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Sermons and Thoughts

When Life Calls on Us to Turn Left

12 October 2024
Rabbi Lea Mühlstein
Yom Kippur Morning (High Holy Days 5785)

You can watch a recording of this sermon on our YouTube channel.

I invite you to close your eyes for a moment and imagine that it is Sukkot not in the year 5785 but 3785 and rather than making your way to our sukkah in Northwood, you joined your community in pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem. As you are walking along the winding paths toward the Holy City, you find yourself immersed in the smell of zata’ar and rosemary released by the hundreds of feet of those on the same journey. Exhausted from the uphill journey, you and your community take a short rest in the shade with the city walls in sight. One of the elders steps forward to remind everyone of the rules for the ritual. “When you reach the Temple Mount, enter from the right, encircling the plaza counterclockwise and exiting to the left. But,” she pauses, continuing with gentleness in her voice, “if something has happened to you, remember that you must enter on the left, encircling the plaza clockwise and exiting on the right. And most importantly,” she pauses once more to ensure that everyone listening understands the gravity of the next part of the instructions, “if you are walking counterclockwise and you pass a person walking clockwise, you shall look them in the eye and ask “Why do you go around to the left?” and you shall listen to what has happened to the person and offer words of comfort to them and only then may you continue on your journey.” And as the elder takes a sip of water, readying herself to continue the journey, you dust off your clothes and rise, preparing yourself to finally approach the Temple, and you ask yourself – this time, will I be among those turning left?

The scene that we just imagined together is based on a short passage in the Mishnah (Middot 2:2), a Jewish legal compendium from around the third century, describing the pilgrimage ritual from the time of the Second Temple. As with so much of the Jewish tradition, great wisdom is contained in less than fifty Hebrew words, just a few lines of text on the screen.

Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR, a Jewish community based in Los Angeles, USA, who first highlighted the text for me, observes:[i] “Buried deep within the Mishnah … is an ancient practice reflecting a deep understanding of the human psyche and spirit: When your heart is broken, when the specter of death visits your family, when you feel lost and alone and inclined to retreat, you show up. You entrust your pain to the community. … This timeless wisdom speaks to what it means to be human in a world of pain. This year, you walk the path of the anguished. Perhaps next year, it will be me. I hold your broken heart knowing that one day you will hold mine.”

I want to focus today on two lessons from this text that seem particularly pertinent this year. Let me begin with the universal lesson before I turn to the more personal lesson.

We live in a world of pain – the pain of the Jewish people is matched by the pain of Ukrainians, Palestinians and all others suffering war and persecution, too numerous to name. Especially at times of trauma, it is natural for us to focus inwards, but this instinct means that it is easy to ignore or dismiss the pain of those outside our inner circle.

One of the examples that the Mishnah offers us of a person turning left, is the one sentenced to ostracization, a punishment used sparingly in ancient times that applied to people who were believed to have brought serious harm to the social fabric of the community. These were individuals that were essentially temporarily excommunicated. Remarkably, the Mishnah reminds us that even these individuals were invited into the sacred space of the temple, where they too were asked: “Why do you go around to the left?” And so, the universal lesson of our text is that even those who have hurt us, those who have harmed the fabric of our society, even those with views antithetical to our, must, as Rabbi Brous teaches: “be seen in their humanity and held with curiosity and care.”

The rabbis of old present us with an incredibly difficult challenge – to show compassion for those who might not reciprocate it. Yom Kippur is a day to acknowledge our failings – and I freely admit that I have not been able to always rise to the challenge throughout the last year. As I shared in my sermon on Pesach: “I freely acknowledge that for the first few months after 7 October I simply did not have the emotional capacity to hold both the pain of our people and the pain of the people of Gaza. There was only so much space for grief and compassion in my heart.”[ii]

But the rabbis also teach “lo aleicha ha-m’lachah ligmor, v’lo attah ben chorin libateil mimena” “you do not have to complete the work, neither are you free to desist from it” and in their wisdom, before they bring the challenging example of the ostracized person, they focus on another example of one, who is walking clockwise around the sacred plaza at the Temple: the mourner to teach us a more personal lesson.

