I’ve written and spoken before about my dear friend Aaron, the Episcopal priest. We met as colleagues teaching at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School - he was the choir teacher and I was in the Jewish Text department. We bonded over a shared love of musical theater and nerdy religious stuff like biblical exegesis and the establishment of a fixed liturgy. He was ordained this past summer, and our friendship continues to grow, now with periodic meetings of our two-person interfaith clergy association.
Aaron invited me to attend his ordination at the National Cathedral. It was a profoundly moving and humbling experience. The space was grand and beautiful; the rituals were intentional and full of meaning, but most of it was foreign to me - except for one thing. As part of the service, the presiding bishop, Mariann Budde, bishop of the diocese of Washington, DC, gave a sermon, much as I’m doing right now. In her sermon, Bishop Mariann spoke about each of the about-to-be priests, about their growth during their years in seminary, and about the unique talents and personality traits each brought to their role as religious leaders. When she spoke about Aaron, she shared how he made it his mission to attend a Sunday service at every church in the diocese. Even though this pursuit made him a frequent stranger, he was always deeply present with whomever he had the opportunity to sit down and talk, whether it was the clergy of the church he was visiting or a fellow parishioner. Aaron brought his full self wherever he went, and communicated through his presence that he was really and truly there. Not surprisingly, Bishop Mariann made a link between Aaron’s way of connecting with others and the biblical text. She looked to the Hebrew Bible reading selected for the service, the story of Isaiah’s call to prophecy in chapter 6. Like Moshe before him, the strains of whose story can be clearly heard in the opening verses to the chapter, Isaiah answers God’s call with a simple “Here I am, הנני.” הנני is a word that should prick our ears. It’s something we hear regularly during this season. We know it perhaps best from Akedat Yitzhak, the story of Avraham and the binding of his son Isaac, which we will read in the Torah tomorrow morning. It is a word with deep significance, a word that marks major moments in the lives of the patriarchs and early leaders of the people of Israel. Avraham is the first in the Torah to say this word - and he says it three times in the story of the Akedah - but he is certainly not the last. Esav says הנני when approaching his father Yitzhak for a blessing (Gen. 27:1). Yitzhak says it when Ya'akov approaches him, disguised as his brother (Gen. 27:18). Ya’akov says הנני twice over the course of his narrative (Gen. 31:11 and 46:2), most profoundly toward the end of his life, as God calls him to go down to Egypt and reunite with his son. Yosef says הנני when his father calls him for the fateful trip to go check on his brothers (Gen. 37:13). It should be clear at this point that הנני is more than a simple “Here I am,” more than just a quick response. Our traditional texts and commentaries begin to shed light on the depth of הנני. Midrash Tanḥuma (Vayera Siman 22) explains that it is an expression of humility and piety. Rashi, quoting this midrash, adds that it indicates readiness. By saying הנני, one is humbly expressing their understanding of their place in the world as well as their readiness to respond and serve. Haamek Davar (to Genesis 22:1), the commentary written by 19th century scholar and leader of the Volozhin Yeshiva Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, comments that הנני indicates that one’s mind is settled and calm. God waited after calling Avraham for him to understand that the Holy Blessed One was about to ask something big of him. הנני was Avraham’s way of communicating that he was able to listen, that he had a clear mind, that he was aware of the significance of this moment. הנני is a word that continues to inspire and challenge us. A young writer named Rosie Yanowitch, currently a student at Brown University, says: “Hineni is a declaration: it requires an awareness of the space in time that you inhabit and a commitment to engage with your full self. It is declared despite fear and ambiguity…There is a sense of power, intention, and responsibility implied when declaring Hineni.” Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herman of SAJ in New York teaches that “Hineni is about turning toward and not turning away…We say Hineni whenever we turn toward…the needs of another; we answer Hineni when we decide that we will not remain indifferent.” More than simply a word, it is a stance, an approach to the way we bring ourselves to our interactions with others. הנני requires us to set aside our egos and feel how small we truly are. It asks us to listen deeply, to make ourselves vessels for the words and needs of others. At the same time, הנני expresses a depth of self-awareness. It shows that we own our power, that we know what we bring to any given situation. Perhaps a better translation of הנני is “I am present.” ~~~~~~~ It has been a year. We were all caught off guard by the events of October 7, to put it mildly. As a global Jewish community, our eyes have been turned toward Israel. We have mourned those killed, prayed for those still held in captivity, felt existential angst for the country’s future, been disheartened at the present state of Israeli political affairs, been devastated by the loss of life over the border in Gaza (and now in Lebanon), and questioned the merits of continuing this war. We have felt loss and fear as we watched antisemitism in both word and deed grow at an alarming pace. For many of us, the upheaval of the past year has drawn us closer to the Jewish community. We have stepped up to express solidarity; found new meaning in religious community and new urgency in prayer; been motivated to learn more about Israel and discovered previously unknown ways to show our support. This year has also presented us with profound challenges to the cohesiveness of our community. The intensity of our feelings and opinions has made us less able to hear ideas that contradict our own deeply held beliefs. We have become wary of sharing too much about where we stand on sensitive issues, lest the people we are talking to reject or even attack us for our views. We have created echo-chambers, spaces where we can share freely with others who think just like we do, clinging to the illusion of safety that comes with never being challenged to defend our positions and to the gross misconception that there is only one right way to look at things. These one-sided conversations make us feel unified - after all, we all agree with each other - but in reality they break us apart into separate blocs and factions. It’s not only matters related to Israel and the current war that create such fissures in our sense of community. For some time now, the political