Boys to Men: The Troubles of Contemporary Masculinity

When I was a boy, I stood with my father in the plaza of the Kotel, the Western Wall, in Jerusalem, for the first time. We walked in, and were confronted by a guy, who looked at my father and said, in heavily accented English, is he bar mitzvah? My dad did some calculations in his head, and said, yes, he’s of age. So the man grabbed me, and strapped tefillin onto me. If you haven’t seen them, they’re leather boxes and straps, filled with parchments from the Torah, that you strap to your arm and your head. It wasn’t my first time. Dad had had me putting them on for about a year already, to practice. But I still remember the rough grip of this man’s hand, and the tickle of the hair on his arms as he put them on me.

I had a bar mitzvah, only a few days later, in Jerusalem, in fact. It was amazing. But if you had to ask me, even so many years later, when I started to grow up, I would tell you it was there, right then, that I started to become a man.

What I think about is how lucky I was to have those hands in my life, how lucky I was to have the years leading up to them. I think about the rabbi who made space for the obnoxious twelve-year-old in his mostly senior citizen classes, the cantor who taught me, word by word, how to understand what I was reading. The love that I saw in both of them for what they were doing. Not love for me as an individual, precisely, but a higher love for what I represented, and for what they saw a sacred duty.

Those men gave of themselves, quite selflessly, for me and for God. And with whatever foibles I have as a person, I am grateful that, as a young man, I was pointed in their direction.

Only a few weeks ago, some people held a night rally not far from here, in Charlottesville. You may have caught it on every single news outlet in the country. They carried a bunch of tiki torches, and there was a barbeque somewhere that was really, really sad as a result. But even those stupid torches couldn’t cover up their menace. “You will not replace us,” they called as they marched. Almost every one of them was male.

I can’t help wondering about how those marchers grew into being men. As much as they would love to get rid of me – you all know that “Jew will not replace us,” was the other chant – I’m not sure that I’m ready to disown them. I have been surprised by how many other men sound like them, many Jewish, many of other ethnicities, as our country keeps descending into this alt-right nightmare of a reddit thread.

There’s a question that I want to ask tonight, which is, what happens when boys grow into men? And, perhaps, what could happen differently? And yes, I’m being gender specific and heteronormative: boys, mostly cis-gendered, into men, mostly straight.

And the reason that I want to ask such a caveman question is because, when looking at the world, what I see is a lot of human beings who are women, queer, trans, standing up. Fighting for a greater good. Putting themselves on the line for what is good and right.

But I see a lot of men standing up for causes and ideas that, honestly, I’m embarrassed by. I’ve got to say it, it feels like an embarrassing time to be a straight man. And I’m not sure that we have anyone to blame but ourselves.

Before I really dig in, I worry that this drash will be hard for a lot of people in the room. Boys, this one’s going to hurt a little, I’m just letting you know. But for all of you, and there are a lot of you, that are queer, women, trans, of fluid genders, or feel that the dominant description of masculinity doesn’t describe you, it might be excruciating. On the one hand, I want to talk about the problems with contemporary masculinity, and maybe you’ll feel that, finally, one of the people those articles are talking about is standing up and saying something. But on the other hand, a whole lot of what I’m going to say will be directed right at the group who’s been the intended audience for most of human history. I can only hope that the truth of what I’m going to say, and the urgency I feel to say it, will act as an amends for not speaking directly towards your spiritual lives.

I know a lot of guys who feel a little bit like society’s out to get them these days. Some feel frustrated, or like there’s nothing they can do right. And most often, most often, they feel like they did the things they were supposed to do, but aren’t getting the things they were promised.

They went to school, where’s that successful, high paying job? I date, where’s the partner that adores me. Why isn’t that woman flattered by my interest in her? And why is it that society always seems to be point to me as the root of its problems?

That last one there, that’s a big one. Why do people keep telling us that we’re a problem? Where are the people telling us that we’re upstanding members of society? That we’re doing the right things? Where’s the respect that a man deserves?

Gentlemen, I think we’ve have fallen into a trap, and that trap is that we think that life owes us those things, because historically, society has been set up to give a lot of them to us.

The things that I’ve described, the right job, plenty of money, the “perfect partner,” the approbation, the approval -  guys, what everybody else has figured out is that those things aren’t promises. Some of us get really lucky, and maybe get a few of those things. But wealth, success, and love are not guarantees that life makes to us. God makes us no deal as to our circumstances. If you don’t believe me, go ask some people who don’t look like us.

