TJS S3 Interlude - the many faces of mercy

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If you do not expect the unexpected, said Heraclitus, you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or by trail. Well, I'm not entirely certain where I'm headed, but I am confident I'll know when I get there. Because I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is the Jewish Story. Interlude to the Many Faces of Raphami Does anything else feel like the whole world has been sent to time out? I mean, 1.5 billion people told to stay home at this point? It's kind of like God has said, everybody go to your room and don't come out until you're going to do something differently. So I want to take the opportunity today to think together a little bit about what exactly we can take from this unprecedented, at least in our lifetime, set of circumstances.

And I'm not saying that every cloud has a silver lining because things are actually quite grim out there and some of you listening right now might be suffering in a very real way. What I am saying, however, is that there's always an opportunity which comes together with such a situation. And when I try to figure out where the wisdom lies in the present, one of my go-to sources is, of course, the past. You're listening, after all, to the Jewish story, and not just the past in general, and not even just the Jewish story in general, which might be useful. After all, this is not the first plague that we've discussed. I particularly go to the Tanakh, to the Hebrew Bible, because amongst the many ways I look at it, I see the Tanakh as a great repository of the wisdom to be found in the human story.

And there's a particular story that's been on my mind a lot lately. It's at the end of the second book of Samuel, Shmuel Bet, 24th chapter. And it's a story that you may be familiar with that David decides to count the people. He does a census, which for various reasons, as we saw not too long ago in our weekly reading of the Torah portion, does not find favor in the eyes of the Lord. The Lord sends the prophet God to David to tell him that a punishment is on the way. It says, When David arose in the morning, the word of the Lord had come to the prophet God, David's seer. Go and tell David, said the Lord, I hold three things over you. Choose one of them, and I will bring it upon you. So God comes to David, and he tells him, Shall a seven-year famine come upon you in the land?

Or shall you be in flight from your adversaries for three months while they pursue you? or shall there be three days of plague in your land? Now consider carefully what reply I shall take back to him who sent me. And before I tell you what David said, it's actually worthwhile to consider what would you do in these circumstances. Take a pause. Think about it. Seven years of famine, right? Three months of defeat before your enemies or three days of plague in the land. we discussed that one around the Shabbat table so David says to God I am in great distress let us fall let us fall into the hands of the Lord for his compassion is great now it's a fascinating statement David chooses the pestilence and he sees it as falling into the hands of the Lord and this is the way I know a lot of people have been experiencing this I've been getting a lot of phone calls, emails from people out there listening or saying, what on earth is happening?

This is not the hands of man striking us. It's a natural disaster. And therefore, those of us who believe everything comes from God, see it as the hand of God. And what I want to speak about a little bit today is what are the Rahamim? What's the compassion or mercy which is available in this moment, which otherwise never would have come into the world? And before we can do that, and the title of the show is The Many Faces of Rachamim, there's a lot of ways in which you can look at it. Before we can do it, though, we have to, of course, define our terms. To me, Rachamim, which is often translated as mercy, has its root in its three-letter root of Rechem. Rechem in Hebrew is a womb. So what's the connection between compassion or mercy and a womb?

Well, it's quite simple. that a womb is the ability to hold space for another being to come to be. And that's precisely what compassion is. Just think about it. If a judge judges strictly, right? Think of a young man who's, I don't know, broken all the windshields in an entire used car lot, gets drawn in front of the judge. Judd looks at the boy, looks at the act. He checks his sentencing guidelines, and he says, 10 years, bye kid. He doesn't ask any questions. He doesn't widen the picture. That's called absolute judgment. It's a snapshot of simply what is. Whereas, the judge could look at the situation and he could have rachamim. He could say, well, how did it come to be that this boy was in that situation to begin with?

Look at the backstory. And where will this boy head if I indeed sentence him to 10 years in prison? Look at where things are heading. It's a broadening of perspective. And in the broadening of perspective, it allows us to have not only human compassion, a care for this individual, but it also allows a space to open up for something which otherwise never would have come to be. That's what Rahamim is. It's the creation of a space that allows something new to come to be. And with that in mind, I want to pursue it into our current situation to understand what exactly is available to us right now, or what is, if possible, that we can hold space for it to come to be? So the first face of Rachamim, of compassion, I want to talk about is perspective.

