Neilah - For This, Ships Are Built

A colleague of mine, Rabbi Paul Arberman, recently shared a sentence he heard from his mother: “A ship in harbor,” said Mrs Arberman, “is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for”.

I’ve been thinking about the phrase – originally attributed to John A. Shedd – in the context of these bruising times and in the context of this day of retreat, this time of Neilah. We’ve been in harbour. It’s time to set sail again soon.

It’s stormy outside.

 

Here, I think, is the goal – the very thing I would want out there on the seas. It’s based on a Mishnah and a teaching of Rabbi Sharon Brous from her book, The Amen Effect.

Mishnah Middot describes, largely, the size of the Temple. And having set out quite how large this building was, it says this.

כָּל הַנִּכְנָסִין לְהַר הַבַּיִת נִכְנָסִין דֶּרֶךְ יָמִין וּמַקִּיפִין וְיוֹצְאִין דֶּרֶךְ שְׂמֹאל,[1]

Everyone coming into the Temple area would come in and turn to the right, and walk around until they exited on the left.

חוּץ מִמִּי שֶׁאֵרְעוֹ דָבָר, שֶׁהוּא מַקִּיף לִשְׂמֹאל.

Apart from those to whom something awful had happened. They would walk around to the left, and the people who would pass these people going around to the left would say,

 מַה לְּךָ מַקִּיף לִשְׂמֹאל,

What has happened that you are going round to the left.

And the person going round to the left would respond, I’m in mourning.

And the person going round to the right would respond, May the One who dwells in this house comfort you.

הַשּׁוֹכֵן בַּבַּיִת הַזֶּה יְנַחֲמֶךָּ.

It’s an incredible idea, of an entire society that understands some people just can’t go around the same way as everyone else, of an entire society that is alert and asks - מַה לְּךָ מַקִּיף לִשְׂמֹאל,  - what has happened that you are going round to the left?

What an incredible society it would be, if you were to share the thing that causes pain with another human being, there would come a response that is compassionate, allows the pain, and just seeks to draw out some of the sting.

I know, I know, it feels a long, long way away.

I know, I know, it feels more often that no one is interested in our pain and that if we were ever to expose just a piece of our vulnerability, we would meet either incomprehension, or dumb silence, or worse, that awful ‘whataboutery’ or even cruelty.

Who among us is brave enough, when faced with the option to go round in the same direction as everyone else, to choose to go round in the opposite direction, along with all of those שֶׁאֵרְעוֹ דָבָר to whom something awful happened?

I’m not often that brave.

And who among us, even if we saw someone coming towards us, in the opposite direction, maybe even bearing a Kriah – a torn garment, or another mark of a torn soul – would trust ourselves to say the right thing, would feel confident saying anything?

I’m rarely that brave and, quite literally, this is my job.

I, like so many of us, fight against this urge to lurk in the habour where it is safe. But, as Mrs Arberman reminded her son, “that’s not what ships are built for”.

I want, as the Gates are closing, to give us a bit more confidence, a bit more hope, a bit more faith in being a ship on the open sea, in being a human who is prepared to encounter another human with compassion. Because I think this is what we are built for – meeting, encountering, sharing, caring.

 

My oboe-playing daughter was at a week-long music camp over the summer, and I traipsed off to Kent to watch the performance and pick her up at the end of the week. As we were leaving, my daughter, her oboe and I, kippah-on, one of the other parents came up to me, took my hand, looked me in the eyes and said, “Awful, I know, awful these things. I just wanted to say, I’m with you.” And then he slipped away to re-find his woodwind-playing child. These things happen a lot.

 

I was touched by something written by Sarah Tuttle-Singer, a Jerusalem-based writer. She wrote of a bunch of things she doesn’t trust – it’s not so easy to trust in what she calls a “post-truth, apocalyptic swirl of fake news, AI manipulations and narrishkeit” But there are, nonetheless, many things in which she does trust;

I trust [she wrote] the bus driver who slammed on the brakes and opened the doors when he saw me sprinting down the street.

I trust the greengrocer who explains why the mangoes are perfect this summer, and why the avocados are disappointing.