But that’s not how we act. The way we act is if we’re entitled to all that stuff. We act like it’s already ours. It’s incredible what we do. We act like conversations belong to us, and talk twice or three times as much as other kinds of people. We act like all the most dominant positions in society belong to us: leader, provider, the innovator, the warrior. Warrior? There’s a woman running for Congress in Kentucky who flew F-18s for the Marines. I spent my twenties studying Talmud!

And more than anything, we feel like women’s bodies belong to us. Like they owe us their attention. Like they owe us access.

If you could only hear the stories that I hear, in my office. The stories that I hear from women about what’s happened to them, even what walking down the street is like – and how many of these stories there are? It would break your heart.

So this is the trap, we feel like we are owed. Not only that, we expect to be first in line when that which is owed is paid – because we’ve always come before others in this world, and we’re used to it! We feel like there are privileges due to our position. And therefore we try to take. Nothing good comes from that.

Those guys, the ones marching in Charlottesville? They’re an extreme version of the problem. They can’t figure out why they haven’t gotten what they’re owed. And since they haven’t gotten it, and it’s clear to them that they deserve it, then it follows that someone is keeping them from it. And then they look at the Jews in this room, and at women, and queer people, and people of color, and immigrants, and say, “You. You must be the ones who have taken it from me.”

And that’s so bankrupt. That’s such a perversion of the way things are.

Our problem isn’t that other people are taking from us. Our problem is that we were used to taking from them, and now that we can’t, we feel empty.

That’s it. That’s what we’ve got to solve. That’s what we’ve got to find, a way to make our lives feel full, and full of value without pushing other people down to do so. That’s what we’re talking about.

So how do you do that? Well, if we’ve been leaning on the lives of others, using other people as a crutch, maybe we need to develop a kind of inner strength that allows us to stand on our own.

What would that kind strength look like? Its definition is that, when one is in 

possession of it, a person can find contentment, satisfaction, a sense of purpose in life, not because of what the world gives you, but in spite of it. One is insulted, but does not insult back. One’s patience is tried, but is maintained. Such a person becomes bigger on the inside than what the world throws at him from without.

There’s only one way I know to achieve that kind of strength, to build that inner skeleton, to strengthen the spiritual anatomy. And that is to change one’s orientation towards the world. If you are facing in the direction of what you are supposed to get out of life, then I ask you turn – like the world teshuvah, turn – in a new direction and ask instead what you have to give to life instead.

It is in giving that a person finds purpose. If you want to be happy, take your mind from what you can get; learn how to give. 

And that turning, that growing – it takes work.

An example.

Gluckel of Hameln lived in the 17^th and 18^th century. I’m sure her name made sense back then. She is famous because of a kind of moral will that she wrote to her children, which survived the ages and came to us.

Amongst other things she was married to a jeweler, and took an active part in his business until she was widowed, at which point she took over the business. That business ultimately spanned four countries.

But after her husband died, she wrote about him, describing him to her children. She says, “So good and true a father one seldom finds, and he loved his wife and children beyond all measure.” It’s clear that she appreciated him. That is how I want them to talk about me when I'm gone.

When she describes what his life was like, what made him so special, she focuses on two things:

The first is that he had an incredible spiritual discipline: “However much my husband toiled, and truly the whole day he ran about upon his business, still he never failed to set aside a fixed time to study his daily portion of the Torah.” “Even among the great rabbis, I knew but few who prayed with his fervour. If he were praying in his room, and some one came to fetch him forth where something could be bought up cheap, neither I nor any servant in my whole house would have the heart to go to him and speak of it.”

And the second is that the expression of his spirituality was the way he treated other people, “All that he had to contend with, and often, from friends and strangers, he bore in patience. When many times, in human weakness, I could no longer contain myself, he laughed away my impatience and said…”I put my trust in God and give small heed to the talk of men.”

All this is to say that here is a person who, relative to other people, thought less about what he could get out of life than what he could give to it. The praying and the studying – especially when they got in the way of business – those are acts of devotion. And the way he answers his wife about why he doesn’t get more annoyed, or more aggressive with other people, was that he trusted in God, which I understand to mean that he treated people not as they treated him, but as God would want him to.

Guys, this isn’t about him being religious. It’s about how he used his religiosity. Look at the way he was devoted to a higher cause! He wasn’t thinking about what he deserved. he was thinking about how he could serve.

