This is Yehuda Amichai’s
poem, HaMakom ShBo Anu Tzodkim – The Place Where We are Right
From the place where we
are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring
The place where we are
right
Is hard and trampled
Like a courtyard
But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plough
And a whisper will be
heard in the place
Where once stood the house
Which was destroyed.
These are strangely febrile
times, times when we cling simultaneously to claims to stand in the place where
we are right and simultaneously fear we might not see enough flowers in the
Spring. Goodness even the flowers are nervous.
Maybe our greatest modern
Hebrew poet was on to something, maybe we need to leave the Makom ShBo Anu
Tzodkim – the place where we are right – and dig up our world like moles
and ploughs so whispers can be heard and flowers can grow.
What I want to do tonight
is think, from a Jewish place, about the appeal of certainty, its dangers and
the other options that are open for us, if we have the courage to embrace
another path.
I’ve spent plenty of time
claiming to be certain. I understand, I think, that appeal. Certainly, I
understand its appeal more having read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and
Thinking Slow.
Kahneman, the Nobel
prize-winning economist and psychologist suggests we have two systems operating
inside our minds. One, the fast one, makes the quick decisions that get us through
the day-to-day challenges of our lives. System One is good at certainty but
can’t really handle complexity. For that we need System Two - the slow system, the
one that can handle nuance, deliberation and doubt. System Two is the system we
need to access to handle the more complex challenge of our life. But this
second slower system of thought is harder to access and harder to hold at the
centre of our decision-making self.
It is, say the
psychologists, not only easier to exist in the world of certainty, it’s also
more immediately gratifying. Our fixed opinions give us a dopamine hit of
self-satisfaction.
And then there’s this
world of stuff we all inhabit – the world of marketing and advertising that
tells us if only we were to buy this, or subscribe to that, we’ll have
complexities eased and inadequacies evaporated. But there are two problems with
standing in a place of certainty.
The first is … well once I
wandered through the streets of Weimer with a Lonely Planet guidebook in my
hand. “Goethe it said,” directing my attention to the famous house, “is the
last person to possess the totality of all human knowledge.” The first problem
of certainty is that the world isn’t really knowable. Maybe in the early 1800s,
one particular German genius could hold all human knowledge available in his
time, but even that, even him, is insufficient for our complex today. The first
problem with our claims to certainty is that we are so very likely to be wrong.
The second problem is the
way our certainties close us away from other people, isolating us and
increasing the brokenness of our society. When we place more effort in our
claims to be sure that we are prepared to leave the place of certainty, we create
a more fractured society, we fracture our friendships, our work relationships,
even our families and we close our own minds to the possibility of growth.
But the attractions of certainty
are so much greater than many of us can withstand. Most of us don’t feel easy
in a world where we don’t know, where we are forced to face our limitations and
inadequacies.
Religion suffers from a
bad reputation when it comes to this question of certainty. Religion gets
blamed for the overflow of claims of certainty that exist in the world. That
might be fair, sometimes. I know there are religious purveyors of certainty,
but I’m not one. This community isn’t about the promotion of the value of
certainty. I don’t think this religion – Judaism – is about the promotion of
the value of certainty. In fact, I don’t think any religion, as I understand
the term, could claim certainty. I mean, if you believe in a truly powerful
God, the first thing to know is that God’s ways are beyond our knowledge.
‘My thoughts are not your
thoughts,’ says God to Isaiah, ‘my ways are not your ways.’
The great Hassidic master
known as the Ishbitzer had this to say about the slightly strange way in which
God expresses Godself at the very opening of the Ten Commandments – I am the
Lord your God – said God, but in so doing used an unusual way of saying ‘I’,
rather than the usual ‘Ani’ – the first word of the first of the Ten
Commandments is ‘Anochi’ – there is an extra Chaf – כ – a letter, the Ishbitzer says should be
understood according to its plain meaning – of ‘similar to’ or ‘like.’[1]
Utterly transformative idea. Not ‘I am God,’ but ‘I am approximate to God’ as
the Ishbitzer goes on to say, ‘this Chaf teaches that no fullness of God’s self
was imparted, only a dmut - a refraction, a dimyon – an aspect.’[2]
At the very moment of greatest illumination of certainty in our faith there is
merely a dmut a dimyon.
