One spring, Solomon challenged his advisors, “find me a gift
by next Rosh Hashanah that will make the happy person look at it and become
circumspect, and the sad person look at it and become hopeful.”
The advisors searched all over, until just before the new
year one passed a poor old jeweler selling a ring – and this ring was the gift
Solomon wanted.
When it was presented to the king he smiled and thanked his
advisors for finding the gift that would teach humility to even the most
powerful and richest of man of all. And
what was special about the ring? On it
were written three Hebrew letters: gimel, zayin, and yud,
standing for, גַּם
זֶה יַעֲבֹר, gam zeh
yaavor, “this too, shall pass.”
It is funny how a story so widely known, one that you’ve
probably heard before, one you may have even heard from a guy in Jerusalem who
told it to you while selling you just such a ring, isn’t really a Jewish story
at all. Or at least, requires a footnote
at the end to give us the correct meaning.
Because, while it is good to remember that everything passes–
certainly, a relief to know in the face of the pandemic and quarantine, and the
other disasters and challenges we face.
But if that is the end of the story, that it’s all for naught, that all
the joy and happiness in your life is nothing more than a mirage on an endless,
flat, featureless, colorless desert, that even the sad and tragic losses and
failures and mistakes completely lack in meaning, that seems incorrect.
Last High Holidays our 16th president, Abraham
Lincoln, helped us learn about teshuvah, and much to my surprise, he’s
back to help us again in understanding the right, the Jewish, way to read this
story.
In his version, from before the Wisconsin State Agricultural
Society, basically a state fair, held on September 30th, 1859. He shares, “It is said an Eastern monarch
once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and
which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They
presented him the words, "And this, too, shall pass away." How much
it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths
of affliction!”
Lincoln said this at the end of a truly marvelous speech, one
you should look up after the holiday to see the workings of a master orator,
called “Thorough Cultivation.” To the farmers
he was addressing, he begins by noting how great State Fairs are, (and on this
point, speaking as a kid who grew up in Illinois and attended my “fair” share
of county and state fairs, I disagree) because they-- “bring us together and make us better friends
than we otherwise would be.” This,
Lincoln says, is important because, while for much of history, treating the
outsider with scorn was allowed and even celebrated, friendship can, “correct
the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy [between] strangers,
[being it is] one of the highest functions of civilization.”
He deftly starts by stating the obvious. To his audience that with modern technology a
field “thoroughly cultivated” produces more, both in terms of yield and in
terms of satisfaction and dignity to the one tilling it. Having established what is universally
understood to be good for fields, “thorough cultivation” – he then says the
same is true for human beings as well. People
have the right to be educated, treated with dignity and respect for their
innate humanity, and not say --oh I don’t know, maybe Lincoln means – treated like
slaves -- our fellow humans will not only contribute more to society, but will gain
the reward owed them to live as all should, with equality and respect.
It is at this point he adds the lesson we need to wrap up his
version of the Solomon story:
“And yet, let us hope, it is not quite true. Let us hope,
rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world beneath and around
us, and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an
individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall
be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.”
None of us is guaranteed that even some of our works will endure
forever. But even so, like Lincoln’s
farmer, if anything still matters, and it does, it is the value of kavod
ha-briot. Of human dignity. Realizing our best lives are lived when we
see that what is true for us, that our lives can matter and mean something, is
true about the potential of every other human being on earth.
Our current circumstances should teach us that. You really want the biggest things you take
away from living through a quarantine to be that you watched all of Tiger King
and that you can now also not pay attention during remote meetings?
Wouldn’t it be better to have learned the value of life? That people we might have belittled, are more
vitally important to your life than you ever imagined? Or that people who don’t look like me or live
like me may have problems that make them angry enough to want to destroy things,
tear them down? Shouldn’t that matter to me enough to want to at least learn about
those people, and maybe even try to help them if they need it and I can?
As different as I may be, and I may not be that different
when it comes down it, but as different as I may feel from the African American
protesting in Kenosha, full of despair and anger at a system and a history in
our shared country that holds back people who look like him for no other reason
than their appearance – I should want to snap out of my complacency, which after
all contributes with its silence to the ills of the world, and understand -- and
in understanding want to help him or her.
Like Lincoln, doing so will have its tangible results – making
a happy, productive citizen, and yet have deeper, higher meaning -- helping a
fellow struggling human being attain their God-given dignity.
That though, seems far more obvious a setting in which
wanting to understand and wanting to help, given a well-known history, are the
choices one should make.
More challengingly, at least for me, is a different
example. One that through what I’ve
heard and seen, and through my stereotypes and fears, opens a great chasm of
distance – for me anyway. What should I
feel towards the white American at a rally in Sturgis? He or she feels intimidatingly foreign to
me. Their lifestyle is nothing like mine,
their faith is nothing like mine. And my
assumptions about them, and my assumptions about their assumptions about
me – lead me to want to have nothing to do with them. Yet, even here, shouldn’t I want to
understand and perhaps even try to help that fellow human as well? For while I believe our country’s history
clearly shows the African-American community far more wrong and far more lacking justice today, does that mean I
should give not a thought to whatever fears and anger and even hate the person
in Sturgis feels? And not to be too
impressed with myself, would it not be even more of an achievement to seek that
regarding one I feel so negatively about?
The lesson, I think could be taken to apply in many cases for
all of, I believe.
And is it not also an achievement to act with courageous empathy
and patience to those who misunderstand me?
And even more listen to those who can help me when I am wrong? I don’t want to be wrong in life, I want to
be good, too. And I don’t think I’m
alone wanting that. At least I pray I’m
not. Isn’t that a reason to want to
understand and reach out even to those with whom we disagree or those we either
believe or know are hurting our world?
It’s a huge task. I
don’t know all the steps that will get us there. Yet I am convinced this is a first step
towards becoming, “better friends than we otherwise would be.”
I love the humility in the gam zeh ya’avor story. But I also love what President Lincoln, and
our own tradition add to it – that even if it passes away, and all the more if
it endures, we must bravely follow their advice. Will doing so mean we will
always achieve it? No. Does it mean we will avoid conflict with evil-doers
and evil ideas – certainly not. Those we
must defeat by any means necessary. But “any
means” includes with friendship and understanding, too.
This is not the weak path.
It is the strong one. Let our
strength be to make a stranger a friend.
And to meet with courageous understanding and patience the one who looks
at us lacking such strength.
And let us pray to God, ken yehi ratzon, so may it be.
So may it be God’s will we appreciate this in the year to come. Amen.
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