His life was filled with a higher love. That’s what gave it purpose. That’s what gave it meaning. And it’s what filled mine up to the brim as well.

Look, I am not exactly a paragon of virtue. My list of character flaws would elicit the kind of low whistle that you give a particularly fascinating wrecked car.

But when I was a young man, rough hands bound me to something higher than myself. Kind eyes showed me, by their example, how I could be kind. And men of devotion pushed me, gently, to devote myself, to try to give as they had given to me. And because of them I learned that the world isn’t just a place where you can get. It is a place where you are meant to give.

Men, is it possible that the life of the spirit is not a weakness, but that our inability to see its necessity in our lives is? Is it possible that everybody else has figured out something that we’ve forgotten – that a person must have a spiritual life, a strong purpose, as sense of devotion, a willingness to sacrifice for something greater than ourselves? Is it not that the men who embody these crazy ideologies have found a twisted replacement for the spirituality that many of us lack?

You need a spiritual life. I’m just going to say it. You need one. It’s what directs and orients you, grounds and propels you. Otherwise you will grow self-oriented, disconnected, and disillusioned, and that is only a step away from selfish, angry, and looking for someone to blame.

Do you feel angry, or lost, or frustrated? Then you have my compassion, for I have felt the same, have been the same kind of angry, have been lost in the same way.

But what I tell you is a life of worth and esteem, of purpose, of connection, never to come through demanding that life give to you. It will only come from figuring out how you can give to it. How you can serve the higher cause. And what that’s going to do is to abolish this fallacy that life is a zero sum game, and that we’ve lost anything. In fact, it’s going show us what we’ve gained by the inclusion of so many kinds of people unlike ourselves.

Change your direction. Learn, with me, to demand to give of ourselves to it. And then you will find the peace you seek.

We have a group here, open to anyone who identifies as a man, called Man’s Attempt at Thoughtfulness. It is in fact a group of men, attempting to be thoughtful. These are the kinds of questions we talk about there. Let me see you there, and we’ll turn together.

Shanah Tovah.

Finding Beauty in an Ugly World - Rabbi Shira Stutman on Rosh Hashanah

There is a certain genre of email that has been hitting my in-box repeatedly over the last year or so. Here’s an example, an email I received in late August:

Hi Rabbi,

I hope you've been well since we last met a few weeks ago.

I've been thinking lots about Charlottesville this week, and the resurgence of white supremacist ideology. Rather than become increasingly dispirited, I want to be able to focus my energy on doing something positive/action-oriented. I was wondering if you/6th & I/anyone you know are doing any organizing in response to recent events. What can I do to make a difference?

Thank you so much in advance,

“Emily”

The secret is that I often don’t know how to respond. These days, with racists marching proudly in our streets, it feels like ugliness is everywhere. A car, which used to be a tool of transport, is now a tool of murder. Domestic terrorists shooting Indian immigrants in Kansas, police caught on tape planting evidence in Baltimore. Airline personnel that physically drag people off planes. One teenager goading another until he kills himself. Anti-semitism from people we know to be enemies and people who are supposed to be our allies. We are mired in it.

For too many of us, this ugliness is not political, it’s personal. Our lives are marked with interactions that leave us with a heavy heart (at best, more often just furious). Whether it’s the daily indignities of city life, like the person on the metro yelling into their phone. Or the friend who betrays you without an ounce of remorse. Or the job that you thought was yours, only to learn from social media that it was offered to someone else. A certain kind of interpersonal nastiness is a resident unwanted guest in many of our lives. And then we too become nasty--because “they” deserve it, no?

One response, from a recent article in The New York Times:

For decades, Wunsiedel, a German town near the Czech border, has struggled with a parade of unwanted visitors. It was the original burial place of one of Adolf Hitler’s deputies, a man named Rudolf Hess. And every year, to residents’ chagrin, neo-Nazis marched to his grave site. The town had staged counter demonstrations to dissuade these pilgrims. In 2011 it had exhumed Hess’s body and even removed his grave stone. But undeterred, the neo-Nazis returned. So in 2014, the town tried a different tactic: humorous subversion.

The campaign, called the Right Against the Right — turned the march into Germany’s “most involuntary walkathon.” For every meter the neo-Nazis marched, local residents and businesses pledged to donate 10 euros...to a program that helps people leave right-wing extremist groups....