When our hearts are broken, when our instinct is to withdraw and isolate, seek the community of others. Our tradition reminds us that when we feel our most vulnerable, we should come face to face with those who will hold us tenderly.

Judging by the turn out in synagogue in this past year and by the many messages that Rabbi Aaron and I have received from you, I know how important the community has been for so many of us in the past year especially. What a gift it has been to be able to share our vulnerability with each other, shedding tears without shame, as we allowed ourselves to feel our pain, our grief, our fear and our despair. And what even greater gift it has been to find strength, hope and courage in the kindness and generosity of the responses that we offered each other, a gentle touch, a quiet smile, an encouraging nod, a short email, an offer to help with the mundane tasks that still require attention even when our hearts are broken.

Yet, as hard as the past year has been, in many ways it is easier to show up for each other when we face communal trauma. The true test of the power of community is how respond when tragedy affects only one person and not the entire community.

When I’m brokenhearted, do I have the courage to turn left and share my vulnerability even when the rest of the community are turning right? Do I trust my community to hold my pain, my grief, my fear, my despair?

Brené Brown, Professor of Social Work at the University of Houston and a popular author and podcaster, speaks about the courage to be vulnerable.

Having collected the stories of thousands of individuals as part of her research, Professor Brown concludes that: “There was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggle for it. And that was, the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging. That’s it. They believe they’re worthy. And to me, the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we’re not worthy of connection.”[iii]

Ritualising the value of connection, our Jewish tradition declares that we are all worthy of love and belonging. As the Temple fell, this ritual was transformed and incorporated in other rituals such as the custom of shivah, the obligation of bikkur cholim—visiting the sick—and the emphasis on the minyan, the quorum, for communal prayer. Put simply, Judaism is about showing up for each other.

And so on our good days, Judaism calls on us to ask ourselves: do I take the time to notice those who have turned to the left? It is such a simple act to stop and notice those walking against the current, people who can barely hold on, and asking, with an open heart, “Tell me about your sorrow.” As Rabbi Brous puts it: “this may be the deepest affirmation of our humanity, even in terribly inhumane times.”

Our Mishnah teaches us what it means to be human in a world of pain. This year, you walk the path of the anguished. Perhaps next year, it will be me. I hold your broken heart knowing that one day you will hold mine.

This is our sacred responsibility – we cannot magically fix one another’s broken hearts, heal sickness, alleviate fears, but we can show up for each other so that those facing their most vulnerable moments can be wrapped in the mantle of community. We can humbly promise each other, “I can’t take your pain away, but I can promise you won’t have to hold it alone.”

Showing up—both when it’s our time to turn right and when it is our time to turn left—sounds like a simple task but it requires us to go against our instincts to withdraw, to hide our pain and to distance ourselves from suffering. It means picking up the phone to a friend or colleague who is suffering. It means going to the funeral and to the house of mourning. It means showing up in synagogue.

It also means going to the wedding and to the birthday dinner. As Rabbi Brous puts it: “Reach out in your strength, step forward in your vulnerability. Err on the side of presence.”

Because even in the face of grave human suffering, we are not helpless.

With small acts of kindness, we have the ability to bring light even in the dark of night, we can bring holiness into this world. In a departure from most other, male, post-Holocaust theologians, Professor Melissa Raphael, a feminist theologian who teaches at our rabbinic seminary Leo Baeck College, argues that God was not absent or hidden during the Holocaust. Even in the depth of despair of the concentration camp, Professor Raphael finds God’s presence “in the acts of women who reached out an arm to comfort another woman, offering water, food, a shawl, or when there was nothing else to give, a simple caring presence.”[iv]

The liturgical poem Unetaneh Tokef, which we recited on Rosh Hashanah and will recite again in our additional service, reflects on the precarious nature of human life, the ultimate futility of our endeavours and aspirations and the certainty of death. It concludes with the words: “u-teshuvah u-tefilah u-tzedakah ma’avirin et ro’a ha-gezerah” translated in our Machzor as “But repentance, prayer and good deeds annul the severity of the judgement.”

