October 4, 2024
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Rosh Hashanah, Day Two
When Archery is Not Your Thing
October 4, 2024 — 2 Tishrei 5785
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Years ago, I was talking with our preschool learners, 3- and 4-year-olds, about God. Not sure what I was thinking that day. I was a young rabbi, fresh out of the Seminary. So I turned to very young learners and asked: have you ever seen God? As you might predict, it did not go well. There was a long, awkward silence. Nobody raised their hand. Nobody said a word. I did not know how to get out of this jam. And then mercifully one child at last, sheepishly, raised her hand. I have seen God, she said. You did? You saw God? When did you see God? I saw God at Logan Airport when we came back from vacation. Logan Airport? Where at Logan Airport? In the bathroom. In the bathroom? How did you see God in the bathroom? I was on the potty. When I got up from the potty, God flushed my toilet.
How do we see what we see? How do we know what we know?
In his new book How to Know a Person, David Brooks offers the following thought experiment. Imagine that you are in a bedroom with your eyes closed. You are instructed to open your eyes and describe what you see. There is a chair, a bed, a desk, a window, a painting. If there were, say, ten people asked to describe the contents of this bedroom, would we expect that we would get a broadly consistent picture? After all, aren’t the people in this thought experiment just capturing objective reality? A chair is a chair. A window is a window.
But different people see differently. Different people see different things. The designer in the bedroom notes the interior decorating. The security specialist notes the window and the areas of vulnerability. The artist is focused on the painting. The personal trainer on whether there is an area in the bedroom for planks, burpees and pushups. We don’t only see with our eyes. We see with our whole soul.
This is our issue now. Whether it is the hard news of the day, or events in our own families, we may look at the same thing, but we see different things based upon our different experiences, beliefs and values.
Our Rosh Hashanah Torah reading grapples with just this dilemma.
Abraham’s banished son Ishmael turns out to have a skill shared by exactly no one else in his entire family.
God was with Ishmael, and he grew up; he dwelt in the wilderness and became an archer.
Ishmael was an archer. His father Abraham was not an archer. His mother Sarah was not an archer. His brother Isaac had no idea what to do with a bow and arrow. But being an archer is who Ishmael was. If you could not see the archer in Ishmael, you could not see Ishmael.
What ends up happening in the relationship between Abraham and Ishmael? The next time Abraham and Ishmael are mentioned in the same sentence is Abraham’s funeral. The verse is terse: “Abraham’s sons Isaac and Ishmael buried Abraham in the cave of Machpelah.” That’s all it says. The Torah does not tell us what Ishmael was thinking, or how Ishmael was feeling. But having been to lots of funerals of our families over the years, let me offer two possibilities.
One is sad eyes. Ishmael has sad eyes at his father’s funeral. I have seen those sad eyes, the sad eyes of a relative who lays their loved one to rest, but there are unresolved issues. And the main unresolved issue is always the same. The person being laid to their rest did not see me. Did not get me. Did not appreciate me. Did not love me for who I am. Never had a curiosity about what made me tick.
Ishmael’s sad eyes would go like this: My father never got me. Never tried to get me. My father would only say: Archery is not my thing. And that was the end of it. But archery was my thing. Why could he not see me? I am sad that I lost my father. And I am even more sad for the father I never had.
When we encounter difference and say our own version of archery is not my thing, and we do not express real curiosity about why archery is our loved one’s thing, what you get at the end of the line is sad eyes. Sad eyes for what never was.
But there is a second, richer possibility. A midrash imagines Abraham repeatedly visiting Ishmael in the wilderness, curious about his life, his family, his archery. As if to say: Archery was not my thing. But archery is your thing. If archery is your thing, I am going to do my best to make archery my thing, or at least to learn about it.
In this reading, at the funeral, Ishmael does not have sad eyes for what never was. Rather, Ishmael cries real tears. As if to say: In this cold universe, I just lost one person who loved me for who I am. My father’s love was even more impressive because he is not an archer, but since he loved me, he made it his business to learn about archery, so he could better connect with me. How can I ever live without his unconditional love? Ishmael cries real tears. Tears at a cemetery cannot be faked.
Sad eyes for what never was? Or real tears for the beauty that was and is no more?
So many of us have our own version of this story. Somebody we love is different from us. They are an archer. Whether it is a deed they do. A passion they pursue. A cause they champion. We don’t share it. We are not an archer. But if we cannot see the archer in them, we don’t see them.
Love begets love. Distance begets distance. It is the oldest equation in the books.
At cemeteries over the years, I have seen sad eyes for what never was. I have seen real tears for the beauty that was and is no more. And the question for us on this Rosh Hashanah is: what kind of life are we leading? What kind of relationships are we building? What kind of love, conditional or unconditional, curious or incurious, are we showing? Do we say archery is not my thing and stop there? Or do we say archery is not my thing, but archery is your thing, so I am going to do my best to make it my thing?
In my 63rd year, I have, at long last, finally learned how to be a better father, father in love, grandfather and human being from our in-laws, Doriano and Flora Russo, the parents of our son in love Davide. They live in Italy, and do not speak a word of English. Shira and I live in Newton, and do not speak a word of Italian. It makes for conversations that are, frankly, limited. Bambino, yes, yes. Beautiful bambino, yes.
Anyway, Davide told me the story of his calling his parents from the hospital in Eugene, Oregon where their surrogate delivered their daughter. Naturally enough, his parents wanted to know the little girl’s name. That’s where things got interesting.
Her name is Aya. Aya is a word in several languages. It is a Hebrew word that means bird, or flying. It also has a Zionist layer. It is an acronym for eretz Yisrael hayafah, the beautiful land of Israel. It is also a very common name in Japan. There are a lot of famous Japanese women named Aya.
Aya also has a meaning in Italian, but it is none of the above. If an Italian speaker stubs their toe in the middle of the night, what they would say in Italian is Aya! Which means ouch. In other words, Davide was calling his parents in Italy to tell them that that they had named their daughter ouch, which is what Aya means in Italian. He was worried about their reaction. But what they said was: Aya must have been written in the heavens. What a beautiful name! We cannot wait to meet our granddaughter Aya.
It must have been written in the heavens.
Can we do that? Can we look at the world that way? Can my ouch be your beauty? And vice versa?
When we see deeply, we are seen deeply. The harder it is to do, the more important it is to do. Let’s begin at home. Let’s begin now. Shana tova.