, recovery from illness and special lifecycle moments as a community.
When I’ve had a difficult interaction with someone, what are the kinds of excuses I come up with to avoid dealing with the unfinished business?
- They need time to cool off before we can have a fruitful conversation.
- I need time to cool off before we can have a fruitful conversation.
- This always happens when we try and have this conversation – I should just avoid further conversation.
- I don’t know exactly how this will end, and if I can’t predict how the conversation will go, maybe I shouldn’t go there.
- I’ve overthought where this conversation will go, and I don’t want to go there. So my imaginary outcome to this next exchange is stopping me from having the conversation.
Perhaps you have further excuses you can add to this list. These are some of mine. In areas of my life where I’m not always proud of my words or actions, I look to those that I can learn from, inspired by their example. When it comes to getting beyond the excuses I have for following up on difficult conversations, my spouse is one of my greatest inspirations.
She doesn’t like to leave things hanging. Knowing that someone is upset with her, she seeks to heal the rift sooner rather than later. She seeks to have a respectful conversation to understand differences of opinion, or how words or acts that were intended one way were received another. And she is dedicated to honesty in the midst of the exchange.
We all have angels in our lives. Angels are melachim – messengers – in Hebrew. We all have people who deliver important messages that we need to hear at crucial moments in our lives. Sometimes its someone we’ve never met before and may never meet again. But one interaction can teach or inspire us. Sometimes its someone who is a constant and important part of our lives. And they teach us how to deal with the difficult challenges in our lives, and how to overcome some of our most-repeated limitations.
So what are your excuses? And who inspires you or teaches you, encouraging you to move beyond them by their example?
We all have certain people and certain kinds of things that ‘push our buttons’. I certainly do. I was just reminded last night about a particular pattern of behavior that I’ve observed over and over again from certain individuals that is hurtful to others. I found myself infuriated. In the heat of the moment, my buttons are pushed, and I feel the anger rising.
On the one hand, this is natural, human behavior. When you see people that you love being hurt, you want to protect them from that hurt. On the other hand, when individuals who are part of your world – family, co-workers, neighbors, etc. continue to exhibit annoying or thoughtless behavior even after you’ve taken thoughtful steps to try and bring the effects of their behavior to their attention, yet they show no sign of change… what next?
The ‘easier’ option may be to minimize one’s interactions. But that may not always be possible. Another path may be to continue to inform the other of the way you are experiencing their actions or words. In unequal power relations (e.g. an employee and a boss), that may not always feel like a viable course of action either. Of course, if the behavior is truly abusive, it may well be necessary to remove yourself from the situation by leaving – something that takes courage but which, ultimately, can be enormously freeing and healing.
What else can you do? We have no ability to make someone else change. We can only truly take charge of making change within ourselves. And so, perhaps we can change our response? Perhaps, when we notice the anger rising we can take a step back and laugh, saying, ‘look at them doing that ridiculous thing that they always do!’ Perhaps instead of anger, we can learn to nurture compassion in our response, ‘I feel so sorry that they so lack the awareness to understand how their behavior makes them look in the eyes of others. That must be so isolating for them.’
The ability to turn the experience in this way helps to get us a little closer to the next step … forgiveness. It is hard to forgive if we truly believe that someone is intentionally hurting us again and again. And, if that is indeed what is going on, perhaps its not the time to explore forgiveness until we’ve been able to create more distance. But if someone seems to exhibit the same behaviors over and over, and seems incapable of change, perhaps we can find our way to forgive what they do out of ignorance and limitation.
Change is hard. Self-awareness is a necessary component of making change in our own lives. Finding ways to let go of our frustrations when others have not changed, we can take the opportunity to look within and find the places in our own lives where change is hard for us. If our awareness of how the lack of change in another makes us feel can inspire us to take up the challenge of making the changes necessary in our own lives, perhaps they’ve given us a gift after all?