They turned the march into a mock sporting event. Someone stenciled onto the street “start,” a halfway mark and a finish line, as if it were a race. Colorful signs with silly slogans festooned the route. “If only the Führer knew!” read one. “Mein Mampf!” (my munch) read another that hung over a table of bananas. A sign at the end of the route thanked the marchers for their contribution to the anti-Nazi cause — €10,000....And someone showered the marchers with rainbow confetti at the finish line.

The approach has spread to several other German towns and one in Sweden.

Responding to ugliness with humor and a successful fundraising strategy to boot. Counter-protesters who pretend they’re hard-of-hearing, so when a racist march passes by, chanting their monstrous chants, the protesters yell, “what? White flour?” And throw flour their way. Or “white flower?” and hand out flowers to the marchers passing by. Or artists in Berlin who turn graffiti of Swastikas into beautiful murals and works of art.

It should go without saying, but at this early juncture of this sermon, I want to be crystal clear about two important points. First of all, Nazism and white supremacy is not funny; it’s serious and dangerous and if left entirely unattended may only get worse. Second, it’s probably not a good idea to make light of white supremacists who march armed with assault rifles, as so many did in Charlottesville. In that instance, I might think twice before I don a wedding dress and a clown nose and yell “wife power!” as these militia members march by.  

But a rabbi can dream, right?

When I was pregnant with our second child, I wanted to name her Hadar. This is one of those Hebrew words that’s difficult to translate. Some say it means “beauty,” but that’s not entirely true because we’re not speaking here of physical or even temporal beauty. “Majesty” or “splendor” are closer to the truth, although it’s splendor and majesty connected not with a flesh-and-blood ruler but instead with God’s presence. “Kol Adonai b’hadar,” we sing on Friday nights at Kabbalat Shabbat services. The voice of Gd is Hadar. It isn’t a superficial beauty of the body but instead about a more profound beauty, of honor and spirit, that can increase as we strive to be more godly in our actions.

I lost the battle with my husband for my daughter’s name (he thought “Ma’ayan” would be easier to pronounce) but not, I hope, for the way that she and her siblings act in the world. Which is to say--with a hefty dose of Hadar. The response to disrespect and disregard in our personal lives is not to up the ante with even more hatred or anger. The response is, whenever humanly possible, to mark life with hadar, in the political arena or in the home. Whether that means practicing safe use of a red clown nose at a protest or dancing in the streets at Simchat Torah, as we will do in just a few weeks, proud and loud about being Jewish, cultivating a life of hadar means refusing to fight hate with hate but instead educating, celebrating, strategizing, turning toward rather than against. Toward acts of tzedek, of justice, of rachamim, of compassion, of chesed, of lovingkindness.

I think. And then some days I think it’s naive at best, actively harmful at worst to believe that if we just responded with a little more majestic beauty the world would right itself. Many of those who sow hatred are playing on a different field that we are; no amount of compassion or Hadar is going to make a difference. They are lost or broken, or feel like they’ve been treated so unfairly that it justifies their actions.

To that statement, two comments: first, for the most part, I refuse to believe that this irrational hatred characterizes most of “them” (whoever the “them” is in your life). When we surprise unkind people with kindness, we can change behavior.  

More to the point, however, it’s not about whether your acts of hadar change them. It’s about whether their acts of ugliness change you. On Rosh Hashanah, we have the opportunity to decide how we want to move forward into the new year. Do you want to be driven by hate and fear? Or by righteousness and integrity? Do you want to spend your time fighting against or fighting for, on defense or offense?

Defense is much easier, because we can do it from our armchairs. We can be indignant anywhere! A life of hadar has to be created--and it’s tough work, and our days are already quite filled. Sometimes the ugliness of it all wears us down. To say nothing of the fact that there’s short-term thrill we may get from being just as horrible to someone else as they are to us. We showed them. But like most things in life, the more difficult action is the better one.

The single greatest excuse that I hear for why people do not seek to make change in their lives is posed as a question. “How do I actually make a difference?” as if until you figure out how to change the entire world, you are absolved of doing anything. In those moments, I return often to a story told by Anne Lamott in her book Bird By Bird:

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’

The parts are greater than the sum. When we feel mired in loss and ugliness and desperation, and don’t know what to do? Step by step, small actions. Bird by bird.

