July 13, 2024
Author(s): Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger,
Parashat Hukkat
Beautiful Dreamer
July 13, 2024 — 7 Tammuz 5784
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Last week I had two meetings that I just can’t get out of my head. The first meeting was with an elder who has recently experienced some significant health challenges. He’s at an assisted living facility now where he spends his days being wheeled around by an aide, going where they take him and eating what they serve him. His wife passed away years ago. His memory is slipping. He’s dealing with significant health challenges. And yet, when I asked him how he’s doing, he said, “I am just so lucky.”
“So lucky,” I said, “what makes you so lucky? Tell me about your life.”
The story he told was just so interesting. He told me about generational pain and trauma. About how his family escaped Poland just in time but lost their entire extended family. He shared about losing his father when he was eleven, and about how his brother became convinced his mother needed to remarry, pushing her to marry a man who turned out to be abusive. He spoke about escaping home and trying to build a life for himself. He talked about losing his wife, about the challenges his children are facing, about his declining health. And yet, it was so amazing—he shared his whole life story with a smile, and punctuated every story with “I am just so lucky.”
As I was leaving the assisted living facility, I got a call from a Yisodnik who is struggling. He’s 28, just broke up with a partner, working a j.o.b. but not a job that feels meaningful or relevant to who he is, and he just feels like he hasn’t had any luck building the kind of life he wants. His takeaway was, “I just haven’t found any luck.”
For me, the juxtaposition of these conversations was so fascinating. On the one hand, here is an elder who has every reason to be downhearted. His physical health is declining, he is very alone in the world—his wife passed away years ago and many of his friends have also left this world—he can’t go where he wants to go or do what he wants to do, and he knows that the end of his life is drawing near. As he shared me with an ironic smile, “it’s all downhill from here.” And yet, he is totally at peace and genuinely happy. His reflection about his life is that he is “so lucky.” On the other hand, there is a young adult who is handsome, healthy, and full of potential. He has only experienced a fraction of what the universe has in store for him. Every day, he wakes up with the limitless possibility of youth—he can do anything he wants. He doesn’t rely on anyone else to get around. He has a job that pays his bills, he has friends and community. He’s got everything going for him. And yet, he feels profoundly anxious, depressed, and unlucky.
How is it that you can be happier knowing that you are about to leave this world than wondering how you will build a life in it?
I was talking to my Dad about this paradox and he shared the most fascinating study with me called—and this is just the best title ever—”Happily Hopeless: Adaptation To A Permanent, But Not To A Temporary, Disability.” In this study, researchers followed colostomy patients to see how their mental health was affected by the uncertainty or perceived certainty of their physical condition. The results were just fascinating. Every patient enrolled in the study underwent the same colostomy procedure to place an opening for the colon in the abdomen, meaning that they would subsequently be required to wear an ostomy bag to collect waste. Some of the patients were told that their ostomy might be reversible, while others were told definitively that the procedure was permanent.
You might think that patients who knew their surgery was likely reversible would be happier than patients who knew they were stuck with an ostomy bag for life. Instead, researchers found that people were significantly happier when they knew their condition was permanent. The patients were categorically happier when they knew definitively what the future had in store for them. Even when that meant a permanent physical disability.
In other words, it’s not the objective experience that gets us. It’s not knowing what our experience will be—the uncertainty of life causes the most distress. That is one reason why young people are so often more unhappy than elders—when you don’t know how your life will turn out, it’s difficult to reflect positively on what has happened and see optimistic possibility in the mundane.
This is something that our ancestors understood intimately. One of my favorite obscure Jewish practices revolves around what to do when you have a bad dream. You know that feeling. You wake up sweating in the middle of the night. The dream feels so real and you worry, what if it is? What if the monster is a symbol of illness or bad luck? What if my business doesn’t turn out or my life doesn’t unfold the way I’ve hoped? Our sages knew that uncertainty could be debilitating, and so they created a practice whereby the dreamer would assemble a beit din the very next day. Three trusted elders would come together, and the dreamer would relay their dream. The elders would listen, and then they would interpret the dream. In this way, the uncertainty would be transformed into knowledge, and the dreamer could rest easy the next night.
Now, I would venture to guess that most of us in the modern world are not losing sleep over the veracity of our dreams, but all of us struggle with the pain of uncertainty. We worry about how and when our lives will come together. We worry about whether our businesses will be successful, about our health, about our wealth, about our homes and possessions. We worry about our loved ones and what will be in our country and in our world. All of that uncertainty can be debilitating.
This is where I believe we need to call Jewish tradition back into practice. Now is the time for us to assemble batei din, tribunals of elders who can engage the worries and uncertainties of the next generation. We need to make time and space for young people to share their stories. We need spaces and places where young people can air their fears and their worries, and where elders can share new and different interpretations that provide more certainty and more hope.
I want to share a story with you. This past Thursday was the 10th Yartzheit of my Rebbe, Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z”l. It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years without him here, and yet, I find myself thinking of his stories often, especially this week.
Reb Zalman was born in Poland in 1924, and moved with his family to Vienna when he was just one. As Reb Zalman was coming of age, the world was becoming more and more Antisemitic and more and more violent. He witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht as a 14-year-old, and subsequently endured beatings and public humiliations at the hands of teens who had formerly been his friends. The Gestapo invaded his home and deported his father. And every day, his dreams of becoming a chemist felt more and more impossible.
Somehow, his father managed to sneak off the train and to find his way back to the family in Vienna, and then they all fled to Antwerp. But by the time they arrived, Reb Zalman was understandably bitter, resentful, and angry. He did not know what shape his life would take. He did not know what would happen to his country or to his family back in Vienna or Poland. He did not know whether his family would be safe and the only thing he did know was that God, if there was a God, was to blame.
He went to the shtieble where the Orthodox Jews hung out, in his words, “to pick a fight.” He was so angry. He stood at the doorway and listened to the teacher speaking about how every Jew has a share in the world to come, and he interrupted the lesson. “Pie in the sky” he said, “it’s all narishkeit, rubbish….”
The students were horrified. They tried to interrupt him. They were angry that he was questioning God, upset that he would have the chutzpah to challenge tradition. But the teacher told the other students to be quiet, and invited him in. The teacher asked Reb Zalman to go on. To share all of his fears, all of his worries, all of his questions, and all of the places where tradition didn’t make sense. Once Reb Zalman had shared everything that was on his heart, the teacher asked if he would like to meet someone who agreed with him. He pulled down Tractate Sanhedrin and began reading him a text that addressed his questions—not only providing him with the certainty of religious answers, but also a new perspective that allowed him to meet the uncertainties and painful losses of his early life.
Reb Zalman modeled his career on this moment. His life was about meeting people where they were at, hearing their pains and their joys, and sharing a personally relevant Jewish practice that could meet him in that moment.
Our world is full of uncertainty. We can’t fix it, we don’t understand it, and the more we don’t know, the more we worry. But if we join together, if we share our thoughts and our fears and listen deeply to one another, maybe we’ll find the courage to move into the uncertainty with gratitude. Maybe, one day, we’ll be able to look at our lives and say, “despite everything that’s happened, I am just so lucky.”