Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

Rabbi Gurevitz' creative works: Podcast, blogs, videos and more

Category: Compassion

#BlogElul: If we could see inside other people’s hearts #takeaseatmakeafriend

September 1, 2013 /

One of the most powerful and thought-provoking sermons I ever heard was delivered by a friend while we were students at Hebrew Union College. It was her ‘Senior Sermon’ – the sermon we all give before we graduate in one of the weekday services at the college. She shared an experience she’d had on the train during her commute into the city. One day there was a passenger seated nearby whose music was playing objectionably loudly through his headphones. It was clearly a distraction to all seated nearby, but no-one was doing anything. My friend politely tapped the man on the shoulder and asked if he wouldn’t mind turning down the music a bit. He responded furiously, cursing her and telling her to ‘watch it’, threatening to make trouble for her when they left the train.  She was terrified and unsure what to do next.  No-one nearby on the train spoke up or came to her aid. She’d recently been reading the book ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ by Mitch Albom, a book that I drew from just this past Friday for a creative service where Morrie’s words inspired us to do our own spiritual preparations for the High Holydays.

‘What would Morrie do?’ she asked herself. A little further into the trip, before they reached their destination and departed, she saw that she had an opportunity to speak to the man again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize how much your music meant to you.’ The anger in his face dissipated. He started to tell her that he’d lost everything – his girlfriend, his job… his music was all he had left. In that brief moment he felt seen by someone who cared about him more than they cared about the volume on his iPod. They both left the train in peace. The moment was brief, but there was no question that it was transformative for both of them.

The powerful video above asks us to contemplate how much we don’t know about people. What would it take to uncover just a little of what lies beneath the surface? In the context of community, how transformative could that be?

#BlogElul: Connection to something larger #takeaseatmakeafriend

August 30, 2013 /
One of the challenges of our traditional liturgy at the High Holydays is the medieval language of our liturgy, compounded by the fact that most of us are reading these poetic passages in translation. It’s a bit like trying to navigate your way through Chaucer’s English. And some of the God images that I can get stuck on are the ones that seem to engender a feeling of fear. But in Hebrew, yirah can be translated as fear or as awe. I don’t connect with a God that is feared. That relationship does not convey the loving, compassionate energy that I want to feel connected to when I seek a sense of greater Presence.
But a God that leaves me in awe… that is something that I can completely connect to. When I try to wrap my head around the reality and complexity of the connections that exist between us all and all life, that is truly awe-inspiring.  My mind can’t grasp it all, but if I can do my own, small piece to contribute to fostering connections that are truly loving and compassionate, then I’m participating positively in the flow of giving and receiving in that infinite and intricate web of connection.
That, for me, is the meaning of feeling the awe of God.
And, as Brene Brown puts it that, indeed, brings a sense of perspective, meaning and purpose to my life.

#BlogElul: Every person is my teacher #takeaseatmakeafriend

August 22, 2013 /

It’s easy to learn from the people we like. What about the people that we find more challenging? It is a spiritual practice to do as the quote above proposes to us. It is hard to do such a practice consistently. But sometimes I learn something about myself. Why are my buttons being pressed? Sometimes, if I open myself to listening with greater compassion and less judgment, I come to know something about a person that underlies the behaviors that I find challenging. My heart opens a little more.

There is a concept in Jewish thought – tikkun. You may be familiar with the phrase tikkun olam, which is often mistranslated as ‘social justice.’ Indeed, social justice is one way of acting in the world that brings about tikkun, but the word means much more. It is literally a ‘repair’ – to repair the world. To fix, or repair can happen on many levels. When I hear someone more deeply and a challenging relationship is turned into something more understanding and more loving, that is a tikkun.

When I think back to interactions in my life that have been transformed in this way, I recognize that these moments have contained within them some of the most profound teachings in my life.

#BlogElul 7: Shofar – the cry of compassion

August 25, 2012 /
One of the midrashim that seeks to explain the origins of the different calls on the Shofar that we sound out each Rosh Hashanah has had the most impact on my understanding of teshuvah and the call to action signified by the Shofar blasts.  It tells us that the shofar calls were modeled on the sound of Sisera’s mother, wailing while she waited at the window for his return from battle.

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

A Charter for Compassion

November 12, 2009 /

Today, ‘freelance monotheist’, Karen Armstrong, launched the ‘Charter for Compassion’.  Listen to her presentation at the TED Conference last year, sharing the centrality of compassion at the heart of every major faith tradition.  The Charter affirms this, and seeks to refocus the message of faith around the world to the principles of the ‘Golden Rule’.  It is, of course, not just about words, but deeds.  Idealist?  Perhaps.  But if we do not see it as our mission to teach and emphasize this message of faith, then who can we turn to for hope and transformation in this world?

You can read more about the Charter for Compassion here.  Take a look, and affirm your desire to fulfill the ideal of living your faith through the lens of compassion.  And then, try to bring awareness to acts of compassion that you experience and you share in each and every day.  This is spiritual practice at its most transformative potential.

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