The essence of Torah -- and therefore of our
creed -- is lovingkindness, to love our neighbors as ourselves. But how do we acquire this sacred
lovingkindness, this combination of energy and patience, and righteousness and
understanding, that makes what we call a mensch? The Talmud answers in
one sentence: “Torah can be acquired only through friendship."
(Talmud, Berakhot 63b)
Judaism is relational – as we discussed
yesterday when we spoke about the meaning of community. And our tradition regards friendship as the
key to human relations. But we have a tendency to use the word “friendship”
carelessly sometimes - to forget what it really means.
My niece, Ava, recently reminded me of the true meaning of
friendship. She’s fifteen and lives in Southern California. Not long ago, she
met up with one of her girlfriends who, she could tell, was upset about
something. A discreet inquiry revealed that the poor girl had a painful
condition that required her to have an ultrasound. Tearfully, Ava’s friend said
that she had been through the ultrasound procedure before and it was horrible.
In order for the ultrasound to work, the patient had to have a completely full
bladder and that meant she had to drink water -- and drink it and drink it and
drink it, way past the point at which it became merely uncomfortable. It
was a kind of torture.
Well, this is what Ava told her friend, without a moment’s
hesitation: "I am going to go with you to your ultrasound. And I’m going
to sit there with you and I am going to drink the exact same amount of water
that you drink and we are going to go through this together." And that’s
what she did. And she and her friend did such a good job filling-up their
bladders with water that the ultrasound technician told her friend: “You’re
actually a little too full. I need you to urinate -- but just a little,
not too much!!” And in this, too, Ava accompanied her.
Can you imagine these two teenage friends, in the women’s room,
laughing hysterically at their absurd situation -- trying to empty their
bladders, but not too much? Now here’s the point: compare that image
with what this experience would have been like for Ava’s friend had Ava not
been there to share it with her. Total misery. And that is the magnificent
power of friendship -- it’s like a kind of alchemy that can transform a
miserable, degrading experience into an uplifting one. And that’s precisely
what this world needs, isn’t it? A worldwide outbreak of friendship.
That, at least, was the view of one of our greatest lights,
author, humanitarian and Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel, may his memory always be
for a blessing. Most of you know him and his work or at least heard or read one
of the innumerable tributes to him after his death in July.
Briefly: He was born in 1928, in the Carpathian Mountains of
Romania, and raised by his parents and grandparents to live according to the
teachings of the passionate, mystical Hassidic sages of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. In 1944, however, when Elie Wiesel was fifteen, he and
his family were sent to Auschwitz, where his mother and sister were murdered,
and then to Buchenwald, where his father died just a few weeks before the camp
was liberated.
As a writer he tried to convey the depths of evil and the
immensity of suffering – as he also called on the world to stop other genocides,
to not be indifferent. The horrors inflicted on him did not dim the glow
of his beloved tzaddikim -- the Baal Shem Tov, Nachman of Braslav, Levi Yitzhak
of Berditchev and the rest; on the contrary, their teachings and the fire of
their souls burned brighter than ever in the darkness of suffering and death.
Such was Elie Wiesel’s message to the world. He was a friend to
all humanity, especially the suffering -- for his greatest passion was
friendship, in the deepest sense of that word.
Let’s have a look at one of his most trenchant declarations on
this subject that he stated in an interview in 2012.
“To me, friendship is a religion. We could not live without
it. Perhaps we could live for a while without love, but not without friendship.
The most simple way to bring about positive change in the world is to let
others know they are not alone. If there is one person on the planet who
still is suffering from loneliness and from pain or despair, and we don’t know
about it — or we don’t want to know about it — then something is wrong with the
world . . . . I cannot cure everybody. I cannot help everybody. But [I can] tell
the lonely person that I am not far, or [not] different from that lonely
person, that I am with him or her.”
In a world that seems, at times, to be almost choked with
suffering, Elie Wiesel offers us a starting place based on the ancient Jewish
teaching that saving one life is like saving an entire universe. If one
person is lonely, we can reach out. If one person is suffering, we can
offer comfort, or at least our presence. For that too is a kind of
friendship, a kind that matters.
