A Nice Problem To Have

Rabbi's Notes - March 2002

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

Here's "a nice problem to have," as they say: in the aftermath of the vandalism of the shul garden and the break-in that happened at the end of last year, several local churches and spiritual groups spontaneously took up collections and sent us gifts of money. These came with heartfelt greetings and words of solidarity and support. I was the person they contacted in each case, and it was incredibly touching to be the recipient of these gestures of friendship. But it was a little embarrassing too, in a sweet way.

Just to catch you up, in case you hadn't heard this unpleasant news, in late December Anne and Mike, our beloved gardeners, came to the shul and found that someone had rampaged the garden. Young trees were snapped in half; plants were trampled and ripped. This happened while I was on sabbatical, so I didn't see the damage myself. But I know that it was substantial and ugly and far more than could be explained away by any accident. A few weeks later we came to the shul and found a pane of colored glass in a window broken away and the little tzedaka cans and bottles in the kitchen upended and empty. The sheriff came out right away and showed us that someone had tried to pry the window to break in.

A few weeks later an article in the Beacon and Advocate-News said that the shul had been vandalized twice. And this, I assume, was how our friends in other religious communities found out about what had happened with us. But, you know, that word "vandalized" is a big one when it appears I the same phrase with "shul." When we hear that a shul is vandalized we think of swastikas and torchings and smashed windows. We think anti-Semitism, and in most cases this is apt. In our case, the first incident was certainly vandalism, but it didn't seem to have any anti-Jewish content. The shul building itself was untouched. If anything, it seemed like something an angry drunk might do coming out of the local bar. The second event apparently wasn't an act of vandalism at all; it was a burglary, which yielded the inept burglar a few dollars in change at most. If anything, we imagine that the thief was someone hungry and homeless. Who else would break into a shul, where little money and few valuables are likely to be found?

Right away a couple of generous local nursery-folk donated a whole bunch of wonderful plants, and Anne and Mike replaced the damaged plants with these gifts. Those offerings, which came so quickly and abundantly, softened the blow somewhat, according to Anne. Then came these gifts of money from the different religious communities. The message came through loud and clear, with both the offerings of plants and cash -- people around us want well for the Jewish community, want to offer comfort and support to us at a difficult moment. I think that a number of other such offerings might have also come our way, except that I headed them off. The damage to the garden and the window has been taken care of. And, while any harm to our wonderful shul is a terrible thing, blessedly this probably wasn't the kind of hateful harm that requires that kind of solidarity in response. Imagining that poor, desperate burglar, our Board decided, very wisely and appropriately, I think, to donate those gifts of cash we received to charities in our community which help people who are poor and hungry. Maybe that poor soul will be able to get help without having to commit another crime.

So what's left at the end of this little saga? If you balance the malice of the vandal and the burglar against the kindness of the many people who reached out to support us, I see a residue of good. Of course we would prefer that the original damage had never happened. But because it did happen, we had occasion to learn that we are cared about and supported as a community by our neighboring churches and sanghas.

In my experience this sometimes happens with painful and even hateful experiences. If they are responded to with generosity and support, sometimes we come out with confidence and hope we never would have otherwise gained.

This is on my mind right now because this (Thursday) morning we were reading the chapter on "Repentance" in Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz's gorgeous little book, The Thirteen Petalled Rose. In this chapter Rabbi Steinsaltz suggests that, through acts of repair after the fact of an act of damage, we can actually metaphysically reverse the sequence of time and replace evil with good. He is speaking in the personal realm: if I do wrong and then, thoroughly and whole-heartedly, do teshuvah -- apology, restitution and repair -- it is possible that in the end there will be that residue of good. It is possible that the universe will actually be better off than if I had never done the wrong in the first place. The repair of a wounded limb may make it stronger than if the limb had never been damaged. The repair of a hateful act may make a stronger, sweeter, more loving individual or community or world than if the hateful act had never happened at all.

Now neither I nor Rabbi Steinsaltz would ever suggest that we intentionally do harm so that we can repair it! But there is enough wrong done all over the place to test this hypothesis a hundred times a day. Rabbi Nachman says, "That which was broken can be fixed." Rabbi Steinsaltz says that the act of fixing what was broken corrects the original evil, changes the cosmic balance in the direction of good. We might say, following his teaching, that the acts of our neighbors reaching out to the Jewish community in the aftermath of damage to our shul actually, metaphysically neutralizes and corrects the original vandalism and burglary. We might say that the net result is a kinder, more loving, safer community than if the original assaults had never occurred.

We might also say that the olive tree which Mike and Anne lovingly started from seed and nurtured for several years before planting at the shul, the biggest, most beautiful one of the several they planted, remains forever destroyed, that all the gifts and replacements and consolations in the world never replace that original nefesh, the soul of that particular tree. We might say that that which is broken cannot always be fixed. We might say that hate once turned into action defaces the world forever, that there is no such phenomenon as repair, that tikkun is wishful thinking.

This would be an apt question for the seder table this year, in a year of war, in a year of fear and polarization on many fronts in our hurting, vandalized world. Does our redemption from slavery in any way mitigate or transform the experience of slavery itself? Would the world or our people or our own souls be better off if we had never gone down into Mitzrayim? Is repair possible? Is repair meaningful?

I want to wish each and all of us, and everyone we love who celebrates redemption at this season, a renewal of hope and inspiration to carry us forward. May our seders be joyful, deep and delicious. May we all learn precisely what we need to know for this season about redemption and transformation. Hag sameach!

© 2002 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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