Ways of Looking at Suffering - Part Two

 I’m sharing, in my words at this time of year, insights sparked by Scott Samuelson’s newly published, Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering.

Samuelson suggests that there are primarily two human responses to suffering; fix-it and face-it. He grants a third response; forget-about-it - which he acknowledges is practically common, but philosophically “not significant.” “Thanks to our fix-it energies,” he writes, “we’ve used our creative fire to forge all sorts of inventions to better our lives. A large portion of civilization arises out of the fix-it attitude, including a fair amount of science and politics, and nearly all technology.” Fixing things is good. But, Samuelson goes on to suggest, because up to the modern period we weren’t actually particularly good at fixing things we also had to develop our skills in facing-suffering.

Nowadays we are so much better at fixing things. Marvellously, infant mortality rates are down, desperate poverty is on the decline, we have and we are achieving so much. Our fix-it muscles are honed, taut and powerful. Long may they continue to be so.

But our face-it muscles have atrophied. In our fix-it obsessed modern age, we seem surprised we can’t fix our mortality and we don’t know what to do about it. We’ve lost our face-it fitness. Facing-suffering is a powerful skill to possess. Samuelson suggests facing-suffering “characterizes much of religion, art, and the humanities, as well as a certain significant portion of science and politics.” Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are face-it moments in the year. We are called to feel fragile, as if we pass before our creator like sheep on a narrow path, each falling under the eye of a watchful shepherd, none knowing of its fate. But we don’t know how to do this well. “Rather than confront our anxiety at the sadness, we fidget on our tools of infinite distraction.” Yes, leave that mobile-phone at home when you come to shul.

Here are my three top tips to strengthen the face-it muscles we will need in our lives just as surely as we need strong fix-it muscles. Sit. Put everything down and sit in one place for a while without trying to do more things. Try - even if just for these coming awesome days of prayer - not to treat life as something to be fixed. It’s OK not to always be doing something. It might be the most important spiritual gift you can give yourself. Reflect on how you treat your life and the lives of those around you. And do something decent and kind for those less fortunate than yourself. Or, as the Rabbis put it, try Teshuvah, Tefillah and Tzedakah.

The best place, the best time to begin this face-it training, is Saturday evening, 1^st September, 10pm at the Shul. Do come, do support our Slichot service. It is a wonderful way to enter the spirit of the time.

The stages of Teshuvah

There are, according to greatest codifier of Jewish law, Maimonides, four stages in Teshuvah; each requiring work.

 

Firstly comes Viddui – confession. In Jewish law a sin cannot be cleansed unless it is verbally articulated. It cannot be liberated from the soul if it can’t get passed the lips. And generalities don’t count. Mass e-mails requesting forgiveness, ‘For anything and everything that I might have done to hurt you’ suggest more of an attempt to whitewash sins than truly heal them. Saying sorry, admitting fault, is not easy; particularly when a wronged person still harbours resentment. Nonetheless we are called on to be specific, personal and honest.

 

Secondly comes making good. Items taken need to be returned. This is fine for some sins, but incredibly difficult for others. It has always struck me that the Jewish pre-occupation with the harms committed through speech is best understood this way. Damage committed through speech is most especially difficult to make good. It’s better to be careful ahead of time.

 

Thirdly comes stopping the wrong action. Rambam details two categories of Baalei Teshuvah – Masters of Repentance when it comes to this stage. The standard case is a person who manages to stop, maybe because they no longer can be bothered to do the wrong again, maybe because they fear of being caught – it counts either way. Then there is the Master of Total Repentance, the person who stops even though they still lust after the thing they did wrong. They find the strength to cease from wrong purely through their commitment not to perform the acts which they now know are wrong.

 

Finally comes letting go of the desire to do the thing. The Talmud proposes an image of a person with their hand clamped tightly round a Sheretz – an entirely impure and unkosher insect – getting into a Mikvah thinking the waters will somehow take the impurities away. We need to prise back our own grasping, we need to open our hand to let go of what we should no longer carry with us in the year to come.

 

We should, of course, be doing this work throughout the year, but these special days are, Maimonides teaches, especially beneficial, less, I suspect because of any astrological juju, and more because this is the time when we most come together and share in our willingness to go on this journey as a community.

 

May we find strength and humility in that shared task, and may the year be sealed for us all for good.

 

Gemar Chatimah Tovah,

 

Rabbi Jeremy

God Slot IV - A Sweet and Happy New Year to All

My latest Radio 2 offering.

At 43:50 in - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00tmg9f/Sarah_Kennedy_08_09_2010 or, for good old fashioned readers …

Today from Rabbi Jeremy Gordon of New London Masorti Synagogue

"This is the Jewish season for atonement.

Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year – begins this evening and is followed by ten days leading up to Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement. Themes of atonement fill our liturgy and hopefully our hearts. And the absolute key to atonement in the Jewish tradition is penitence. Without penitence we are not worthy recipients of atonement.

My tradition takes penitence tremendously seriously. Penitence involves having to right any loss caused, having to apologise – and, and this is the really difficult piece – having to change the desire to never do such a thing again. It is this internal immeasurable aspect that’s so important, penitence involves having to change your desire to never do such a thing again.

There is, in the Jewish tradition, a particular and vivid example of penitence. Say there is a man who once sinned with a woman. Then he finds himself alone with her again, in the same circumstance where once he sinned. And he’s still aroused by her and he’s not worried about anyone finding out if he were to sin again. If, despite all the temptation, such a person holds themselves back, that is penitence.

It’s the same woman, he feels the same way about her, they are in the same situation they were in before. Everything about the encounter is the same, apart from the will of the man. The point of the story is that the man made the change himself. He sat himself down and made a decision about how he wanted to live his life.

He still hungers after the woman, but whereas he previously was led by his desires he is now in control of them. The man has grasped the responsibility for his own life.

An appeal to heavens can help. A belief in a God of grace, quick to forgive, is a bonus – for those of us who so believe. But there is no substitute for taking hold of those of our desires that make us less than we could be, and bending those deviant desires to our will – rather than allowing them to bend us.

The traditional Jewish greeting, at this time of year, is to wish for a sweet New Year. Whether we are celebrating a new year or not, may we all enjoy great sweetness".