The ancient rabbis also had trouble defining the word “hadar,” by the way. There’s an especially curious verse in Leviticus (23:40), in which we read about the lulav, three of the four species that we shake on Sukkot, a holiday that begins in just 15 days. The rabbis knew that the fourth species was an etrog, a citrus fruit that looks a lot like a lemon. But the Torah doesn’t refer to the etrog by name and instead calls it “pri etz hadar,” the fruit of the “hadar” tree.

The rabbis then try to understand why the etrog tree is Hadar.

Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi says: Do not read the verse as it is written, hadar, meaning [only] majestic beauty, but rather read it hadir, meaning the sheep pen….Just as in a pen, there are both large and small sheep together, so too, on an etrog tree, when the small ones come into being, the large ones still exist on the tree, which is not the case with other fruit trees.

The word “hadar” describes the etrog tree because that tree grows fruit both large and small; all are necessary. In this room, are people who are going to make tremendous change in the world: write the op-ed that will convince members of Congress to govern in the interests of the people, take over Metro to make sure there are enough trains so people don’t lose themselves to rush-hour ugliness. Those are the big actions, the “large etrogs.” But for the rest of us, we’re going to take it day by day, many small actions, etrog by etrog.

And it’s going to be a slog. The more we practice Hadar, the more we’ll screw up. Ann Patchett writes.

[When I write,] For me it’s like this: I make up a novel in my head….This is the happiest time in the arc of my writing process….I’m figuring things out, and all the while the book makes a breeze around my head like an oversized butterfly whose wings were cut from the rose window in Notre Dame. This book I have not yet written one word of is a thing of indescribable beauty…[it] is the single perfect joy in my life….

When I can’t think of another stall...I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air….and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something…[O]nly a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words...

An idea can be perfect, but only in our minds. Real life is more like “running over the butterfly with an SUV,” another Patchett turn of phrase. Hadar is an ideal; the reality is more stilted and filled with disappointment. But someone who only keeps the story in their head, and does not write it down, is not a writer. And someone who keeps their ideas set on a idealized world, without taking the risks, making a few mistakes, and accepting imperfection; someone who puts their ego before their community and doesn’t step into the fray; better a broken butterfly than no real butterfly at all. Take the same energy that you’ve been using to criticize your family, colleagues, allies and put it toward doing the work yourself. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Bird by bird.

When we actualize Hadar in this world, we take something that could be ugly--that is ugly--and, like the swastikas in Berlin, in ways humble and quiet, small and large, we transform it into something beautiful. We take the hard material of a difficult world and do something life-affirming with it. It won’t match up with the ideal--it never does--but we’re creating something new and beautiful and holy nonetheless. When you acknowledge that you’re going to do your best even though you know it won’t be ideal, that’s crafting a world of Hadar. When you turn that swastika into a flower, it’s a certain kind of bravery and beauty and strength--that’s Hadar.  

One more email, this one from early September

:

Dear Rabbi--Hi!

I am the Turkish woman you met at services on Friday night, [who has been to Sixth & I  a few times over the last months and wants to do my part to improve relationships between the Muslim and Jewish communities.] I will try to do as much as I can but as I mentioned I am only one person and officially 'nobody'. What I mean is that I don't belong to any mosque or ngo seriously. I don't have titles nor official training in religion or interfaith relations etc. I came back to Sixth&I to show that there are people...open to communication. So I am not sure what I can offer you more than that and I don't want to disappoint you but I would definitely like to meet with [the other rabbis on staff] and see what [they] think. I will show up at random events at Sixth&I until then :) No worries about the scheduling [because of the holiday], I completely understand.

Have a nice Sunday and holiday season!

G

This is Hadar. Stepping into a place that might not feel comfortable, even if you’re a “nobody.” Because you’re not. Thinking you can’t make a difference is wrong, maybe lazy, maybe dangerous. You’re somebody, and you can make a difference in this world.

While I still believe that the moral arc bends toward justice, this past year has given me--personally and as an American--too many examples of base cruelty triumphing over goodness. Most surprising is that it still feels like a sucker punch every single time. I’m not inured to it. It’s a little bit embarrassing, given that it’s a type of privilege to be surprised at life’s unfairness.

I’m going to own that privilege--the work of hadar is not perfect--because I believe more than anything that meeting ugliness with ugliness would be the worst result of all. We are a community of faith. Our goal in this world is to build an olam chesed--a world of lovingkindness. When we encounter hatred, our job is not to turn the other cheek, but instead to stand and face the wind, to respond in strength but not in viciousness. It’s incredibly difficult, but it’s also perhaps the most important thing we’ll ever do.