My teacher, Rabbi Professor Marc Saperstein,[v] points out that the text found in the prayerbook is based on a midrash that lists the three things that annul the decree—in Hebrew, mevatlin et ha-gezerah—but the change introduced by the liturgists is significant:

Rather than talking about “annulling the decree” the poem promises that repentance, prayer and good deeds have the power to, translated a little more literally than in our Machzor, “to cause the evil of the decree to pass.” As Rabbi Professor Saperstein teaches, the poem is not an affirmation that “it is within man’s power to annul an evil decree;” it is, rather, “a statement about human response to the arbitrary misfortunes and catastrophes that occur all around us.”

We might not be able to affect the things that life throws at us that lead us to having to turn left, but our liturgy reminds us that we have the power to decide how we respond when we see someone approaching us from the left.

So let us take a moment for Cheshbon Hanefesh – for taking stock: T’shuvah – repentance: when did we fail to show up? Did we not pay attention? For the times that we fell short, I offer this modern Al Chet written by my friend Rabbi Evan Schultz[vi]:

For texting when we should have called.
For listening when we should have heard.
For waiting when we should have started.
For fearing when we should have spoken.
For missing what we should have seen.
For watching when we should have come.
For asking when we should have realized.
For being when we should have acted.
For shouting when we should have spoken.
For keeping what we should have given.
For preaching what we should have lived.
For ignoring what we should have noticed.
For going when we should have waited.
For doubting when we should have believed.
For all these and more, we ask forgiveness.

But as we judged ourselves, may we show ourselves the same compassion that we attribute to God and ask ourselves: did life call on us too to turn left, hiding the face of others suffering alongside us from our sight?

Tzedakah – or as I would have probably formulated the prayer, G’millut Chassadim – good deeds and acts of lovingkindness: let us take a moment to recall in gratitude the small acts of kindness that were shown to us during the past year and reflect with pride on the times when we were able to bring holiness into the world by showing up for others.

And finally, t’fillah – prayer: through our prayers we remind ourselves to imagine a world as it could be.

So, as I asked you at the beginning of this sermon to imagine yourself walking up toward the Temple 2000 years ago, let me close by inviting you to imagine a community, a society, in which we learn to see one another in our pain, to ask one another, “What happened to you?” Imagine that we hear one another’s stories, acknowledge one another’s pain, and show up for each other. And we pray that even if that world might not become a reality tomorrow, we will commit together to working to make this a reality in our own community, that it be a space of sincere, tender encounters that remind us that our lives and our destinies are entwined. May our efforts to find our way to one another give us the strength to find hope and courage in our broken world and may this be a source of healing for us all.

V’nomar – and let us say: Amen

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[i] I am deeply grateful to the wisdom found in Sharon Brous’ book, The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World, Avery 2024. Direct quotes are from the article by Sharon Brous, Train Yourself to Always Show Up, New York Times 19 Jan 2024, nytimes.com/2024/01/19/opinion/religion-ancient-text-judaism.html

[ii] Lea Mühlstein, A Heart of Many Rooms, Sermon for First Day Pesach 5784, The Ark Synagogue, 23 April 2024.

[iii] Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability, TED talk June 2010, ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability

[iv] Carol P. Christ, Review of The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust by Melissa Raphael, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Jun. 2005), pp. 577-580

[v] Marc Saperstein, Rosh Hashanah 5769, Leo Baeck College 17 Sept 2009, lbc.ac.uk/d-var-torah/rosh-hashanah-5769/.

[vi] Evan Schultz, Facebook 10 October 2024 – the original version uses the first person singular.