You know, I remember when I was an undergrad, I went to the Colorado College, a wonderful liberal arts school, right at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and not just any part of the Rocky Mountains. There's a massive 1,400 foot high mountain which looms over Colorado Springs. It's called Pikes Peak. Send me an email, robmikefoyer at gmail.com or a Facebook message if you've ever actually been to the top of Pikes Peak. If you have a picture of you, you want to share it, that would just make me smile. Anyway, I love that mountain. Its image is branded in my mind to this very day. I can shut my eyes and see it. I remember once when I was a freshman, I was speaking to my brother back in New York City about what it was like to wake up every day in the shadow of this mountain.

I grew up in suburban Cleveland where the biggest thing around was the downtown buildings. And frankly, with all due respect to Cleveland, they're not that big. And so he asked me, what's it like out there? How do you like it? I love it. I said, and you know what more than anything else? It's just this mountain that's with me every day. He said, what do you mean? I don't understand. I said, well, there's just something about having that mountain on the edge of the horizon at all times that it just makes everything else on a day-to-day level seem a little bit less important or pressing. I really struggled to communicate it. At a certain point in our conversation, he said to me, so you're telling me just because the mountain exists means you don't have to do your homework?

And I laughed, but you know what? He was right. because having that mountain on the edge of the horizon at all times gave me perspective It not that the things I were doing were less important It just that they were no longer the all story that we so often make out the events of our lives to be Now, this aspect of rachamim, of a widening of perspective, of an opening out of the space of the possible that can allow something new to be, is more than just a simply, this too shall pass. However, we shouldn't sort of negate that here in Israel we have that expression that says, We got through Pharaoh, we'll get through this one too. It's a bit of a joke in Israeli society, but, you know, it goes to the core of what it means to be a Jew in the world, is that no matter how difficult the situation we find ourselves in today, and listen, I got five kids at home, I'm trying to work three jobs and just hold up morale.

This is not simple, and I'm willing to bet that there's someone listening to me right now, or many someones, who have it a lot harder than I. So the fact that we have a historical perspective which tells us there is actually something beyond the horizon of the immediate crisis should not be dismissed. What I'm pushing at is something even deeper. Because when you have eyes of Rahamin, when you have eyes that look at a situation, and are able to lift up beyond the immediate horizon toward a realm of the possible, then you begin to recognize that there's something larger which is always being played out. And you know, this perspective we associate with a particular name of God, Hamakom. It literally means the place.

You know, and when the rabbis used it, and it will come up in the Seder, for those of us who will be indulging in a couple of weeks in one of my most favorite moments of the Jewish calendar, Seder night, we will use that name of God in very specific places. To the rabbis, it's undoubtable that, or indutible? There's a word for that. It's beyond doubt that the word makom referred to the temple, of course, to the Holy of Holies in specific where God's dwelling presence was to be found. But they also use the word makom to refer to that attribute of God, which is he who holds the space of the world. We say that the world is not the place of God, but God is the place of the world, the place, Hamakom. Now what can this teach us about the power of Rahamim to broaden our perspective in order to allow something new to come to be?

Well, I'll teach it to you in a very specific way. When a Jew greets a mourner, there's a very specific phrase which we use, Let the place bring you comfort amongst the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. And you know, the question comes up all the time. Why that particular name of God? It could have been the four-letter name of God should bring you comfort. It could have been... There are many names of God. The merciful one should bring you comfort. Why? And I'll tell you, it's very simple. Grief, when it's real, is all-consuming. Much like the current crisis, I mean, I don't know about you, but I've spent many more hours than I ought to have reading the Internet, gathering the news, cruising Twitter, feeding through Facebook, just focused, obsessed, consumed with the current situation.

And to a certain degree, that's appropriate. It's unprecedented, not just in our lifetime, but in the lifetime of anyone I've ever known. It's an unbelievable occurrence. However, you have to remember that there's a horizon beyond our current crisis. In the same way that a mourner delves all the way into the distress of mourning, and must really do so in order for it to be real, when we greet them, when we try to bring them nechama, comfort, so it's a fantastic thing, nechama, by the way, means comfort, but it also in Hebrew means regret. Now, how could the same word mean comfort and regret? It's quite simple, really. it doesn't mean either. Nechama means to change one's perspective after the fact. Regret's the easier one to understand.