When the next hate-filled march comes, which it will, we’ll be there. Maybe some of us in clown suits. Between now and then, though, let’s focus our energy on hadar. Invite friends new and old to a Shabbat dinner. Get to know someone different than you. Get involved in a cause that is close to your heart. Create a majestic world. Etrog by etrog. Bird by bird. Broken butterfly by broken butterfly.

It’s going to be a beautiful 5778, everyone. Because we’re going to create it.

Shana tova.

Hearing No - Kol Nidre, Rabbi Shira Stutman

I want to tell you the story of the first time that I remember hearing a big, strong, “no.”

I was in college. Of course, I had heard “no’s” before. From my parents, teachers,  friends. But this one was different.

As early as my freshman year, I knew that I wanted to run for President of the Jewish Student Union (which is what we called Hillel in those days). I waited until my junior year, working hours each week with a bunch of Jewish student groups, and then submitted my name for the ballot.

Given that it’s an election year in our country, and we have many political people in the congregation, let me tell you a little about the demographics of Columbia University undergrads in the early 1990s. There were a lot of Jews. Probably 1/3 of the population. It will not be surprising to learn that many of these Jews were not very involved in the JSU, and were uninterested in voting in the elections. Among those who were involved and interested, many were Orthodox. And even though I was pretty observant, I knew I wasn’t really one of them. I needed to reach outside the traditional constituency, get out the vote with those who wouldn’t otherwise be inclined to participate.

I’m talking about the non-Jews, of course. There was no way I was going to get my less observant Jewish friends, “scarred” by years of Hebrew school or youth group,  to vote.  But non-Jews? They were game.  And it was totally legal, according to the JSU election by-laws. (Yes, there were by-laws.)

Apparently, it was legal but not kosher, and I got called into the JSU executive director’s office to be told that I was to stop encouraging non-Jews to vote. Which I did.

A night or two later, I was hanging out at a polling place with a friend who was volunteering. Another friend (“friend”) walked by and saw me standing within 150 feet of the polling place. Apparently that, too, was against the rules. I had not read them in their entirety.

I was called back into the ED’s office, and told by a panel of my peers that because of my two infractions, I had been kicked out of the elections for president. I pleaded with them, I cried. Ultimately, though, I was escorted from the ED’s office. As I crossed the threshold, and turned around to make one more point, the door closed quietly.

I can tell you the color of the stained rug underneath my feet, the shape of the mezuzah on the door, the scraped-up door-jam painted a dingy white. The door itself, with the JSU sign. Everything I had been working for 2.5 years was on one side of the door. I was on the other.

  

If I were to ask you--what was your first “no,” would you be able to tell me? The dream job you didn’t get, the relationship that disintegrated for reasons you can’t articulate even today, the loved one who passed away too young, too soon? The Yom Kippur liturgy, resonant with a gate open in front of us, but soon closing, coaxes us to acknowledge that these no’s come, that they come more often than we would like, and that they change the arc of our lives forever. The goal is to accept the “no.” But that does not happen in an instant. It happens over time.

We take as an example the entire book of Deuteronomy, in which Moses learns how to die.

A few chapters earlier, in the book of Numbers, we had read the story of the Israelites, thirsty in the desert. They had gathered to complain to Moses and Aaron, who brought the complaints to God. God tells Moses to speak to a certain rock, and it will pour out its water. The community and their livestock will drink.

Moses complies, but he’s for some reason he’s angry with the Israelites. He yells at them--calls them “rebels,” and instead of speaking to the rock, he strikes it. The water comes out anyway; the people drink.

But, God, perhaps ironically, is furious with Moses and Aaron’s angry behavior, and punishes them.

“Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites,” God says, “You will not bring this community into the land I give them.”

In other words, Moses, a man who has dedicated just about his entire adult life to bringing the Israelites out of slavery and through the desert, will die before he gets to the Promised Land. He will not get his reward.

There is an exquisite midrash called Petirat Moshe that narrates the story of Moses’ dying. He does not easily accept his fate.

When Moshe Rabbenu’s day to depart this world had arrived...Moses said, “Master of the Universe, allow me, and I will become a bird and fly in the air...or make me into a fish, and I will make my two arms like two fins, and my hair like scales, and I shall jump into the Jordan, and at least see the land.”

God says, “I can’t. I vowed that you wouldn’t enter the land. No.”

Moses: “Master of the Universe, lay me upon the clouds...that I might just see the land from above the Jordan.”

