Hillel UW's Blog

Hide and Seek

2007-09-21T18:00:00.000-07:00

Kol Nidre Sermon 5768 / 2007
By, Rabbi Will Berkovitz

Several months back the Washington Post conducted an experiment. They wanted to know what would happen if Joshua Bell, one of the world’s finest violinists, playing one of the best violins ever crafted, was to perform ten of the most elegant pieces of music ever written. But dressed as an ordinary street musician in one of the most mundane places – a subway station in Washington, D.C. during the morning commute. The question they wanted to explore was, in a banal setting, at an inconvenient time, would beauty – would genius transcend? Is there something deeply rooted in the human soul that can rise above the white noise – the blindness that comes with familiarity.

Would a crowd gather? Would people willingly miss their trains, turn off their cell phones, take off their iPods. Would people slow down, be late for work and find themselves inexplicably drawn in to the music? The answer was no.

That Friday morning passed like so many others. A crowd did not gather. They did not miss their trains and did not show up late for work. In fact 1,070 people passed by and virtually no one noticed – a scant 7 people paused. For his 45-minute performance, this world renowned violinist made $32 and change. Few people even bothered too look. Something in our goal driven society, in our destination oriented culture created an astounding lack of vision. Blindness isn’t just an inability to see, but also the inability to edit – to appreciate what we are seeing – or to distinguish anything at all. In our frantic rush forward our lives are becoming diminished.

My photographer friend Tony lead me to the Washington Post story because it related to a book project that was consuming him. He had been reflecting on the nature of sight and shadows after spending a year teaching blind students the art of photography.

While looking over the photos, my friend found himself compelled not only by what his blind students had created but what it had to say about our own lack of vision. He asked one student, “How do you not cut people’s heads in your photos?” The student replied, “I just ask people where they are.” These blind students had learned what we need to learn: how to see deeply by listening closely to our world.

The Talmudic word for blindness is sagi nahor. The literal translation is not blindness, but great light. It is as if the Rabbis are saying that people become blinded by seeing too much. Or too much of the same thing. The people in the Washington subway couldn’t see or hear the violinist because they have walked those steps so many times that they lost the ability to encounter anything unexpected.

We see roughly 30% of the sun’s light. Even with 20/20 vision, we walk around oblivious to what is perfectly visible to many animals. So much is obscured by a fog drifting before us as we edit and splice our way through our lives.

Most of us have a vague fear of losing our various senses. But while we may be able to buy glasses with stylish frames to correct our sight or a hearing aid the size of a pea to amplify the ambient sound, the sense we are truly losing is something far more profound – our ability to hear beyond listening – our ability to “see beyond sight.”

There was a constant group of people who tried to stop and listen to the music in that subway station – people who fought against the demands and the timelines of others. People who tried to push back on the strain of society and were drawn toward the music and the voice of the lone violin. People who heard beauty that day; who recognized genius. And in each case, despite their greatest efforts, they were whisked away to the subways or the doors leading to the streets – to other destinations.

It was always the children. Whenever a child crossed those few steps between here and there. Whenever a young boy or girl entered that in-between space and was enveloped by the music, caught site of the violinist casting out notes like hooks, beauty did transcend. They recognized what the people around them could neither see nor hear.

But what distortion happens between here and there? What is the distance between young and old that is measured by something far greater than years? What gets lost and when, and how, and why? Where does it happen? Who pulls us away when our truest longing is to stay and linger? And be drawn in? For a moment or a lifetime? Is there a way to keep our souls from becoming calcified – to remove the cataracts? Remove the beliefs that we have built up and fortified with our reason, our emotion, or our pain. Can we regain our vision – our ability to distinguish?

We see what we expect to see. We hear what we want to hear. And we experience what we anticipate we will experience. And we do it with all the instinctiveness of breathing. We do not expect to see a world-class musician on the side of the road, so we don’t see him even if he is there. We don’t expect our roommates or our spouses to wash the dishes, so we don’t notice when the sink is empty. We are so used to being criticized, that we cannot hear a true compliment. We only see the same old parent tyrannically hurling the same old silences and aggression so we are blind to the sadness, loneliness or fears that have crept in over the years. We can’t begin to forgive because we have put our emotions on mute.

What we see has little to do with what is before us, and has everything to do with our experience and how we piece together our narrative. Our lives would be transformed if we could let go of what we expect to find before we begin the search. If we could wait for the question before settling on the answer. If we could attempt to understand before being understood. Like Hagar when she was cast out by Abraham, if we could lift up our eyes, we might begin to see a pool of water instead of a desert before us. Or like Abraham stopped by the angel, we might be able to see something other than our families to sacrifice. We might truly begin to experience the people before us, and the world before us anew.

We too want to be seen anew. We all want to be seen. To be heard. I think of my son Nativ. He loves to play hide and seek with me when I come home. The dialogue goes something like this….I walk in the door and Nativ calls out, “Abba, I’m hiding.” I ask my wife, “Hey, where is Nativ?” She will say, “I don’t know -- he was here a minute ago.” And then Nativ calls out from under the kitchen table or behind the couch, “Abba. I’m here.” More than wanting to hide, we want to be found.