I thought it was a good idea until I did it, and now I really regret it. It's that perspective that comes to us after the fact. But what does it mean to take comfort after tragedy? Well, the mourner in their distress, or those of us who are in the midst of a crisis, are consumed by what is. And those of us who have the ability to stand just a little bit outside when it comes to the mourner, because I myself have not suffered that loss, or when it comes to the current crisis, because I am able to maintain perspective, we stand just a little bit outside and we say, listen, there's something beyond your crisis, beyond your pain, that's waiting for you when you're ready. Now that last point is very important because it is actually halakha, it's actually Jewish law, that you don't try to comfort someone who is unable to receive it.

You're meant to sit silently with a mourner until they speak first. In the same way, when people are consumed with panic over the current crisis, it does not help to tell them, listen, everything's going to be okay. But the reality is every crisis has a horizon. And if you want to find the comfort, if you want to understand the potential which lies beyond it, you have to know Hamakom is always there. There is a place which upholds you. So when we say to the mourner, Hamakom Yinechem Etchem, I'm basically saying, when you're ready to choose life, when you recognize that you can't roll back the clock and the person you love is indeed gone, and nevertheless you want to live a happy full life, you're going to need to transform that grief in some way into a precious part of the life you're going to live moving forward, meaning you'll never have the person back, but you will always have their memory.

You always have your determination to embody the qualities about them which you love in your own life. You always have many things. And that choice, that choosing of life, is what allows the mourner to step out of the narrowness, and appropriate narrowness, mind you, of their grief, into a broader horizon. And our job for the mourner is to just hold that space and gently say, When you're ready to be comforted, there is a world beyond your grief. And in the very same way, right now what we have to do is have compassion for one another to hold that space saying, yes, this crisis is real. Yes, it deservedly consumes your emotional, psychological, physical energy. But it has a horizon. and God is waiting for you on the other side.

Another face of compassion is prayer. You know, our sages, often in the Gemara, when they spoke about praying, they called it boyerahme, calling down mercy. And there's something very deep in this. The Holy Eish Kodesh, the Pius Nasser Rebbe, who was the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto, meaning literally the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi, if you're unfamiliar, makes a fascinating observation. He says that suffering, all suffering, is actually a double tragedy. There's the suffering itself, what's causing you pain. But then there is the most common reaction to suffering, which is that it narrows us. And in that narrowing of horizon, suffering removes hope. Now listen to those words of David that we read right at the beginning.

V'yom e' David al G'ad tzar li me'od. Tzar li me literally means I am in great distress but it also means I in a very narrow place Once again we coming up on Pesach And in Pesach we came out of Mitzrayim We came out of Egypt. We also came out of the Mitzarim. We came out of those narrow places. Now, how do you get out of that double tragedy of suffering? Because suffering is real. There's sometimes nothing to be done about that. And we're talking about, by the time you hear this, it could be 20,000 people who have died on our planet. Mind you, there's many people who die of many other things, but this is real. So how am I supposed to get out of the narrowness which so easily follows in the wake of it, of a narrowing of horizon, either just a concern about myself, or a narrowing of horizon in the sense that there's nothing beyond this tragedy, or a narrow horizon in the sense that I lose hope?

Well, prayer really is the answer. Even in the Exodus from Egypt, we see that this is so. I mean, after all, Israel had been slaves in Egypt for 210 years, and by the time we went out, our residents there had been pushing 400. So what exactly was it that caused redemption to happen now? Well, if you look in the second chapter of the Exodus, in the 23rd and 24th line, He says, And though after many days, the king of Egypt died. That Am Yisrael groaned from their labor and they cried out. And their cry for help, basically, rose up to God and God heard. and God remembered his covenant with Avram Yitzchak and Yaakov and God looked upon the Israelites and God knew. Meaning what triggered all those who God heard, God remembered, God looked, God knew what triggered divine action in their lives was the fact that they cried out.

That that didn't allow, that they didn't allow their suffering to push them into hopelessness. Remember, when it hurts, we cry out. And if we don't cry out, it's because of one of two things. Either we don't believe we deserve to be saved, or we don't believe anyone's there to save us. Meaning it's either a narrowness of inward conception, or it's a sense that there's nothing beyond my suffering to help me anyway. Prayer is the most fundamental face of compassion, of rachamim, of a broadening of perspective, which allows something new to come into the world that we need right now. And when I say prayer, I'm not just talking about the gimme, gimme, gimme prayer. Now, it's very natural. And if anyone out there is facing sickness himself or their loved ones or the people they care about are sick, I bless you that you know only healing.