God: No.

Moses begs, pleads. Moses deserved to enter. God says no. This just happens sometimes.

 

In contemporary society, the “no’s” bombard us from all corners. Some are as poignant as Moses’ death; others are more akin to being kicked out of the elections-- traumatic in the moment, but over the span of a lifetime not overwhelming. We have more information than ever before about our own health, so can find out almost for certain if we carry one terminal gene or another. Someone swipes right or left on us without even knowing who we are. We try to bargain--

God, please heal my sister. No

Please--just make that little plus sign appear on the pregnancy test, I promise I’ll never ask for anything again. No.

God: Medical school. No.

God, I’m 45 years old and haven’t found my life partner. Just this. No.

God, I’ve been unemployed for longer than I care to acknowledge. Please. No.

When faced with the terminal “no,” we have a few options. American culture would have us avoid the pain and rejection by sublimating it into consumerism. A 21st-century Moses would be encouraged not to yearn to turn into a bird and fly over a country he wouldn’t inhabit in any case but instead to forget about the land of milk and honey and buy the iPhone 7.

Yom Kippur stands in stark contrast. We wear white, no leather, no jewelry--no retail therapy here. We actually list the different ways we can die--no pretending here. We hold two truths at the same time: on the one hand, acknowledging that we are all mortal, that life ultimately is out of our control, and at the same time that “teshuva, tefila, tzedakah make easier what has been decreed”-- we have a way forward. Yom Kippur invites us not to live in a fictional “happily ever after” world  but instead to  acknowledge, however reluctantly--the no will come for all of us, but we have control over how we live in the meantime.

 

That this acknowledgement is difficult, painful even, is an understatement. In fact, our brains are wired to experience rejection in the same way as we experience other pain.

When scientists placed people in functional MRI machines and asked them to recall a recent rejection, they discovered something amazing. The same areas of our brain become activated when we experience rejection as when we experience physical pain. That’s why even small rejections hurt more than we think they should, because they elicit literal (albeit, emotional) pain.

Even the “small” no of a new friend who doesn’t return your email is not nothing.

According to research from Case Western Reserve University, exposure to rejection led participants in a study to have an immediate drop in reasoning by 30% and in IQ by 25%. It was also determined that feelings of rejection led participants to become more aggressive and exhibit less self-control.

These physical reactions are only compounded by the self-recriminations that follow our rejection. While some of us have no problem experiencing compassion for the other, we have a much more finite amount of compassion for our own selves.  We berate ourselves with stories, only a few of which are factually accurate. Sometimes there is something that we said or did to make the “no” come about. Something as innocuous as not having prepped enough for an interview or as “insidious” as standing within 150 feet of a polling booth. Often, though, there is no reason. Either way, even as we must learn from our mistakes, to spend too much time blaming ourselves is hurtful at best. Invert the famous lesson from Rabbi Hillel: that which is hateful to others, do not do to yourself.

When the “no” arrives, unbidden, on the doorstep, we must first respond by granting ourselves permission to mourn.  Yom Kippur is not Simchat Torah, with its joyous dancing in the streets. There is a season for everything, Ecclesiastes teaches. And sometimes we need to give in to the sadness.

Bat-Galim Sha’ar is a mother whose only son, Gilad, was one of the three Israeli teenagers kidnapped in the summer of 2014. He was 16, a student, on his way home for Shabbat dinner with his family.  Bat-Galim described what it was like to wait for eighteen days, not knowing whether her son was alive or dead, watching for the news, which, when it came, was as awful as it could be. Murdered.

She said recently,

[About this] statement we often hear telling us that we are strong.

I want to tell you a secret.

You can’t be strong in the face of death, of deep loss, with a huge hole in your heart.

So how can we go on?

We try to be flexible.

We try to learn how to be healed.

To remember that not everything is in our control.

Sometimes when there is a difficult wave of sorrow,

It is best to bend with the wave and feel the pain

And then get up and stand straight again.

But even that is not always enough.

To bend with the wave, to go through it, let it wash over you. If you try to stand tall in front of it, you’ll just get knocked over, anyway.

The meditation teacher Tara Brach talks about it as:

replacing the dark cloud of “no” with the expansive sky of a “yes” that has endless room for grouchiness and irritation. Quoting another teacher, she writes, “so walk with our heaviness, saying yes. Yes to the sadness, yes to the whispered longing. Yes to the fear. Love means setting aside walls, fences, and unlocking doors, and saying yes…”

Permit yourself sadness. The psalmist teaches, “tears last for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” You can’t get to one without the other.