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
This past Shabbat, reflecting upon the arrival of Elul with my congregation, I mentioned that I would use my own blog to share some of the other contributions to #BlogElul that have been inspiring me. First, a brief excerpt from my sermon, where I offered some thoughts on what this month of preparation is all about. After all, the 10 days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur feel intense enough to many of us… what purpose does thinking about this entire month as ‘preparation’ time serve?
- We know that we’ve prepared our souls when we have something to fall back upon in a moments of crisis.
- We know that we’ve prepared our souls when the words that come out of our mouths in the heat of the moment are the same as the ones we would say if we had time to reflect first.
- We know that we’ve prepared our souls when we are able to articulate what we believe and why.
- We know that we’ve prepared our souls when we can make ‘big talk’ and not just ‘small talk’ in our interactions with other people.
- We know that we’ve prepared our souls when we’ve made choices about how we structure our day such that we have space for something that nourishes the spirit – taking a walk, a swim, meditating, yoga, quiet reading time…
- We know that we’ve prepared our souls when we can find the spark of holiness in the midst of the messiness of everyday life.
- We know that we’ve prepared our souls when we feel a sense of inner peace and wholeness. If this day were to be our last (the big question that, with courage, is the question to explore on Yom Kippur), could we find that place of inner peace?
I don’t think that there is anyone in this room, myself included, who can answer ‘yes’ to most of those questions. Spiritual preparedness takes practice.
Kol Isha: Reform women rabbis speak out! – a wonderful, new blog, featuring a different woman rabbi each day – many have been posting on #BlogElul themes.
Below is a review of the themes of each day of the month (we’re up to day 10!). If you don’t have a blog of your own, but would like to have a go at writing a reflection on one of the day’s themes, email it to me and I’ll post yours here on this blog in the coming days.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
Who was Sisera and who was his mother?
In the story of Devorah, the Judge, Sisera is the enemy. He is the General that Devorah and her army general, Barak, are out to defeat. There is a poignant line toward the end of the story, when we are told that Sisera’s mother waits at her window for his return. It is poignant because we, the reader, know that he has been defeated and has fled. But his end is gruesome. A woman, Yael, encourages him to rest in her tent. She feeds him and gives him drink and, when he is asleep, she cuts off his head.
‘Hurrah! The enemy is defeated!’ might be our response. But then we find a rabbinic midrash that suggests that the sounds of the Shofar, that most emblematic of sounds for the High Holydays, remind us of the cries of Sisera’s mother.
In the midst of our season of return, when we are seeking forgiveness, when we are asked to find it in our hearts to forgive others, we struggle with our desire for justice in our world and the world’s need for compassion. That, after all, is the moral of the story of Jonah that we read on Yom Kippur. If we are all Jonahs then cities will be destroyed and who could stand in judgment? But if we are in the image of God, we respond with compassion, particularly when we see remorse in the words or actions of another.
The sound of the Shofar reminds us that even those that we regard as our enemies… even those who we regard as evil and have committed the worst atrocities – they have a mother. And that mother cries out in sorrow when harm comes to them.
Framing our world in this way, I have found myself able to be less angry at wrong-doing in the world, and, instead, feel the emotions of deep sadness. It doesn’t make me any less desiring to act in ways that might help make this world a little better. But instead of running in with sword unleashed, angrily battling the world of injustice, the sound of the Shofar asks me to see the world with greater empathy. It calls me to unleash a little more love and compassion in the ways that I seek to make a difference.
And I can thank Sisera’s mother for reminding me of these valuable lessons.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
I’m taking two of the #BlogElul themes and putting them in one for this blog – Trust and Faith. In Hebrew, there is one word that can capture aspects of both of these english words – Emunah. There is another word in Hebrew, bitachon, that can also convey ‘trust’, and sometimes bitachon and emunah get used interchangeably. But in rabbinic literature, emunah is often the word that conveys both meanings.
When we awake in the morning, the traditional blessing that is recited upon noticing that we have regained consciousness is Modeh (Modah for women) Ani lefanecha, Melech Chai v’kayam, she’he’chezarta bi nishmati b’chemla rabah emunatecha: Thankful am I before You, Living and Eternal Sovereign. You have returned my soul to me in mercy. How great is your trust/faith in me!