We do not want to live in other people’s blind spots. We do not want to be invisible to the world. We do not want to be ignored. We want to feel understood. When his student gave my friend Tony a photo she had taken of some cracks in the sidewalk, he thought it was a mistake. But then the student explained she planned to send them to the school superintendent with a note saying, “Since you are sighted, you may not notice these cracks. They are a big problem since my white cane gets stuck.” Not only do we shape what we see, but we shape what others see as well. We push things in and out of their blind spots as well as our own.

The violinist who was accustomed to playing before huge crowds was asked what it was like to be cast to the margins. “It was a strange feeling, that people were actually ignoring me,” he said, “I started to appreciate any acknowledgement, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change.” This was from a man who can earn $1,000 a minute during a performance. “There was this thought: what if they don’t like me? What if they resent my presence…”

I suspect that is how it is for most of us. We don’t need thunderous applause, but we do know the comfort when even one person understands us. And we know the vulnerability of being made invisible. Imagine if one of the world’s greatest violinists can start to doubt his abilities, how much more so with us.

I once had a conversation with a homeless man in a shelter. He didn’t start out homeless. In an earlier life he had a successful career in government, but alcohol got the best of him. He explained to me that the hardest part about life on the street was constantly being stepped over, forgotten, ignored.

We want to be heard for who we truly are. We want to be accepted – to be seen. We want to be found. And it does not matter if you are a freshman leaving home for the first time or the grandmother of that freshman, we want someone to say at last, I see you. I hear you. I am with you. We diminish the humanity of others by not seeing them, and we diminish our own by letting it happen.

The cure for our blindness. The thing that will remove the cataracts from our souls is if we direct our hearts to the face of the other before us. If we seek their humanity and stop hiding from our own. We cannot distill our lives to a play-list – no matter how good it may be. Your Facebook profile will never contain your essence – it will never allow you to comfort a friend. And it is never, ever a way to say I am sorry. It will never show your true face. Your Blackberry, iPhone or laptop cannot replace a conversation. And except for possibly the iPhone, it will not help you see beauty, or genius.

Turn them off. Put them away. Lift up your eyes and you will see. Listen and you may hear. Direct your hearts. Pay attention. The people who see the deepest know how to look. The people who know how to hear, have learned how to listen. I challenge you all to unplug for a weekend or forever– at least for the next 24 hours. No television or computers, no cell phone, no text messaging, no IM, no email and no Facebook. Just face-to-face conversations or comfortable silences. And then, maybe then, our vision will be restored.

Im shemohah, tishmah – if you listen you will hear. “If you listen to what is old, you will hear what is new.” The struggle is to let go of our distortions – whether caused by fear or distraction. And seek a higher illumination – see beyond sight. See the face of the other.

And that is what we need to commit and recommit to again. And again. And again. We have to look close enough. We need to not only listen but also strive to hear. We need to really see; not what we expect to see, but what is really before us. Who is really before us. And then we might discover in our closest relationships something fresh and unexpected. Something completely new or recover something very old or forgotten.

We have to keep looking and searching and exploring and seeking until we arrive where we began and see the place, see their faces for the first time. Our relationships, our lives, our very souls depend upon it. And then if we look a bit closer, and closer still, in the sound and the silence, in the white fire and the black fire, at what has always been before us, we might begin to see, shimmering there, the fine threads binding our lives, and our souls together.

Your One Wild and Precious Life

2007-09-12T19:00:00.000-07:00

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5768 / 2007 Sermon
By, Rabbi Jacob Elisha Fine

After high school I went to Israel for a year with the youth group I grew up in. About six weeks into my program I was in a favorite café one evening in Jerusalem with a friend. We were on our way out the door when we heard popping noises from outside. At first I thought that it was firecrackers but the Israelis in the café knew better. The lights went out and everyone fell to the floor, diving under tables for protection. Instinctively, I ran behind the café’s counter where I lay in a tight space next to the waitress. For 30 minutes, I lay on the ground in shock praying to God for my life. At a certain point someone came running into the café and I thought that this was the end of my life. But, instead, it was a soldier instructing us to stay put until he returned with instructions. About 15 minutes later he returned and told us that it was safe for us to leave.

The message of these days is that all of our lives are hanging in the balance. We may not be lying down on the ground with bombs blasting outside--but our future is completely uncertain. Ultimately we have no idea when we will die—and we desperately want to live.

It is hard to honestly confront our mortality. It is terrifying. We want the Israeli soldier, God, anyone, to come running to tell us that everything is going to be ok--that there is nothing to worry about--that we are going to be healthy, our parents and spouses are going to live long healthy lives, that our kids are going to be ok. We desperately want this assurance-to go to bed with some deep sense of security about our lives—but, of course, this is ultimately a futile desire--it isn’t how life works.

On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is decided,
how many shall pass on and how many shall be created,
who shall live and who shall die,
who in the fullness of years and who before,
who by fire and who by water,
who by the sword and who by wild beasts,
who by famine and who by drought,
who by earthquake and who by epidemic…

This chilling text of the unataneh tokef prayer which we will pray together tomorrow puts into words with unabashed honesty something that we all know but are often afraid to face—ultimately, our fate is out of our hands. We do not know whether or not we will be here next year to celebrate another Rosh Hashanah with our friends and family.