and cultural climate here in America has led to greater and greater polarization. Here, too, we tend to stick to echo-chambers, the result being that we’re forgetting how to talk to each other, really, deeply talk to each other. We are reaching a point - if we’re not already beyond it - where engaging in open, honest, and even (and especially) difficult conversations feels impossible. Difficult conversations, conversations where we address the things that matter most to us without the expectation of uniformity or unanimous agreement, where we look straight on at the things that divide us can, if I’m really being honest here, be divisive. But they don’t have to be. And I would argue that it is exactly these kinds of conversations, the kinds of conversations that allow all of us to share openly without fear of recrimination, even when disagreements are deep and of consequence, that are exactly the kinds of conversations that build and strengthen community. These are exactly the kinds of conversations we need to be having. Over the course of the holidays, you’ll hear me speak from this bimah a number of times about the sorts of difficult conversations we need to engage in and the skills and practices that will support us in taking on this challenge. There are a number of conversations that we’ve been trying to have as a community and a few that are on our agenda for the coming year. We want these conversations to move us forward and bring us closer together; and they can. ~~~~~~~~ To do this and do this well, we need to take the approach of הנני. So how do we do that? Thinking back to my friend, Father Aaron, we start from and with ourselves. We enter into our conversations with each other with self-awareness, knowing what it is we bring to the interaction. If we understand הנני to mean “I am present,” we begin with the “I am” part of the word. I am. I don’t know that I, or many of us, give a tremendous amount of critical thought to who we are. But it deserves our attention. What makes each of us us? In his excellent book, How to Know a Person, David Brooks defines our personhood in this way: “A person is a point of view. Every person you meet is a creative artist who takes the events of life and, over time, creates a very personal way of seeing the world.” The way we see the world is a conglomeration of our memories, beliefs, traumas, loves, fears, and goals. These experiences from our lives construe how we feel about any given situation and help us construct our image of ourselves. Just as my image of the world and myself is uniquely mine, your image of the world and yourself is uniquely yours. To cultivate the self-awareness that is the “I am” part of הנני, we need to understand, discover, or rediscover, who we are. We begin by acknowledging the idea that our unique personhood lies in our unique perspective. And then we must examine that perspective. What is our point of view, and how did it come to be that way? What experiences from the earlier parts of our lives have been the most impactful in shaping how we see the world and our role in it? What activities or roles do we gravitate toward and which ones repel us? Why? When we pay attention to these aspects of who we are, we begin to know ourselves on a deeper level, and we can understand what it means to say, “I am.” Now the second half of הנני’s meaning: “present.” The first piece of presence begins with what we discovered about ourselves and recognizing that the same is true for everyone else. Every single other person in our lives and in the world is a creative artist whose selfhood is constantly being experienced into being. They cannot see the world just as we do and we cannot see the world just as they do - even when we agree with each other. Given how disparate our experiences and worldviews often are, we will of course not agree with each other from time to time. This is only natural; not cause for alarm. Expecting and sitting in disagreement is the next part of being present. Connecting deeply with another person means making room for them to be themselves, just as we want room to be ourselves. It means engaging with curiosity, rather than trying to define them from our own point of view. It means acknowledging when an idea or perspective is new or uncomfortable for us and asking questions to understand more deeply. Let me be clear: this is not easy to do, especially when we’re first starting to use these muscles. It is real, intentional work. When people express ideas or opinions that conflict with our own, it can be tempting to go into convincing mode, trying to get them to see the light and adopt our point of view. Sometimes, the ideas others express are so contrary to our own that our first instinct is to dismiss the other person out of hand. Or we hear something that gets our back up, that puts us on the defensive. When we feel this way, we have a tendency to speak in exclamation points rather than in question marks. These types of interactions only reinforce our differences and push us away from each other, rather than bringing us closer together. As human beings, we are hardwired to feel more of a connection to people who are most similar to us. The flip side of this is the tendency to be suspicious of or even hostile toward those whom we perceive as different. Rabbi Sharon Brous calls this tribalization. Pushing past our tendency toward tribalization is the next piece of presence. And it goes back to engaging our curiosity. When we reach that hard point, when we feel the distance between us creeping in, we need to open ourselves up to wondering, not just about the other person, but about ourselves. As Rabbi Brous says, “When we don’t wonder what the other is thinking or feeling, or where the pain comes from, when we don’t interrogate our presuppositions, our hearts close to one another.” Being curious, asking questions in a way that doesn’t prejudge the answer (“What makes you think that?” is very different from “WHAT makes you think THAT?!”) helps us turn our hearts back toward each other. In Rabbi Brous’s words, “...[W]hen we hold this kind of curiosity…we affirm another’s humanity, we reinvigorate our own.” Taking a הנני approach, especially to interactions and conversations where we anticipate deep disagreement, takes focus and practice. If we’re not yet experts in this, we’ll get it wrong a lot before we start to get it right. But when we start to get it right, when we are vulnerable, curious, openhearted with each other, when we bravely walk together through the hard stuff, then we are truly present. This New Year, may we ask more questions than we answer, may we see each other as the unique masterpieces that we are, may we find wonder and wholeness in even the hardest conversations. May we be blessed to say honestly and with conviction, הנני - I am present. Shanah Tovah.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Shabbat MessageA message from Rabbi Jacobs to the Congregation each Shabbat. Archives
November 2024
Categories |