There is a story found near the very beginning of the Talmud. Rabbi Yohanan fell ill. His friend Rabbi Hanina came to visit him and asked, “Is your suffering, are these afflictions, dear to you?” Or, “is this enjoyable for you?”
While answering in the affirmative might have made him look macho, Rabbi Yohanan bravely said to Rabbi Hanina, “I welcome neither this suffering nor its reward.” (He did not enjoy or appreciate the suffering he was experiencing.)
Rabbi Hanina said to him, “Give me your hand.”
Rabbi Yohanan gave him his hand. Then Rabbi Hanina stood him up and somehow restored his friend to health.
While this is the end of the conversation between the two rabbis, the Gemara then asks: Why did Rabbi Yohanan need Rabbi Hanina’s help? Couldn’t Rabbi Yohanan have helped himself?
The response offered is so powerful.
The Gemara answers: A prisoner cannot generally free himself from prison, but he depends on others to release him from his shackles.
Even the strongest and smartest of us need another to come by to free us from captivity. That is what we learn from Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Yohanan. We need other people.
We need other people in order to thrive in this world. Unfortunately, we tend to ignore, neglect or devalue others too much.
Here is a more contemporary story.
One spring afternoon, a man came home to find two little girls on the steps of his building. Both were crying hard, shedding big girl tears. Thinking they might be hurt, he dropped his briefcase and quickly went over to them.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Still sobbing, one held up her doll. “My baby’s arm came off,” she cried.
He took the doll and its disjointed arm. With a little effort and luck, the doll once again became whole.
“Thank you” came a whisper from the girl as he handed her the doll back.
Next, looking into the tearful eyes of her friend, he asked, “And what’s the matter with you, young lady?”
She wiped her cheeks and said “I’m okay. I was just helping her cry.”
How many of us would act like the man in this story who passed two crying little girls? How many of us would stop, listen, consider and then respond if appropriate?
Really being there for other people. That is what we learn from these two girls.
This story is so similar to the story of Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Yohanan. In both stories, we encounter true relationships and deep friendships.
The rabbis were peers and colleagues. The little girls were friends.
Because the rabbis and the girls had deep and real relationships in their lives, they were thriving.
Rosh Hashanah is a time for heshbon hanefesh, for change, a time for growth and a time for recalibrating and recalculating. This Rosh Hashanah, it is time for us to move beyond simply surviving in this world to thriving in it.
Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, writes in his book Flourish, “Very little that is positive is solitary. When was the last time you laughed uproariously? The last time you felt indescribable joy?
“Even without knowing the particulars of these high points of your life... all of them took place around other people… Other people are the best antidote to the downs of life and the single most reliable up” (20).
On the opposite end of the spectrum, he writes that “loneliness is such a disabling condition that it compels the belief that the pursuit of relationships is a rock-bottom fundamental to human well-being” (21).
In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence wrote, “accept your own aloneness and stick to it all your life.”
That is the opposite of what we as Jews believe.
It is time stop rushing past people and actually be there for them.
Being with other people and for other people and helpful to other people enables us to thrive.
By now many of you have heard that Beth Tzedec is embarking on a culture shift with the creation of our Centre for Spiritual Well-Being.
The word well-being was chosen b’kavanah, with sensitivity and intent. We have a vested interest and intent for the synagogue to aspire to be more.
Beth Tzedec is not trying to be a Wellness Centre or a Mindfulness Centre. That is not our goal.
Let’s be clear: the contemporary mindfulness fad is, according to Ronald Purser, void of a moral compass or ethical commitments. It is focused on self and moored to the market (McMindfulness).
Wellness is not measurable. It is a buzzword, a meme and it is a $3.4 trillion industry, gaining more and more momentum as stress soars. Just about anything that relieves us from the stresses of everyday life is fair game for carrying the wellness label, whether it be a shoe, yogurt or even a drugstore – like Shoppers Wellness, where they put the focus on wellness and not illness (Kim Tingley, “What, Exactly, is Wellness?”).
There are so many places we can go for wellness. I spent last Tuesday afternoon at a spa in Rosedale that promoted anti-aging wellness.
Wellness has many positive attributes to it, but we are not in the wellness business here at Beth Tzedec.
Not so long ago, Google employed an in-house mindfulness professional whose actual title was Jolly Good Fellow. He was chair of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI). He would tell people to look inside themselves to find the source of their problems.
That is a solitary experience. That is not what we want to do at Beth Tzedec.
What we intend to do in this synagogue is to focus on our well-being, to build a stronger community and to ground it in Jewish tradition so that we can all thrive and live our best lives.