During a break from college I spent a few weeks living in a Zen Buddhist Monastery. At the end of each day, after a period of silent meditation, we would chant the following words before shuttling off to bed.

Let me respectfully remind you,
Life and death are of supreme importance.
Time passes by swiftly and opportunity is lost.
Each of us should strive to awaken.
Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.

At the time, I found the notion of squandering my life to be a deeply morbid thing to recite right before going to sleep. The pessimistic tone struck me as profoundly un-Jewish. Ours is a tradition that is generally not morose. We tend to emphasize living with simcha (joy) and tend to focus much more on life than on death. People are often surprised when they learn that the kaddish prayer that we recite in memory of a deceased relative has absolutely no reference at all of death. Rather, this prayer is an extended list of superlatives which we attribute to our Creator. As Jews, our typical response to death is essentially to affirm life.

And yet, while we are generally discouraged from remaining overly consumed with the inevitability of dying, the high holy days are a time each year when we remind ourselves that in order to truly live—we must appreciate that we are mortal and that life is precious to us. Again and again over the next 10 days we will pray that God ‘zochrenu l’chayim, v’kotvenu l’chayim--that God remember us for life and inscribe us in the book of life.

As I lay there on the ground in Jerusalem 13 years ago crying, desperately praying to God for my life, I had my first taste of my own mortality. I felt in no uncertain terms the transience of being---everything that feels so real and so permanent can be gone in a flash. During these days we are asked to go to that same emotional place. We are challenged to allow ourselves to actually fully feel the precariousness of our lives, and from that place of profound vulnerability we call out to the mysterious Source of Life with the most primal of our yearnings and to exclaim in the most candid of terms---‘let us live!’

Why do the authors of our liturgy try and take us to this very challenging and potentially painful place?

The central spiritual message of the High Holy Days is the renewal of life and the possibility of transformation. The simple but radical assertion which characterizes this season is that human beings and, in turn, communities and the entire world, have the capacity and, in fact, the responsibility, to profoundly transform themselves for the better.

Maimonides teaches:

Do not imagine that character is determined at birth.
We have been given free will.
Any person can become as righteous as Moses or as wicked as Jeroboam.
We ourselves decide whether to make ourselves learned or ignorant, compassionate or cruel, generous or miserly.
No one forces us, no one drags us along one path or the other.
We ourselves, by our own volition, choose our own way.

When we pray unetaneh tokef and acknowledge that some of us may, God forbid, pass away this year, the intention is not for us to dwell on death, rather, the wisdom of confronting our mortality is that it serve as a wake up call towards our transforming our lives.

In Jewish language we are essentially saying what the Buddhists said before going to sleep—
Life and death are of supreme importance.
Time passes by swiftly and opportunity is lost.
We should not squander our lives.

We are meant to be jolted from our complacency and to be moved to ask ourselves the big questions--‘Am I living my life as fully as I can? Am I taking advantage of every precious moment of this brief life?’

The Rabbis and poets who created the High Holiday liturgy had the conviction that we cannot afford to wait until death is at our doorstep to begin to really live--to become fully human.

When we are lying on the ground shielding ourselves from machine gun fire, or catching our breath after a near car collision, or watching our infant fight for life in the NIC-U, everything petty falls away. All that matters is LIFE. In the wake of moments like these we are offered a rare perspective--we are shaken, thrown off balance and, as if screamed from the heavens, we hear a voice deep within us which asks—challenges--are we living a life that really matters?!

This is one of those moments. Our being is this room together now is meant to be experienced as the moment after the near-car collision. Over the next 10 days let us take the call of this season seriously. Let us look deeply within and ask ourselves if we are living lives that matter. Are we living in ways that truly and authentically represent our deepest values? Are we living the lives that God demands of us? Are we living the lives that we demand of ourselves?

I find this to be extremely difficult work. I know that for me personally it is often not self-evident how I am meant to be spending my time on earth or how to go about living a life that matters.

Perhaps one way to engage this soul-searching is to take the time between now and Yom Kippur to really think hard about, and even to commit to writing, what it is that truly matters to us--to put into sharp focus what are our deepest values, convictions and priorities? What would we be proud to be known for? And then, once we have this clarity—the next step is to honestly ask ourselves whether we are acting out these ideals in our day to day lives. Are we walking the walk? If I tell myself that caring for the health of our planet, or fighting poverty or homelessness is one of my two or three greatest concerns in the world—is this consistent with the way I live my life? Does this value shape how I eat and spend money and teach and raise my family? If my partner or children are the single most important priorities in my life—does the amount of time and quality of attention that I offer them reflect this feeling?

These are the kinds of questions which this season of awe begs us to ask of ourselves. These are the conversations that we are meant to have with our loved ones.

And we engage this process with the promise that, after having done this difficult introspective work, that we will emerge after Neilah, the final service on YK, with a renewed sense of purpose and meaning, having reconnected with our own souls, with our loved ones and with the Source of All Life.

I would like to conclude with a poem by Mary Oliver.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?