I bless you so that you should see the perspective beyond and know that there is health and safety waiting for you. But nevertheless, it's not enough to ask just for ourselves. Our sages say that dogs bark in Aramaic. You know, and here in Israel, if I ask my kids, how does a dog bark? They'll say, hav, hav, hav, which is Aramaic for gimme, gimme, gimme. We don't want our prayers to be gimme, gimme, gimme, because then we're treating God like a tight-fisted parent who's just simply not giving out enough love or healing to the world. On the contrary, Rav Kook has a beautiful statement about prayer. He says, kishemekuvanim la'ezem uvukash v'tfilah when we orient ourselves towards some particular object in our prayer we must take heart that our intention is to remove the darkness and evil from the whole world right?

because our experience, he goes on to say of what we lack our need to get out of our particular narrow place is expressive not just of our own need of give me, give me, give me but actually in the greatness of our souls, he says. Begodel nishmatenu harinu hafatzim davka b'shlemut hagemurah v'amukhletet. Really what we want is only the absolute and complete wholeness. We need to use the current suffering that we're feeling. The narrow places literally we find ourselves locked in our spaces, perhaps separated from our prayer communities. We need to take that intensity and we need to cry out, not just on our behalf, but on behalf of the whole world. And who knows, since those of us who believe that God always listens, perhaps this time God will hear, God will remember his covenant, God will see, and God will know.

So, there's one more, perhaps two, faces of compassion that I want to touch on in this brief and from the heart message to you. And that is really the sense of the womb. I hope we all have people in our life who are able to hold space for us, who really have that capacity to meet us as we are, to draw out from within us the things that we perhaps don't even see ourselves, but to hold them all together and to force us to integrate them in a way in which become more of who we need to be. And that integration is associated in the Kabbalah with Tiferet, the quality of divine beauty, which is itself the ultimate embodiment of rachamim, of compassion. But in order to get there, in order to make all the pieces fit together, sometimes you've got to get stuff out of the way.

Let's face it, none of us is perfect. And the womb is one place that you make space for another one to come to be. But I'll tell you, as a parent of five kids who are all trapped inside my house right now, the older they get, the more you have to have that capacity to be a womb, to hold a strong structure around them in order that the things which are within them can come to right relationship and that they can spit out those that they don't want. Because we are all right now in the crucible, right? You may be familiar with the prayer of Solomon. O Lord, give heed in your heavenly abode to their prayer and supplication. Uphold their cause. Pardon your people for all the transgressions we've committed against you.

Grant them mercy. There is our mercy. Because grant them mercy in sight of our captors that they may be merciful to us. And here's the key word. because they're your very own people. That you brought out from Egypt from the midst of the iron crucible. Right, Egypt was a crucible. We went down there, imperfect, brothers that had beat up their brother and sold him into slavery, a bunch of pieces, and there, through the suffering of slavery, we were forged into a nation. In the very same way, the crisis within which we find ourselves right now is indeed a crucible. Meaning the pressure's on, the heat's being turned up. So long as the vessel holds, we will all have the capacity to spit out the slag and to become a more pure alloy of the pieces of ourselves that we all longing to put together And that integration is a face of Rachamim as well as the capacity to hold that space for one another And I'm going to put out there to you right now.

I am willing to hold that space for you. If you are in distress, if you need spiritual counseling, write to me, ravmikefoyer at gmail.com or Facebook, ravmikefoyer. Reach out. We'll work out a professional situation. I'll find a way in which to do it. I don't want anyone to feel alone. Not just because you're in distress, but because this is a tremendous opportunity to take the heat and pressure you are experiencing and to transform them into a crucible which will allow you to become the person that you want to be. You know, those words I quoted you from Solomon were not just any old chapter. They're from the first book of Kings, Malachim Aref, from the eighth chapter of the first book of Kings, which everyone must read.

If you've never read it, it is arguably one of the most important chapters in the entire Hebrew Bible because it's his dedication speech for the temple. So when Solomon stands up and explains to us exactly what it means that he's just constructed a place which is meant to be a connection between heaven and earth. And the fact that that crucible is located right there in the temple leads me right on to my last point. So, you know, that story with which we started has a somewhat strange ending. Let's see how it goes. God essentially causes David to stumble. It says that God was angry with Israel. Thus, he is the one that provoked David to do this census, which then in turn evokes God's further angry. And you get this very strange choice with which David is presented, you know, seven years of famine, three months of defeat or three days of plague.

