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Last week we read the Torah portion called Kedoshim, ‘holy things,’ and our particular little section in the service included these verses:
You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall reprove your fellow and do not bear a sin because of him. You shall not take revenge, and you shall not bear a grudge against the members of your people; you shall love your fellow as yourself – I am HASHEM. (Leviticus 19:17-18)
This is generally understood to say that offering tochechah, reproof, when it is called for is actually part of loving your neighbor, or at least a necessary corrective to grudge-bearing and (heaven forbid) revenge. So of course the rabbis offer up rules and teachings about how to reprove our fellows.
This whole matter makes me a little nervous. I don’t really like being criticized myself. And more than that, I usually subscribe to the notion that my own sins are plenty enough for me to worry about, without getting in the business of telling other people how to fix theirs. In fact, every High Holy Day season someone talks to me about someone who has hurt them and asks me whether I think they should confront that person about the injury they inflicted. And for many years I’ve responded that you can’t really do other people’s teshuvah (repentance, turning, repair of wrongdoing) for them, and maybe it would be best to just think about whatever small contribution you might have made to the conflict, take responsibility for that, and maybe your good example will, if anything, inspire the one who hurt you to do likewise.
But last week I read a Talmudic passage which says that my position on this could be called “false modesty.” (Me???) R. Judah ben R. Shimon ben Pazzi asked R. Shimon ben Pazzi: ‘What is preferable: reproof with honest purpose or false modesty? (Arachin 16b) Of course the Talmudic answer is, how about true modesty??? But then the sages go right on and tell a story about simmering resentment, tattling, needling – everything except directly asking a person to stop doing something they shouldn’t be doing.
Maimonides is less oblique: a reproof should be offered in private, in a gentle and tender voice, and only for the wrongdoer’s own good. God forbid you should humiliate or terrify a person in the course of correcting her, cause his face to go white, or call her a name. If the person changes course, all well and good. Forgive and let it go. If not, you should repeat your words of reproof, even several times. Only if a person flagrantly, publicly, repeatedly commits the offense should you escalate your tactics. If you can see that the person doing the wrong deed is too dense to understand a reproof, the better path is to just let go of it, as long as you can do so without bearing a grudge. “All that the Torah objects to is harboring ill-will.” (Mishneh Torah, Knowledge 6:6-9)
Okay, all this is preamble. I have a reproof to offer (be warned: you might want to stop reading here…) I hope you are reading your Megillah in private. I think I really am saying this for your good, or at least for all of ours… Here goes:
There weren’t enough seders in our community this past Passover to comfortably welcome everyone who wanted to be a guest at one. Some people did not have a first-night seder to go to.
Phew! I got it off my chest. Need I say any more? Maybe that’s enough.
Well, a little more… I find myself remembering a time many years ago when things in our community felt pretty rocky to me. I felt terribly anxious and guilty and, yes, resentful. What do anxious, guilty, resentful Jews do? I went to a therapist. One day the therapist asked me to focus on some particular thing or other, and I confessed that I had stayed up late the night before making trays and trays of enchiladas, wallowing in resentment as I cooked, because there was an upcoming potluck, and I didn’t think people would bring enough food. I remember blowing up and saying, “I feel like the Wizard of Oz!” I felt – back then, a long time ago, different circumstances – like I was hiding behind a curtain, trying to create the illusion of community.
I learned a huge amount that session! And I very seldom anymore act, or feel, like the Wizard of Oz in this community. I really get that whatever we all want by way of life together we need to make with and for each other. No co-dependent wizard can do it for us. If we want each other cared for when we are sick or fed when we are hungry or taught Judaism or included in festivities or supported as we age or celebrated as we come to milestones in life, well, we have to show up and do it. No short-cuts. We’re actually pretty good at a lot of this, In My Humble Opinion.
We fell down a little at Passover. Several households were gracious as ever and called the seder hotline to offer places at their Passover table. (I don’t know if it is my place to say thank you, since you did this mitzvah for the whole community, not just for me. But my heart is grateful to you nonetheless.) Just not quite enough of us. It can be intimidating to host a seder if you’re not used to it. And expensive. And crowded. And sometimes you just want to be with who you want to be with, and the idea of having people you don’t know so well just feels like too much. And this year, davka as they say (“all the more so!”) there was a community seder later in the week, so that no one had to be completely seder-less. All completely understandable reasons not to have offered a place at your own kitchen table. I hope no one’s face has gone white with shame reading the above…
Next year, when Pesach comes rolling around again, we’ll each have to ask ourselves what kind of community we want to be holiday-wise, and what we each have to offer into that vision. For that matter, as long as I’m on your case (and here I am escalating my reproach, contra Maimonides…) we could ask the same question about Shabbat dinner every week.
I don’t know how you’re feeling reading my words of tochechah. For my part I can report that I’m sitting at my computer smiling out the window right now. My mind is wandering to _______ saying recently that, when she was sick, people she didn’t even know kept showing up at her house with food and help, or to ______, who has offered to lead a shiva minyan at the home of someone she hardly knows, or to the secret angels who sneak into the shul each week to set up chairs and leave challah for the morning minyan. And that’s not to even mention the international chess game, with accompanying chat, going on via Facebook between our rebbetzin and a younger-generation world traveler, or words of support and consolation sent through the ether as another young adult starts a new business, or computer help for a person losing eyesight, or... If you’re a person who doesn’t have a seder to go to on the first night of Passover, that’s a serious and painful thing. But it occurs in the context of people learning how to be more deeply in the mix with each other. As we do so, we find our edges and our limits, as individuals and as a community, and we each can think about whether and how we want to stretch. I can think of few questions more important, locally or globally.
If I may speak for a moment on behalf of all of us – and I don’t really know whether or not I can or may – I ask forgiveness of anyone in our community who was not included as they wished to be included during this past Pesach. I hope that you will look on us kindly as we reflect and repair, and that you will be part of that repair, as you part of everything we are as a community. Okay, enough tochechah. Maybe more than enough. I know you’ll think about it. And so will I.
- Rabbi Margaret Holub
© 2009 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Updated 04/30/2009 (rge)