And allow yourself the anger. Says Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her legendary book on death and dying:

It is important to feel the anger without judging it, without attempting to find meaning in it. It may take many forms: anger at the health-care system, at life, at your loved one for leaving. Life is unfair. Death is unfair. Anger is a natural reaction to the unfairness of loss.

I refuse to abandon “this is not fair!” to the ash-heap of childhood. Life is not fair. For some people it is even more unfair than for others.  

And then--and then, please, remember that you are not alone. You are connected to a community larger than anything you can imagine, a net that will hold you in times of pain as it does in times of joy. Maybe this is your family, maybe these are beloved friends. Maybe this is the Jewish community, which has withstood whatever you’re suffering from and much more, which asks that you take when you need it, only to pay it back when you don’t. Accompany those who are in pain, just as you deserve to expect to be accompanied in your time.

When we say the vidui, part of what we acknowledge is a shared responsibility for the ways that we have missed the mark this year. But what if we also, as in the Hasidic tradition, think of the hand knocking on the heart as not about self-flagellation but instead about breaking our heart wide open, to recognize that our not only are our sins more than one person can bear, but so too is our grief. When we open our hearts on Yom Kippur after a year filled with no’s, we invite--we ask--our neighbor to take a little bit of our pain, to make our hearts just a little bit lighter as we walk in the world. And I will do the same for you, we say.

In a world in which we are affixed to screens, alone in our studio apartments, living walled off from pain/grief of others, Yom Kippur calls us to take down those walls and to open up. We say kaddish not alone but in a minyan, a group of 10 or more Jews. The ancient rabbis understood that the nos we receive in life are simply too much to bear on our own.

So too with Moses. At the moment he is about to die, he calls out to God:

 

Master of the universe, remember that You revealed Yourself to me in the burning bush, remember that you lifted me up to the heavens.... Merciful and Compassionate One, don’t send me off…[alone].”

God: “I have accepted your prayer. I myself shall care for you and bury you.”

At his moment of death, Moses is not alone. Even more astounding, his executioner is also his guide, the source of his pain and accompanying him as a beloved. On our own, it’s just too much.

And what else? Once you allow yourself the sadness, once you have been held in community, figure out where the learning is. The door has been shut, and you have walked alone back to your Columbia dorm room to sit on the floor and weep. A week has passed, a month, a few months. It is time.

 

For what it’s worth, the JSU story continued, of course.  It involved a phone call from a reporter from the Columbia Daily Spectator, a late-night call to my boss the previous summer, who happened to be Congressman Henry Waxman for help navigating the press, a subsequent call to Congressman Waxman’s Chief of Staff Phil Schiliro (who recommended a “no comment” to the Spectator), lots of tears and recriminations, many bags of Peppridge Farms Goldfish crackers.

I found another Jewish student group to affiliate with, and the arc led from that moment to this moment in ways I could never have imagined. Some of you might have had the experience of not getting the job that you really wanted only to end up with one that was even better. In those moments, life seems to work out and make more sense.

But sometimes it never does. Sometimes we end up scarred, never whole again, a new normal. The acceptance that we feel is a reluctant one, tinged with bitterness.

It doesn’t mean that there’s not still something to learn. My father dying young has made me a better rabbi. A friend who was abused as a child is now a lawyer, specializing in abuse cases. A man who lost family members and every possession he had in Katrina’s floodwaters was able to make a better life for himself in Houston. All of us would give anything to undo what has been decreed, I know. But there are no take-backs.  So instead we, the remnants, clench our fists around what we have left. We hold the potential to grow from even the most traumatic experiences.

Moses dies at the end of the story, so his “no” is final in a different way from most of ours. Those of us here today, alive, stand on a precipice. In the year that has passed, life may not have gone the way we had anticipated. Some of the rejections were inconsequential when viewed through the lens of an entire year. But some still sting, still bend us over, breathless, with sadness. The door has been closed in our face.

But now we have the opportunity to turn around. To see the hallway in front of us, going where? We don’t know. But to take that next step forward anyway. Towards community, towards new opportunity, towards the unconditional love that flows from many different sources, if only you take it it. We have the opportunity to remember, each and every day: “No” does not always mean “the end.”

G’mar tov. May we all be sealed for a year of acceptance, healing, and abounding love.