And David falls upon the divine mercy. He falls onto God's hand. And indeed, the story goes that the plague spreads throughout the land, and right when it's on its way to Jerusalem, the plague is stayed. But there's more to it than that. It says, The Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from morning until the set time, and 70,000 of the people died from Dan to Beersheba. We should be saved from hearing even one one-hundredth, one one-thousandth of that number. But when the angel extended his hand against Jerusalem, the Lord renounced further punishment and said to the angel who was destroying the people, enough, stay your hand. And then, the angel of the Lord stops right above the threshing floor of Arvina, the Jebusite.

And the text goes on, it says that when David saw the angel, he said to the Lord, I alone am guilty, I alone have done wrong. These poor sheep, what have they done? Let your hand fall upon me and upon my father's house. That willingness, by the way, to own the situation, to not only own the situation, but mis-sirut nefesh of sacrificing himself for the sake of Israel is the ultimate act of compassion. David is willing to use his very life to become a vessel to transform the relationship between God and Israel. And thus comes the Lord's answer. God, the prophet, comes to David the very same day and says to him, go and set up an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Arvona the Jebusite. it starts with a plague and ends with an altar.

You know, I promise you that the situation that we are in right now is paving the way for something new. And that is a unique opportunity which we might not otherwise get. I'll tell you a story about myself. Once upon a time, I wasn't observant of Torah and commandments. Those of you who have been listening to the Jewish story long enough have probably picked that one up. And not only was I not observant, I actually knew the Torah was where I needed to be. But if you know anything about Torah, and if you are yourself an observant Jew, you know that the lifestyle ask of Torah and mitzvot is quite high. It's a big barrier. And I was living a very good life, a caring life, a life of values. I had good friends.

I didn't feel the lack. But when my father died, everything about the life I knew fell apart. And suddenly, aside from the tragedy, I was gifted with a tremendous opportunity because perforce, once my life fell apart, I knew I could start again. You see, the difficulty in making change, even when we know that there's a world we want which lies just beyond the current horizon, is that most of us construct a world which we already want. And to take away the old and build the new is a very difficult thing to do. Sometimes, however, life sends you the opportunity where the world you knew simply falls apart around you. And it teaches you a very important lesson. Nothing is set in stone. But the reality is we have the power to shift the process.

We can build a new world. And right now, one of the greatest acts of Rahamim, of compassion, that we can engage in is to spend our time, if after all we've all been sent to our rooms we spend our time thinking about what type of world do you want to build when we emerge on the other side of this crisis what is it that you've always felt coming into your life that you've always felt coming into your community that we've always felt coming into the world which we now have the opportunity to make emerge we have the power to shift the process and that power comes from the perspective that the breaking of the old always offers a chance to pave the way for the new. And I guess I'll just end this little exploration of all the faces of compassion which are actually showing themselves in this very crisis with the final line of this story that we started with.

It says, And David built there an altar to the Lord and sacrificed burnt offerings and offerings of well-being. The Lord responded to the plea for the land and the plague against Israel was checked. what came into being in that particular tragedy was the place where heaven and earth meet the holy temple we should be merit to say the words and the plague against Israel against the whole world was checked speedily and in our day and we should also merit to see the full rebuilding to see the glory of a world whose horizon is broad enough to hold the point that connects between heaven and earth let it be soon let it be now I just want to thank everybody out there who gives their hard-earned money for helping make this show happen.

I know that times are not easy, but I'm telling you people, now's the time to put your money where your ears are. If you want to become a patron, you can go to my website, jewishstory.co, and in the upper right-hand corner, you'll see a button that says, Be a Patron. You can click there and give a little bit of per-podcast support. Or if you want, you can send me an email, rovmikefoyer at gmail.com, or reach out to me on Facebook, rovmikefoyer at Facebook, and I'll send you the details of how you can dedicate a show in honor of someone who's living today or someone in memory of someone who has passed. And I want to thank also the Land of Israel Network. That's thelandofisrael.com for creating a platform that allows me to reach so many amazing people.

I want to thank the Pardes Institute, pardes.org.il for building an educational institution which is so strong that we're still going full-time right now. God bless you all. And I want to thank you for listening. I'm Rav Mike Hoyer. And this is The Jewish Story.