A person’s well-being can be tracked. Research by Tom Rath and Jim Harter, lead researchers from Gallup, shows that only 7% of the population thrive in the essential elements needed to live a thriving life of well-being.
At Beth Tzedec, we are using a Hebrew word to capture this sense of wholeness, completeness and peace, which is shlaymoot, which has the same root as shalom, as peace.
In broad strokes, well-being is about the combination of our love for what we do each day, the quality of our relationships, the security of our finances, the vibrancy of our physical health and the pride we take in what we have contributed to our community. It’s about how these five elements interact. Specifically the measurable elements of well-being are career, financial, physical, social and community.
A strong social well-being leads to strong relationships and love in your life.
Community well-being is about the quality of engagement you have with the area where you live.
At Beth Tzedec, we are committed to enhancing the social and community well-being of the members of our congregation so that we can thrive.
How are we going to deliver on social and community well-being? How will be build Beth Tzedec as a place for shlaymoot?
By offering relevant experiences, programs, skill training, spiritual and meditative services and activities and opportunities designed for the needs of small groups that deepen our connections to each other and infuse our lives with a deeper understanding of Jewish values and culture.
In his fantastic Ted Talk, Jim Harter said, “I think one of the best opportunities for well-being change in the world is through communities.”
Beth Tzedec is a large and diverse community. This is our moment.
It is a new and different transformation than we might expect from a shul. It will require us all to be open and vulnerable. It might seem counterintuitive, but we learn from the examples of the rabbis and the little girls that the more vulnerable you are—both with yourself and others—the better.
According to a team of psychologists writing in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “having the courage to show our vulnerability will often be rewarded, contrary to our worst fears. That’s because there is an intriguing mismatch in the way we take a more negative view of our own vulnerability than we do of other people’s.” The researchers call this “the beautiful mess effect.” Others see us differently when we open ourselves up than we see ourselves.
Nearly everyone who has ever lived has experienced loneliness. Beth Tzedec wants to be there for you so you don’t feel alone. We want to increase your social well-being.
This idea is not actually new, as right near the beginning of Creation, we learn that God does not want us to be alone either.
On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate the creation of the world and that first special week. After Adam is created, there is a moment in which God says, almost with a sense of surprise: lo tov heyot adam levado “It is not good for a person to be alone.”
Oops!
There is a midrash on this verse wherein the Rabbis imagine God parading all of the new animals, holding hands, two by two, before Adam. Adam, with all his power, names them all. No sooner does he finish his task than he says to God, “Hey, it’s not fair. They all have a partner and I don’t!” God saw Adam’s pain and realized it was time to create a companion for him (Bereishit Rabbah 17:4). And so, God created Eve. Lo tov heyot adam Llevado. Living a life alone is not good.
In another midrash, (Bereishit Rabbah 17:2), the rabbis state that without someone else in your life, “you lack goodness, help, happiness, blessing, atonement and peace.”
In other words, you cannot thrive.
In the original midrash, the rabbis were actually referring to marriage, but the message can be extrapolated to all relationships—like family, friends, coworkers and community.
Adam’s loneliness, being levad, meant that he could not involve himself in community, which is essential for a thriving well-being.
God wants us to be connected to others and is the original community organizer.
Similar to the research of Martin Seligman, Rabbi Marc Katz teaches that “it’s hard to feel happiness when we lack someone to share our joys with. It is impossible to feel centered when we have no one to comfort us and teach us we are safe. Life seems duller when our own eyes are the only ones observing the blessings around us. The perspective of others adds colors to our world... and since it is Rosh Hashanah… without others to turn to for forgiveness, it’s much harder to feel better after we make mistakes.
“In observing Adam’s loneliness, God understood the profound role of others in our lives. Without our fellow human beings, we will never live life to its fullest, deepest and highest” (The Heart of Loneliness).
Or, in other words, we will not be able to thrive if we spend our days devoid of other people.
The importance of being part of a social network is a long standing tradition for the Jewish community. Most obviously, we have a requirement that there be a minyan, ten people, for the recitation of many prayers, including taking out the Torah.
This is not just a Jewish idea. Self-determination theory holds that humans need three basic things in order to be content. We need to feel competent at what we do, we need to feel authentic in our lives and we need to feel connected to others.
There has always been a fear that when get older, we will enter a life of solitude. There is a verse from Psalm 71:9 that we recited at Selihot and will say again on Yom Kippur: Do not cast us away as we grow old, do not desert us as our energy wanes!
I can only imagine what the author was scared of. He was scared of being alone at the end of his life and not being able to thrive in community with others.
