The Thickening Around Your Hearts

The following is an adaptation of my d'var Torah from this past Shabbat.

Outside the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, last week
image found at msnbc.msn.com

The Sikh Temple shooting has received so much less coverage, so much less outcry, than the mass shooting less than two weeks earlier in Colorado. Is it the Olympics? Compassion fatigue? Or is it plain old racism, or xenophobia?

Or, is it something less sinister but more insidious than that? Is it simply that average Americans can’t relate because, as Robert Wright wrote in The Atlantic, “They can imagine their friends and relatives—and themselves—being at a theater watching a batman movie; they can't imagine being in a Sikh temple.”

As a Jewish community, perhaps we can relate better. We are, after all, a minority people and religion in this nation and all others around the globe but one. And so we have stories like this from JTA, and this press release and blog entries such as this and this from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

Still, I wonder how many of us followed the news of the Wisconsin temple shooting with the same level of interest as the Colorado theater shooting coverage.  After all, Jews are not Sikhs. We get top billing in the great “Judeo-Christian tradition” so many Americans are fond of claiming, and thus strike most Americans as not nearly as foreign as our Sikh brothers and sisters, with their turbans and their saris and their little-known eastern faith. The Sikh temple shooting is tragic, sobering, but I can imagine there were a few of us out there getting back to business as usual after breathing a secret prayer of thanks that it wasn’t one of our temples.

Except that, essentially, it was.

The day of the Sikh shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, I wrote a prayer that concluded, “We’re all in this together.”

When things like this happen in our country, a nation that we celebrate for its embrace of “liberty and justice for all,” we’re all implicated. And we’re all in danger. Because when one group in our society becomes the target of hateful acts for who they are, everyone’s rights are in danger. And all of us are responsible for speaking out against such persecution.

Several media outlets and commentators have observed that there has been an increase in attacks on Sikhs and Sikh communities since 9/11, because many people mistake Sikhs for Muslims. Does that mean this shooting would have been less tragic had the white supremacist gunman shot down innocent Muslims instead, the presumed “proper” target of his attack?  

We’re all in this together. On Monday, the day after the Sikh temple shooting, a mosque was burned to the ground in Joplin, Missouri. It hardly received any press. Since then, mosques and Muslim worshipers in California, Rhode Island, and Illinois have been targets of vandalism or violence. I had to search for these stories to find them. It is an outrage, a string of events that should cause us to feel shame—as Americans, but also as Jews. Not because as Jews we are in any way more responsible for these events than anyone else, but because as Jews we are particularly warned against this sort of unconcern and blindness.

This week’s Torah portion, Eikev, chronicles one of Moses’ final speeches to the Israelites as they muster on the east side of the Jordan River, preparing at last to enter the Promised Land. Moses exhorts the people to remember how much they have been given:

When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty...and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.” (Dt. 8:12-14,17)

At one point in his discourse, Moses literally tells the people, “don’t think it is because of your virtue that you will possess this land” (Dt. 9:5) rather, he continues, it is because of the virtue of their ancestors, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and, moreover, it’s because of the wickedness of its current inhabitants. Try that on for size, and see how it feels. Did we choose our ancestors? Have we never behaved wickedly? Remember the Golden Calf, Moses reminds the people? See those people you are about to dispossess? See those people less prosperous than you? Poorly housed? Poorly fed? But for the grace of God, we are them. They are us.

Our Torah text continues: what does God want from us? God wants us to do the right thing. To remember that there is, essentially, no ethical difference between ourselves other people. Fortune? Misfortune? The luck of the draw. A turn of the wheel. God wants us to empathize with everyone:

Cut away, therefore, the thickening around your hearts, and stiffen your necks no more. For the Lord your God...shows no favor and takes no bribe, but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing him with food and clothing.  You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Dt. 10:16-19)

And, as we should well know, we might easily become strangers again. Befriend the stranger.

Can this feel overwhelming? Yes, it can. Can we solve all the world’s problems? Not alone, and not all at once. As Rabbi Tarfon taught, “Yours is not to complete the task; neither are you free to desist from it.” We can send letters of solidarity, letters to the editor, material and monetary donations, to help those suffering all around us. We can ask questions, vote, march, organize. We can talk about things we usually avoid talking about. We can look at faces we usually avoid looking at. We can seek out the stories we might otherwise not hear.

“Cut away...the thickening around your hearts” is a loose translation of the Hebrew umaltem et orlat levavkhem—literally, "circumcise the foreskin of your hearts." Remove that protective layer. Make yourself vulnerable. What have you got to lose? We’re all in this together.

How will you circumcise your heart?

The Narrow Places of Mitzrayim, or Where Do You Get Stuck?

This was the question I asked my Sunday school students as we sat around a table in the social hall having our snack of graham crackers and green grapes.* I explained that Mitzrayim, the Hebrew word for Egypt, also means “narrow places,” and I asked them to think about where in their lives they feel the oppression of Egypt, when in their lives they feel constrained or stuck.

