Dai k'var!

Rabbi's Notes - June 2001

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

In the course of some deep conversation or other when I was in college centuries ago, my friend Mary Ellen said one day, "The most important thing in life is to learn to love in as many ways as you can." It's still the best sentence I've ever heard spoken. I've thought about it a billion times since -- not only about the fathomless essence of love, but about how love can be learned -- must be learned -- and that one can love in many different ways. At some level I think of my whole life so far as one long and checkered education in ways of loving.

Texts appear regularly. When I was part of the Catholic Worker community on Skid Row in LA, folks there used to quote Dostoevsky: "Love in dreams is sweet. But love in reality is a harsh and dreadful thing." We had t-shirts: "LA Catholic Worker: Harsh and Dreadful..." And so we were.

In what appears to be quite another vein, my beloved Rav Kook writes: "Love in its most luminous aspect has its being beyond the world, in the divine realm...When worldly love derives from it, it partakes of much in its nature. Even in its descent it does not become miserly or grudging."

And of course, the clincher, from the morning service: "I hereby accept the obligation of fulfilling my Creator's mitzvah in the Torah: Love your neighbor as yourself."

Teachers appear regularly as well, geniuses of loving, artists of the generous gesture and the caring statement. I could write for volumes about people I know or read or hear about who educate me about new expressions of love. There are the sculptors who meld love into the political realm, into the household and family and community, who craft novel ways of loving in the intimate sphere. It has been my great luck and blessing to have been surrounded with teachers of love for my whole life, from my parents and first teachers and classmates to you with whom I live today.

And of course there are tests. Love is easy when everybody is agreeable and sweet. But the real education is in learning to love when there is stress and scarcity and disagreement and pain. Some of us in the Jewish community are being so tested right now. Our Board, responding in part to my strong advocacy, has banned M. from the shul for a period of time, until Rosh Hashana. Because he has come to the shul after being informed of the ban, we have secured a Temporary Restraining Order and have, on one occasion so far, called the Sheriff to have him removed. We have done this because a number of people, including myself, have found his behavior during services to be upsetting and frightening, and because intermediate steps have not caused this behavior to change.

This experience has aroused within me a million questions. Personally I never imagined sheriff's officers and court papers to be tools I would use to conduct myself in community, or that I would encourage others to use. After all, when we think about examples of love, we usually think of acts that are expansive and generous, not severe and limiting. We think of hesed, lovingkindness, not gevurah, strict judgment. As Rav Kook wrote in The Lights of Holiness, "Love in its most luminous aspect has its being beyond the world, in the divine realm, where there are no contradictions, limits and opposition, only bliss and good. When worldly love derives from it, it partakes of much in its nature. Even in its descent it does not become miserly or grudging."

But that very passage goes right on to say, "When it needs to confine itself, it confines love for the sake of love, it sets a boundary around the good for the sake of the good."

Most of us prize inclusiveness and acceptance, as well we should. Much of the world's terrible cruelty is based in intolerance of the various differences of individuals and groups. In our own personal moral careers, I imagine that most of us have worked diligently to face our own prejudices and intolerances, to welcome the ways in which people are different. We have stretched ourselves to live peaceably with different values and different behaviors than our own. This is beautiful, crucial, holy work.

Still it may be that our very prizing of inclusiveness and tolerance has occasionally caused us to include behavior which should not be included and to tolerate actions which should not be tolerated. It is hard, complicated, subtle work to know when to draw that line between someone merely being "different" and that person being abusive or destructive. People of conscience may well define that boundary differently from each other. It is tricky in one's personal life to know when to stretch to tolerate and when to say, "This behavior is not acceptable." There is an additional layer of difficulty in making that determination on behalf of a whole community. After all, some people have more ability to absorb difficult behavior than do others. So how abusive is too abusive? How destructive is too destructive? Certainly no one wants to make a habit of drawing these hard lines, of becoming intolerant. And no one wants their community to become rigid and unaccepting.

And so perhaps we go on a long time accepting behavior that is hurtful and not merely diverse, because we don't want to see ourselves as "hard-liners." When I think back on the history of MCJC and my own part in it, here and there in the sea of kindnesses and generosities, I remember moments of people shouting at each other, putting each other down. I remember some public confrontations in which people acted extremely unkindly and destructively. In the aftermath of such moments I recall a lot of heart searching, moral questioning. But I don't recall myself or anyone in authority ever simply saying, "This behavior is unacceptable, and anyone who engages in it will be removed." This may have occasionally happened in our Torah school. But never, in my recollection, with adults, no matter how destructive their behavior.

I wonder now how differently we might be facing this present challenge if we had ever drawn that line before. I wonder if we may even have been remiss in the past in tolerating intolerable behavior, so that we are agonizing today about what is actually a fairly clear case? I wonder if, because it is hard to know exactly when to draw that strict line, we have avoiding ever drawing it at all? After all, there is always someone who has more capacity to be shouted at, glared at, shoved or threatened than the next person. Should that line always be drawn at the far edge of the capacity for tolerance of the most capacious person? When should we stretch to accommodate, and when should we say, "Dai k'var! Enough is enough?"

And no one is cruel or abusive for no reason at all. There is always a cause, always, I suspect, a root in personal pain, that makes a person explosive and attacking. And so, even as the behavior may be intolerable, in the very same moment it arouses our rachmones, our compassion. And we ask ourselves, "Can I fix the pain that is causing the explosion? Should I be doing something to help?" Shouldn't I be doing something to help INSTEAD of drawing a line? Shouldn't I be hasidic -- full of hesed, lovingkindness -- instead of gevuradik, severe and limiting? And if I can't help the person who is attacking, can't I at least help my own soul by being tolerant at all costs? Even if he or she can't be kind to me, does that mean I should retaliate by being strict? Doesn't that just feed their pain and give them a reason to attack again?

These are such hard questions, questions about which equally loving, equally conscientious people may honestly differ. But this doesn't mean that they should never be answered, that no line should ever be drawn. Sometimes one must "confine love for the sake of love, set a boundary around the good for the sake of the good." It is my belief and that of the leadership of our community that the moment arrived to set such a boundary. We have done so with sadness, not delight, with different degrees of conviction, and with lots of reflection and soul searching.

Just by reading this, you will be drawn into moral tests of your own. If you don't know the details of this situation, you may find yourself wanting to know more so that you can decide for ourself if we did the right thing in this instance. And you will have to decide whether or how much to ask of whom. Or you may have a firm opinion based on what you already know or what I have written here. Should you speak your mind? In what settings? In what tone? With what aims in mind? Getting more information, participating in conversation about the moral implications of this situation, will help you to feel more part of the living, breathing process of our community, which is good. And you may well have some piece of wisdom to offer, some helpful moral support or correction. At the same time, conversation about other people's behavior is always problematic. It may cause embarrassment, may increase gossip, may enflame other people's hostilities, may spread dis-ease among us.

I am aware that by writing this column, even with its scarcity of detail, I am exposing not only M. but myself and the rest of our community's leadership, to scrutiny and to conversation which may be difficult for any of us. The alternative is to operate more quietly, some would say with less transparency. In exposing this situation, and my own questions and answers, I am trusting that you reading this are also "learning to love in as many ways as you can," that you too will look within and think about how best to draw from that place of divine love, where "there is only bliss and good, wide horizons without limit." Your answers will not necessarily be mine, nor should they be. But, since we are hopefully all students of love, all constantly taught and tested, we can trust each other even in a time of difficulty to "accept the mitzvah or our Creator, to love each other as ourself."

Copyright 2001 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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