Often we think being kind to others means giving to tzedakah --
giving money. And that’s not wrong -- money is an important aspect of
what Judaism calls upon us to give. But we also have a
responsibility to know others. To reach out to them. And, wherever
possible, to show our friendship as deeply and truly as Ava showed hers.
Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov -- one of the great 18th-century Hasidic
masters so loved by Elie Weisel -- had a story about friendship. It used to
delight him to say that he learned the truth about friendship from a gentile
peasant who was getting himself drunk in a tavern. Now, there is a proverb that goes, “Over
the bottle many a friend is found”. But this story offers a different perspective
on that proverb than we might think.
There were several peasants in the tavern that day -- men who had
nothing to show for their lifetimes of hard work, and never would have
anything, and knew it. Finally, one of them -- having been, according to the
rebbe’s story, “sufficiently moved by his wine” -- stirred himself and
addressed the man seated next to him. “You -- my friend. Tell me, do you love
me?”
The peasant seated next to him -- no doubt, equally moved by his
wine -- blurted emphatically that, yes, of course he loved his friend,
loved him very much.
But the first peasant shook his head and replied sadly: 'You
say that you love me. You might even believe that you do. But you do not
know the needs of my heart. If you were truly my friend, you
would know the needs of my heart.’
The second peasant had not a word to say in reply. He didn’t
understand.
But Rabbi Moshe Leib understood. “To know the needs of other human
beings,” he said, and, still more, to be willing “to bear the burden of their
sorrow--that is the love" that true friends bear for one another.
And just as Moshe Leib was amused to have learned this lesson from
an inebriated peasant, I must say, I am delighted to have been so well-schooled
in friendship by my fifteen-year old niece, Ava. Had she simply been willing to
sit and hold her friend’s hand during the painful procedure; had she asked her
friend, “is there anything more I can do?” – how could a parent not be
proud to have a kid like that? But Ava went miles beyond mere kindness.
She volunteered to take her friend’s burden upon herself so that her
friend would not be alone.
Of course, many of us may have a long, long way to go to meet this
high ideal. But many of us here at B’nai Abraham do have stories of such
friendship. In the last couple of years, for instance, one of our members
survived a battle with cancer and was recently approached for advice by someone
who had just been diagnosed with the same condition. What impressed me about
our member’s reaction was not that she was willing to help her
fellow-sufferer, but that she was anxious to do it -- grateful for the
opportunity to take-up another’s burden, to provide hope and companionship to
her new friend. That is what Judaism calls upon us to do.
And we see it around us every day. Ava is not the only young
person who understands the importance of friendship and what it can do. Another
one of our members recently told a story about something that happened to her a
daughter -- a sensitive
child, vulnerable to the twin demons of anxiety and depression. One day, her
daughter’s dance class was holding a photo session and the high-strung dance
instructor was particularly edgy, yelling at the students to behave, to be at
their best, to avoid mistakes and so-on. Alas, one particularly virulent
outburst was directed at this girl, who took it personally, fell apart and
retreated to a back room. Instantly, three girls retreated with her, hugged
her, retrieved her and stood side-by-side with her, to get her through the
ordeal. It was a turning point not only for the daughter, but also for the
mother, who was both surprised and inexpressibly moved to discover that her
daughter was surrounded by people who “cared about her enough to give her that
kind of comfort and confidence.”
And
yet another member wrote of a high school friend who traveled from afar to
comfort her and her young daughter after the devastating loss of her husband 18
years ago. Just recently, she traveled to comfort this same friend when she
lost her husband.
Another
of this past year’s most inspiring acts of kindness was performed in our
greater Beverly community. Lenny
Lublinski lived at River House – a homeless shelter for men. When I was honored
with leading a memorial service for him, everyone shared a story of his
kindness m- the residents, the staff and members of their board of directors. But one story stood out and showed me that
Lenny, a man many of us may have passed by as we walked through downtown
Beverly, was a tsaddik, a righteous man.