In the book of Jonah,
coming soon to a Bimah near you, Jonah is the anti-hero. He’s the guy who gets
things wrong. God spends the entire book attempting to ease our reluctant
prophet out of his certainties. Meanwhile the true heroes of the story get it. Ulai
says the Captain of the Ship, let’s try this and maybe it will work. Mi
Yodea says the King of Nineveh, let’s try this and who knows, perhaps it
will work. Transformation follows their abandonment of certitude.
Transformation, surely, is
only ever possible when we abandon the certainty of our current experience of
what, and who, is right in the world.
Time and time again the
Torah, and its heroes, temper their hopes and aspirations with caution – with this
word Ulai.
Sarah, wrestling with
infertility, suggests Abraham father a child through the maidservant Hagar,
with the phrase (Gen 16:2) Ulai Evna Mimena – maybe I shall be built up
through her.
When Moses looks at the
Children of Israel dancing before the Golden Calf, he volunteers to reclimb the
mountain with this phrase, Ulai achprah bad chatatchem
–
maybe I will achieve atonement for your sins.
In Lamentations (3:27-29)
we read, “It is good to wait patiently until rescue comes from the
LORD.... Let a person put their mouth to the dust — Ulai Yesh tikvah
Maybe there will be hope.”
In Amos (5:15) we read, "Hate
the evil, and love the good, and establish justice in the gate; Ulai
yechenan maybe God will be gracious"
The Talmud[3] records
that
When Rabbi Ami reached this verse in Eicha, he
cried. He said: A sinner suffers through so much and only 'maybe' there is
hope?
And when Rav Asi reached this verse in Amos he cried.
He said [a person does so much good’ and only maybe God is gracious?
But maybe there is a
different way to understand this Ulai – the maybe of faith and honesty.
Dr Judy Kiltsner suggests
Ulai [opens
up] the potential [of] human beings to imagine [our]selves as other than [we] have
always been and to undertake the courageous task of corrective repair that will
reverse [our] standing before God.[4]
This Ulai of faith,
correctly understood, is not a product to solve certainly, but a way to live
with uncertainty, in an uncertain world. It’s a way to open us up to new
possibilities which, by very definition, we cannot see from the place in which
we still stand.
If we remain in today’s
place of certitude as to out righteousness – Bmakom ShBo Anu Tzodkim – there is
no chance of encountering the new possibilities of growth, of a potential
beyond our current experience. There is no chance of flowers in the spring –
which brings me back to Amichai.
Having claimed flowers will
never grow in the place where we are right, Amichai goes on to say,
Sfeikot and Ahavot dig up the world like a mole, like
a plough – bringing fertility and possibility.
Sfeikot – doubts – I understand. Ulai – the doubting
maybe – needs to be part of our articulation of the desire to see flowers in
the Spring. I need to stay uncertain.
But Amichai also counsels
as to the ability of Ahavot – literally Loves, alongside Sfeikot – doubts,
as a way to break up the hard and trampled ground from which no flower can
emerge. It’s a remarkable pairing Sfeikot v’Ahavot – doubts and love.
Amichai was a very remarkable poet.
It’s hard to love people
who are utterly certain of their own correctness. It’s hard, too, to fall in
love when we think we are certainly right ourselves.
Love both demands and
supplies a missing part in our certitudes, a sense of longing and an opening of
our security-gate towards the gifts of another. It might be expected that love
offers certainty, but my own experience of love is that it demands I worry more
about my beloved than it allows me to wallow in self-satisfaction at my own security.
I think, at least for me,
Amichai has it absolutely right, that love functions like a mole or a plough
churning up the compacted earth of my solitary courtyard, bringing possibility,
but at the expense of my ability to claim that I am Tzodkim – right.
There’s something
interesting in the three Biblical commands to love.
VAhavta Et Adonai – says
the Torah - And you shall love God
VAhavta Et Reicha – says
the Torah – And you shall love your fellow
VAhavata Et HaGeir – says
the Torah - And you shall love the
stranger in your midst.
What do they have in
common? We aren’t told to love what we can control. WE are told to embrace the
other, the unknowlable.
You shall open your
defences – calls the Torah. Churn, churn, churn up our certitudes.
So if you are feeling a
little uncertain and unsure in the face of this day ahead, this year ahead,
this life ahead. Here’ the good news. You’ve come to the perfect place. That’s
the good news. Here’s the bad news. I don’t promise you will feel any more certain
25 hours from now.
But maybe, if we can learn
to embrace the uncertainty, the doubts and loves we will find a way to see
flowers growing in the spring and hear whispers in the place where the ruined
House once stood.
And may the year come to
us all in peace, sweetness and health,
Hatimah Tovah
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