A prominent challenge that our elderly face is the loss of their social network. Add to the mix the day the kids take the car keys away and they’re left with nobody to interact with. It can lead to the feeling of being cast away. Today is not so different from the day the author wrote this psalm.
We might be connected to a whole lot of people through various technologies, but how many of us have meaningful relationships with the person in front of you, beside you and immediately behind you in shul on Rosh Hashanah? How many of us feel whole? How many of us are thriving and living the best lives possible?
Many of us aren’t.
Charles Fritz teaches that modern society has gravely disrupted the social bonds that have always characterized the human experience. In the book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, written by Sebastian Junger, the author explains that the beauty and tragedy of the modern world is that it eliminates many situations that require people to demonstrate a commitment to the collective good.
Every single one of you in this room, or in any of the other prayer or spiritual experiences being offered today, will leave Beth Tzedec with an increase in your social well-being. You might wonder how that is possible. Studies show that people who spend six hours a day socializing with friends, family and colleagues have a much greater sense of wellbeing and positivity in their lives and are 50% less likely to be depressed and physically ill. We tend to synchronize our moods with the people around us and our emotions influence one another throughout the day (Wellbeing). This only happens if we are in social situations like shul, work, the gym, book club or Mommy and Me.
Rabbi Yohanan felt better when Rabbi Hanina came to visit. The first little girl stopped crying when someone stopped to see how she was doing. Both saw a change in their well-being in those moments.
When we strengthen our well-being, we will have better days, months and decades. That is what we all want, isn’t it?
In regard to community well-being, or a sense of community shlaymoot, the Talmud (Sanhedrin 17B) teaches that a Torah scholar is forbidden to live in a city that does not have these things: a court of law to keep justice and determine punishments; a charity fund that is collected by two people and distributed by three; a synagogue; a bath house; a bathroom; a doctor; a craftsperson; a butcher and a teacher of children.
“These ten things require the members of a community to support their existence and to be involved in their success.
There is a direct correlation between one’s well-being and the amount of time and energy they put into “giving back” to their community. In fact, the difference between a person who lives an exceptional life verses a good life is related to their contribution to something greater than themselves” (Darren Levine).
That is why for this New Year, the Out of the Cold program is being rebranded under the Centre for Spiritual Well-Being. There is scientific evidence that proves volunteering with the homeless or doing bikkur holim, visiting those who are sick, will improve your well-being as you help others. We at Beth Tzedec are ready to be the place that improves your well-being through connections like these.
We have to remember that connection is not formed in crowds. Yes, you are all raising your voices in this room together as you daven, but are you intimately connected?
Connections are formed in the home, around the dinner table, in small groups and at other peaks and valleys of shared human experience. Loneliness is healed and well-being is increased and people thrive through moments of connection (Katz).
The greatest reminder to wake up from the status quo and move the needle from simply surviving to thriving is the shofar.
In Hilhot Shofar (3:2), Maimonides, the medieval thinker wrote:
“Due to the great passage of time and the extended exile, we are no longer sure as to the nature of the terua mentioned in the Torah. We do not know whether it is similar to the wailing of weeping women; or the slow, deep sobbing of someone heavily burdened; or whether it is like a sobbing which naturally turns into a wailing. Therefore, we perform all three variations.”
Whatever it was, Maimonides claims, the sound of the shofar is akin to crying. And crying, as we know, is connected to sadness. Every Rosh Hashanah when we hear the shofar, we are reminded of one message: sadness, confusion and loneliness are constants in our life and the lives of everyone we know. All of us can improve our well-being.
But just as we are not afraid to let the shofar sound, we should not be afraid of uncorking what runs inside of us. There is a kol dmama, a small still voice, inside all of us. We just need to hear it. Even if a shofar is an external manifestation of our inner selves, there is something uplifting about hearing its cry (Katz).
As you listen to the shofar this Rosh Hashanah, open up to yourself and look deep into your soul even if you fear what you might find. And then turn to the shul and take advantage of the reimagined options and the new options available so that you can increase your well-being, your shlaymoot, and thrive as you navigate this world.
This is the year we at Beth Tzedec begin to move in an orchestrated way from simply surviving to thriving. And we are going to do it together. We are going to increase our well-being, our shlaymoot and we are going to be a stronger community, a community of stronger individuals and stronger groups—a better, more connected congregation.
I once learned that the roots of a redwood tree only run six to twelve feet deep. Instead of growing downward, they grow out, extending hundreds of feet laterally and wrapping themselves around the roots of other trees. When rough weather comes, it’s the network of closely intertwined roots that allows the trees to stand strong. We are the same (Brad Stulberg).
This is the new direction of Beth Tzedec. Let us partner together to make it happen.