“School,” said one, just as our prescient congregational president/resident Sunday school teacher simultaneously said, “And ‘school’ doesn’t count!” (I shushed Mr. president/teacher.)

“Practicing violin,” said the other, with a sideways glance at her mother, enthusiastic proponent of violin lessons, sitting nearby.

This led to an interesting conversation about whether aspects of our lives that ultimately benefit us (the one child does aspire to a high school diploma, and the other loves performing violin, which she does beautifully, thanks to the despised practice sessions) could be compared to the biblical Mitzrayim, a site of bloodshed, suffering, and degradation for our biblical forebears. (The answer: No. And yes. Of course. Try it yourself, and let me know how your conversation goes.)

But the reason I asked my students this question, the reason I’m writing this in the first place**, is that I had been thinking about this question—“What is our Mitzrayim?”—during my entire drive from Jackson to Greenville on Friday afternoon. (I live in Jackson, Mississippi, I serve the congregation in Greenville, Mississippi, 110 miles away. A more coherent introduction to me and my crazy life in another post.) I was thinking about this question in conjunction with the Trayvon Martin shooting, and also, especially after reading my friend Beth's thoughtful (and poignant and brilliant) blog post, in conjunction with the shootings in Toulouse and the guilty pleadings of three white teenagers in Jackson, Mississippi to the racially-motivated killing of James Craig Anderson, a black man.

So much hate. Is hatred our Mitzrayim?

But, why the hate?

We learn from the Passover Seder that each of us must feel each year as if we ourselves left slavery in Egypt, as if we ourselves experienced the redemption. No formal commemoration, this. Not even a reenactment. This is real, Jewish tradition teaches us. Every year, we feel the oppression. And then we experience the release. We are meant to put ourselves, as nearly and as truly as possible, in someone else’s shoes sandals.

And that, in fact, is the problem. Because we can’t actually, truly walk in another person’s shoes, can we? Not simply by attending a Passover Seder. It’s the stuff of fantasy and undercover spy stories and psychological studies, the idea of experiencing another person’s reality.  

Nevertheless, it is our obligation to try, each year at Passover, and, I would argue, every day of the year: You shall welcome the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt, the Torah repeatedly exhorts us. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do not do to others what is distasteful to you. We are all created betzelem elohim, in the image of God. Put yourself in the other’s shoes.

Because when we don’t, it leads to injustice. The other remains other: distant, alien, threatening…. When we can’t put ourselves in another’s shoes, it opens the door to hatred.

As I drove and thought, the flat Mississippi Delta plains stretching out in every direction from under the wheels of my car, I thought a new question, a terrible question: Do people, my people, the people of my own congregation, whom I love, want to put themselves in The Other’s shoes?

Now, I am not completely naïve. I know that none of us always wants to put ourselves in another’s shoes. It’s hard work. The Torah wouldn’t constantly command us to do it if it were easy. Even when we want to do it, when we mean to do it, we often fail. And I know there are plenty of people out there who make bad choices, even wicked choices, who through some sad injury or perversion lose all contact with their yetzer tov, the good that God put in them, and intend ill toward others.

But I suppose I’ve always assumed that people of good will, even when we are failing to do the right thing, even when to do the right thing is difficult or unpleasant, in some part of our being, want to do it. In some corner of our consciousness feel indignation when injustice is brought to our attention, and want to do something to correct the injustice, to change and heal the world.

Beth, in her blog post, wrote, “I began to fear, not for the first time, that perhaps I have too much faith in humanity.” When I read that, I felt terribly sad for Beth, but the closer my wheels took me to Greenville, the more I began to wonder the same about myself. I began to wonder when, and even whether, people, even good people, truly aspire to walk in another’s shoes, aspire to recognize The Other’s basic humanity, especially when that other is of a different race, or class, or creed.

When I arrived in Greenville, I got ready for our Shabbat service. During the service, I shared some of these thoughts and questions with my congregation. And then, after the service, I had a conversation about all of this with a good friend, a good person, a person I have known and loved for many years, and suddenly, vividly, I saw how good people can become resigned to others’ otherness, and to hatred, and injustice. Good people can become embittered and worn down by a lifetime of slights, and insults (even as it is also a lifetime of blessings and friendship—for don’t we all too often remember the bad and forget the good?), and outrage, personal and communal.

This then, is our Mitzrayim: our failure to walk in another’s shoes. Or even worse: our failure to want, or even to try, to do so. It’s perpetuating the cycle. It’s holding us back. We’re stuck, as long as we stay here.

My religious school students don’t know this yet, which is perhaps, given their youth, appropriate. My congregants…some know it, some believe it, others not. Myself? I think I, like the rest of us, have my work cut out for me.

I have finally taken the big leap into the blogosphere partly thanks to Ima on (and off) the Bima's #BlogExodus initiative. Yes, I am a few days behind on the #BlogExodus schedule. So we're starting off on the right foot! More about myself and my blog another day.

*Wow, I had entirely overlooked the alliterative quality of our snack til this very moment! I guess I was having a great day. A gimel-ish day. A yom gadol, perhaps. But I digress.

**Aside from imabima, that is.