The idea of waking with this blessing goes back to Talmudic times and is derived from verses in Lamentations (3:22-23) that rabbis interpreted to mean that Creation is renewed every day. Our souls are safeguarded in God’s hands, metaphorically speaking, while we sleep and, when we awake, it is God who has restored our souls.
When I pray these words, I often focus more on the first phrase – Thankful am I before You… There is so much to contemplate in these few words. A story is told of a Hassidic master, the Apter Rebbe, who had not started his morning prayers, yet it was now noon. He explained that he had awoken and begun to recite modeh ani, but began to wonder, ‘Who am I?’, and ‘Who is the You before Whom I am I?’ Still pondering these questions, he had been unable to go forward. (in ‘A Book of Life: Embracing Judaism as a Spiritual Practice, by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, p. 5).
Focusing on the first part of the prayer can invoke a sense of awe if, like the Apter Rebbe, one truly begins to think about the essence of the ‘I’ and what we understand to be the ‘Thou’.
But the last part of the prayer is where we find the word, emunah, and the emphasis is quite different. How great is Your faith. Does God need faith? Surely not. But on days when we might not feel like opening our eyes, on days when we might not be looking forward to the tasks that lie ahead, on days when we feel loss, pain, loneliness… uttering the words of Modeh Ani can remind us that each day is created anew. We have been given the gift of today. What shall we do with it? When we are lacking faith in our own strength, our own abilities, or our own will to get ourselves up and out of bed, we remind ourselves that God has faith in us. Its God’s little daily pep talk with us.
Here faith and trust are interconnected in one Hebrew word – emunah. God has faith in us. Our soul has been entrusted to us for one more day so that we may do something remarkable with it. And God believes in our capacity to do just that. God trusts that we will use this day wisely. Rabah emunatecha, we say – Great is your faith/trust. Why so great? Because perhaps we didn’t use the gift we were given so wisely yesterday. Perhaps we didn’t do all that we could have with our time. But great is God’s faith that we may still live up to our full potential. Preparing for Rosh Hashanah, we are invited to consider how we are using each gift – each day. We are called upon to have the faith to believe that more is possible. We are called upon to trust and believe that we can raise ourselves higher.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
Today’s #BlogElul theme is counting. Round about now, there are parents everywhere counting down to the start of the school year. For some, they are counting down to their kids being back in a regular schedule – they can stop worrying about how to keep them occupied in the wide expanse of Summer. For some, they are counting down to the end of the delicious, extended time they are able to have with their children in a qualitatively different way to the rest of the year. For most, its probably a combination of the two, depending on the day and the hour, and how adorable (or not) our kids are being.
Poet and writer, Merle Feld, has a powerful poem in her book, ‘A Spiritual Life’ that describes a mother looking through the window at her child, worrying about her wellbeing. She reflects on the years she spent watching and worrying, never just looking out the window to take in the pleasure of watching her child at play.
I’ve recently been through (admittedly, am still going through) a transition of my own. I left my position as the Associate Rabbi of one congregation to begin as the Senior Rabbi of another. The last month in my last post was both a counting down of the precious days I had left there, in a community that I loved, and a counting down to beginning a new and exciting phase of life in a community that I was looking forward to getting to know. On days when I felt myself consciously counting, I realized that this act was a way of managing my emotions and the mix of excitement and anxieties that come with making significant changes in one’s life. But, in the moments that I stopped counting and, instead, was just ‘being’, I experienced a much more complex and richer array of emotions. I allowed myself to feel all that was happening for me, my spouse, and the communities that I was a part (or soon to be a part) of. These emotions could sometimes feel overwhelming, but it was at these times that I was most present to what was happening, moment by moment.
I’ve noticed in other contexts too, that counting often appears to be a substitute for just being present. Like the mother in Merle Feld’s poem, worrying about things that may not be real, counting the passing of days and years, but missing out on the sheer pleasure of play by simply being present to her child in the moment.
We can count our days, or we can learn to make each day count. And they are very different things. What choice will you make today?