I trust the Old City merchant who told me not to buy floaty dresses from his stall, but to go instead to the wholesaler he uses, where they cost a third of the price. [I presume that’s an Arab old city merchant, she’s written plenty about meetings with Arabs in Jerusalem].

Trust is a spiritual practice, it takes … practice.

And Tuttle-Singer also wrote this

And I trust my children. Not because they are perfect, but because they are growing. Because they are learning to choose kindness, to discern, to stumble and get up again. Because they carry tomorrow inside them - and they’re stubbornly refusing to let go of the hope that can come with it.

I trust my own children.

Actually, I know a bunch of your children, the children of New London Synagogue. I trust them too. And not just our own children, there’s an entire generation out there worth trusting, because despite the Covid thing and the AI thing and everything else, they are growing, learning to choose kindness and stubbornly refusing to let go of hope. Our children are remarkable.

And I think it’s up to the rest of us, the supposed grown-ups, to more stubbornly refuse to let go of hope.

I think it’s up to the rest of us to try and be bolder on the stormy seas.

The story is told of the four Jews, of a certain age, who would meet every Thursday for a cup of late-morning coffee.

Oy, said the first

Oy vey, said the second

Oy veyz mir, said the third.

Listen, said the fourth, I thought we agreed not to talk about politics.

That’s not going to be good enough. That’s not what we are built for.

The story should be told about four Jews of a certain age who gathered for a late-morning coffee.

“Wow,” said the first, “did you see the way the autumnal sun glints through the yellowing leaves?”

“Just yesterday,” said the second, “I excused myself for accidentally bumping into a stranger and they responded, perfectly civilly. We had a momentary meeting of hearts over the contents of our shopping bags.”

 “Actually, I’m not doing so well,” shared the third. “I need to ask for your help,” and the conversation soared and the world, just a little piece of it, was mended.

On the occasions in my life when I have, in the language of the Mishnah from Middot, indeed turned to the left – allowed myself to be seen in need of care, I’ve always been surprised by the warmth that has greeted me. At the very least, turning left has always clarified for me who I should seek out as friends. And there are many, many I should be seeking out as friends.

The turning to the left, the admittance that I’m stumbling, the abstaining from grunting, ‘yeah fine’ when asked how I’m doing, has served less, in my life, to mark me out as someone to be avoided, and more, in my experience, as someone others have wished to know better.

My experience of fighting back the desire to remain in harbour and instead make myself available to meet strangers and strangeness and otherness and pain has not brought me to a place of depression or anxiety but rather given me a sense of the beauty that exists in humanity; a beauty that is available to us all – if we set sail from our harbour.

I know. Other experiences differ. I’m not recommending we present every stranger we pass with the fullest list of every ailment and woe we’ve experienced since childhood, on first meeting. But can we tweak the way go around in this world? Can we look out for the other brave ships with whom we share this sea, all of whom are all built for this purpose of seeking companionship, sharing kindness and building a world of decency? What a world we might build.

My mind goes to that extraordinary idea in Talmud Kiddushin (40b), and Rambam’s Hilchot Teshuvah (3:4), that the world, and all the people in it are like a set of weighing scales precariously balanced in equilibrium. And one act, one single gesture towards the direction in which we wish the world to follow, will tip not only our own self, but Col HaOlam Kulo – the whole wide world – towards the scale of merit, towards the scale of compassion, towards the scale of a better world for us all.

In a world so febrile and seeming to be so hostile, setting sail, being willing to bare weaknesses, to encounter – with compassion – the weaknesses of another is, surely, the greatest act of spiritual resistance.

There is a world out there, beyond this day of harbouring, in which the forces that do not make our world a better place, rely on our spiritual nervousness to argue there is nothing in this world stronger than hatred, or at the very least, as if we are all playing a zero-sum game where your benefit must mean my loss.

But the truth is, there is love in this world. There is that which we can trust and there is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, and if we were only able to build this world together, what a wonderful world it would be.

May we sail well. May we love well. May we be bold and brave and compassionate and kind. And in doing so, may we build and bring just a little bit closer, the world in which we would all wish to live.

May it come to us all.

Chatimah Tovah

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[1] 2:2