Deeds

Rabbi's Notes - October 2005

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

It wasn't even Yarrow's extraordinary account of feeling the call to fly to Louisiana a few days after Hurricane Katrina and meeting up with a beautifully-organized, totally spontaneous encampment of people in tie-dye from all over the country who poured in to help, or the pallets of food and medical provisions they found waiting, also sent spontaneously from all over the place, to be carried out to people who needed them, or all the other incredible stories I've heard, along with all of you, about rescue attempts, homes thrown wide open, rebuilding projects started. No, it was actually a few days before the hurricane even started, driving up Albion Ridge on my way home, when I saw a van being driven by one of my neighbors, whom I know to be pretty sick, with a passenger that I happen to know is even sicker, and hearing just from wandering around town that the one guy was taking the other to get out of the house and take a little walk on the beach…

It got me to thinking about how truly generously people around me behave so much of the time. Writing this as I am during the middle of Ellul, when my faults and foibles (and oh-so-incidentally other people's too!) are on my mind, it's like looking through a whole other lens to think for a moment about the dense and nearly-invisible web of right, kind, decent, and sometimes truly heroic action that makes it possible for me to be so shaken up by people's very occasional shortcomings!

On the first day of Ellul I made my annual timeline, in which I reviewed my dog-eared 5765 datebook to recall the details of my own past year. Each year I do this extremely focused exercise: I go over my timeline with two different highlighters. I highlight the recollections which are especially pleasant (things I'm proud of, happy about, grateful for.) And I highlight the experiences that I still feel bad about.

So today I am studying the green items, the ones that make me glad in the remembrance. I see the meetings with people planning simchas and memorials, and I remember so many generous, confiding conversations, the trust that was placed in me. I see classes I taught, people shlepping to the shul week after week in the dark of winter, reading huge volumes of stuff I assigned, asking pointed yet openhearted questions. I see meetings to plan the retreat, the Shabbat Chai gatherings, the Torah school day camp -- everyone else present volunteering not only their time but their genius. I see holidays, Board meetings, the Darfur vigil, the Advance Directive workshops, the Ministerial Association. I see endless cups of coffee with folks, scheduled to talk about this or that, or just to connect and catch up. I see any number of places on my timeline where people reached out to listen to me and offer their wise counsel. This is my timeline and my teshuvah, so it centers on my activities. But I am struck anew by how much my happiness, my well-being and my growth depend on all of you. And so strongly by how generously I have been met, day after day by the community in which I live.

Yarrow gave her talk at the shul just a day or two after she returned from Louisiana. She bowled us all over with her descriptions of people all over the country taking the initiative to do brave and generous things: a businessman in Southern California who filled a semi with canned goods, medicines and cleaning supplies and sent it off to Louisiana; the 350-pound Mormon EMT from Iowa who showed up at the Veterans for Peace encampment, donned his tie-dye and went out to help out; the church group with years of hurricane relief experience coaching the hippies in how to do their work even more efficiently, the leaderless circles morning and evening at the encampment to plan the day's work and to hear how it went, everyone figuring it out together. Not to even mention Yarrow's own plunge into the fray, her first time in a Wal-mart, where she bought many hundreds of dollars worth of relief items, renting a van in Dallas and driving it to Louisiana, turning it over to the group to stock it as a medical van… Afterward Yarrow's talk, in the kitchen over tea, people were sharing news of other relief efforts. And various folks were saying things like, "See, the world really is good. If we listen to the news we might think that this isn't so, but look at the relief effort…"

And I found myself thinking, well not quite… I tend to agree with the Rambam. He teaches that the entire world is in the balance at each moment. If we commit one sin, the whole world is tipped towards evil; if we commit one good act, the whole world leans towards the good. At any given moment any of us can tip the world, or at least the immediate vicinity, in whichever direction we wish. Maybe it is a grandiose way to see oneself, holding the whole good or evil of the world in the balance. But then I think back over, say, the last twenty-four hours, and I could make a list pages-long of the kindnesses and decencies of Mickey and my other family, my neighbors, my pals, the people at Shabbat services yesterday, the good folks at businesses I've bopped into, the people on the other end of all the e-mails and phone calls I've gotten, folks I've run into here and there as I wandered through a day of life. If even one of those encounters tipped in the wrong direction, it would create a bitter taste in the day. Dozens of people (hundreds, thousands, millions if I really follow the chain of causality) collaborated to tip my world towards the good in the past day. And the day before and the day before that.

The world is rocking and rolling with the deeds of us all. There are plenty that tip things towards ill, and these wrench our guts, as they should. But somehow it's easy to overlook all it takes from all of us to keep that world from just flopping over on its axis. I just had to take a break between that last sentence and this next one because our beloved neighbor, Susan, dropped by with a spectacular ginger blossom from her garden for me and the sports page from her Sunday Times for Mickey. The house is already filling with fragrance (of ginger, not newsprint.)

And so may it be for us all: whatever adversity may come to any of us in the New Year 5766, may it be cushioned by a multitude of kindnesses; may we be able to see the kindnesses and goodnesses as well as the sins; and may we each be granted the merit to nudge things in the direction of good, for our families and neighbors and for us all. L'shana tovah, my dear community.

© 2005 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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