Another
man at the shelter was also down on his luck, had been a drug user, and hadn’t
seen his daughter in 2 years. He was finally
going to be able to have a supervised visit with her. It was just before
Christmas. Lenny – who clearly had very
little himself - went to the Dollar Store, bought a stocking and some toys, and
gave it to his friend to give to his daughter.
He told him that he couldn’t see his daughter without giving her a Christmas
present. Lenny – a Jew by birth but not
a knowledgeable or practicing one – was embodying our sacred teachings, to
reach out to others, to share their burdens, to let them know they are not
alone.
There’s a story told that, during the Roman Empire, two Jewish
boys grew-up together in Jerusalem and became the truest of friends. In time,
one moved to Damascus while the other stayed in Jerusalem.
One day, when the man from Jerusalem was visiting his friend in
Damascus, someone planted a false rumor accusing him of sedition against Rome. The
poor man was hauled before the Emperor and summarily sentenced to death.
“Sire,” he begged the Emperor, “the God of Israel knows I am
innocent, but I make no protest. All I ask is that, before executing me, you
let me return to Jerusalem and say farewell to my loved ones. Then I’ll come
back and you can do to me as you wish.”
The Emperor laughed outright. "What sort of a fool do you
take me for? If I let you go, you’ll never come back.”
"I will come back, sire. I am a man of my word.
Indeed, I have a friend in Damascus who I know will be my guarantor. If I don't
come back in sixty days, you can kill him in my stead.
The
Emperor was intrigued. "Let this man’s friend be brought to me. I don’t
believe one man would be willing to take such a foolish risk on another’s
behalf.”
And
so the man’s friend was brought before the Emperor and volunteered without
hesitation to take his friend’s place in the dungeon and await execution in his
friend’s place. “Understand, both of you,” the Emperor warned, in sixty days
one of you dies. Whether it is the Jew from Jerusalem or the Jew from Damascus,
makes no difference to me.”
Back to Jerusalem sailed the doomed man. He wrote his will and
said his tearful farewells in plenty of time, but, as fate would have it, the
weather took an unseasonable turn. For weeks, no ships or caravans left
Jerusalem and the doomed man grew increasingly frantic.
At last the weather turned and the man arrived at the Emperor’s
palace at dawn on the sixtieth day. A crowd had assembled to witness the
execution and, already, the man could see his friend being led to his death.
"Wait!” he cried, “Do not kill this blameless man! It is I,
the guilty one, returned from Jerusalem -- lead me to my execution!”
This
outburst shocked the assembly and everyone -- onlookers, centurions, even the
Emperor himself -- was frozen with shock. But suddenly, the astonishment was
broken by the sound of the Damascus Jew, who was shouting in reply.
“Don’t listen to him! I swore to die in his place! It is my
responsibility and also my right! For I swear by the God of Israel, that
good man is as innocent as I, and I would far rather die myself than watch him
suffer an unjust punishment. Take me to die now, sire, I beg you.”
The man from Jerusalem was beside himself. “Do not listen to him,
sire. He has no right to suffer my fate while I stand before you. Please, sire,
kill me and send this good man home to his family. He is of far more value to
your kingdom than I.”
On they went, back and forth for an hour, each imploring the
emperor to kill him and not his friend, until finally, the Emperor silenced the
commotion by raising his hand.
“Here is my decision,” he said. “I shall release both of you -- under
one condition.” And the crowd waited breathlessly to hear what that
condition would be. “You must, each of you, promise . . . to be my
friend.”
One thing more about this story: A commentator writes that it
illustrates why, in Leviticus, the verse "Love your neighbor as
yourself," concludes with the words, "I am God." Because
friendship is so precious that even God -- represented here by the Emperor --
wants a share in it. So when we share true friendship with another, God,
holiness, is present in the relationship.
And that is why, as we set out on
the voyage of this New Year, I ask you to join Elie Wiesel in making friendship
your religion. And let us say: Amen
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