Vulnerable. That’s what many of us feel.
Growing up, I felt vulnerable. I worried about whether my mother would be stable, whether we would have enough food and whether we could pay the rent.
Vulnerable. With ice storms, floods and power outages locally, we are more sensitive to the devastation caused by hurricanes and floods, forest fires and earthquakes, the natural disasters that affect us environmentally, socially and culturally.
Vulnerable. Last October, the kitchen intifada began in Israel. Knives, scissors, even vegetable peelers began to be used in attacks in locations that many of us have walked or in which we have dined.
Vulnerable. I get my passport in the same building at Sheppard and Yonge where members of Canadian armed forces were attacked.
Vulnerable. Many of us have been on school trips or community business in the same Parliament building that was invaded by a shooter.
Vulnerable. When cafes in Paris, gay night clubs, offices and churches in the United States are attacked, we feel at risk. When Jewish schools, synagogues and supermarkets are attacked, we increase the security measures at Beth Tzedec and throughout our community.
Vulnerable. When Jewish university students at countless campuses report increased anti-Israel and anti-semitic activities, we worry about the physical safety and emotional security of our young adults.
Vulnerable. When millions of Yahoo accounts are hacked, when our credit cards are captured and used by others, when our homes or property are invaded, we feel justifiably anxious and angry.
Vulnerability can lead to fear and anger, two emotions at play in Canada and America, Europe and Israel. Fear leads us to focus attention on our self-protection. We shift attention for others to ourselves and those we love. This is natural and understandable.
As Rabbi Donniel Hartman has written,
To love one's neighbor as oneself is only possible if there is a "oneself," and in times of danger, our moral duty to ourselves takes precedence. [However] … Fear may not only activate a heightened sensitivity of self, but can generate an “us/them” consciousness.
How do we protect ourselves and not lose sight of the other?
Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Joshua Goldstein, who wrote Winning the War on War, argue that we need a new perspective on conflict and vulnerability. They contend that despite news of terrorist bombings and shootings, aerial attacks on civilians in Syria, military battles in Iraq and armed assaults on civilians and soldiers, the world has never seen so little war and violence.
After thousands of years of near-universal poverty and cruel rule, a growing number of humans are surviving infancy and childbirth, going to school, voting in democracies, living with less disease, enjoying the basics of modern life and surviving to old age.
There is significant criticism of this position, declaring it naive and pointing to the deterrent effect of nuclear arms, the increased casualties of non-combatants, the proxy wars of great powers, the many-sided conflicts involving fractured states that seem to have no end, and the existence of sleeper cells and home-grown terrorists.
In 2013, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States stated that the world is “more dangerous than it has ever been”. The columnist Roger Cohen reported, “Many people I talk to, and not only over dinner, have never previously felt so uneasy about the state of the world.”
Yet some situations are better. The Israel-Palestine conflict once was the Israel-Arab conflict. From 1948, over 25 years, Israel fought the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan five times and in 1973 both Israel and the United States were on nuclear alert. Notwithstanding the conflicts with Hizbollah in the North and, more recently, with Hamas in the south, for the past four decades there have been no such wars, and no Arab regime has shown an interest in starting one. Prime Minister Netanyahu correctly points to improved relations with many of Israel’s neighbours.
None of this means that Hamas attacks on border towns like Sderot, the settlement communities or in major Israeli cities are tolerable or acceptable, only that they need not lead to fatal despair. Shimon Peresz”l, one of the architects of Israeli security, believed that a resolution to the conflict, as difficult as it may be to achieve, should not be dismissed as naive. Intelligence briefings suggest that even though the major security threat of Iran still looms and the daily concern for personal safety can and does erode national morale, Israel is not in existential danger,
Yet the residents of the south still carry a sense of vulnerability. They listen for the siren warning of a missile and for the vibrations of tunnels being dug.
This past summer, Josette and I felt secure as we walked in the Jerusalem Pride parade and through an evening street fair in the centre of the city. Yet it wasn’t hard to recall how worried everyone had been a few years ago during the Intifada and we know that people have been stabbed and killed during the past year.
What accounts for this varying sense of vulnerability? Perhaps it is our greater level of safety, which accentuates our receptivity to bad news. There also is a tendency for news—local and international—to focus on violence.
Did you know that there are Jewish laws about how long to sit shiva for delayed news? In the past, information could take a long time to arrive. Maybe the rapid news cycle that brings us information so quickly also contributes to our sense of vulnerability.
Some of you have experienced a variation of this: I hear the news about an incident in Israel and call our children. They respond “it’s news to us,” we’re fine, and—by the way—we heard about a shooting in Toronto, “Are you OK?”
My father-in-law used to read about a shooting in Toronto and felt that this city was so violent. I’d say to him that Toronto had 50 murders the previous year and Chicago had 300. Why did he think it was more safe in Chicago? Because the incidents received more attention here and were buried in the back pages in the Chicago media.
Bill Clinton says, “Follow the trend lines, not the headlines.” In addition to the military which usually imagines the worst, there are organizations and media outlets that emphasize Jewish and general dangers. Would a perspective that sees and experiences violence and vulnerability differently still allow us to rapidly respond to attacks while also limiting the fear factor of terror?
Would a changed mindset enable us to focus on some longer term challenges, such as a sustainable environment? Or ensuring a democratic, Zionist and Jewish culture in Israel? Or sustainable financial support for Jewish education? Or fostering future non-Jewish leaders for Canada and other democratic countries that are pro-Israel? Would it dispel the sense of vulnerability and open the possibility of hope?
Vulnerability, a dominant feeling during these Days of Awe and into Sukkot, can also lead to concern and care, hospitality and hope.
Lawrence Kushner tells this story:
… It was in Munich in Nazi Germany. … Sussie had been riding a city bus home from work when storm troopers stopped the coach and began examining the identification papers of the passengers. Most were annoyed, but a few were terrified. Jews were being told to leave the bus and get into a truck around the corner.
[Sussie] watched from her seat in the rear as the soldiers systematically worked their way down the aisle. She began to tremble, tears streaming down her face. When the man next to her noticed that she was crying, he politely asked her why.
“I don’t have the papers you do. I am a Jew. They’re going to take me.”
The man exploded with disgust. He began to curse and scream at her. “You stupid bitch,” he roared. “I can’t stand being near you!”
The SS men asked what all the yelling was about.
“Damn her,” the man shouted angrily. “My wife has forgotten her papers again! I’m so fed up. She always does this!”
The soldiers laughed and moved on.
[Sussie] never saw the man again. She never even knew his name.
In our High Holy Day reader, Erica Brown points to vulnerability as a source of religious values.
On Rosh Hashanah, we re-coronate God as the King of Kings and see ourselves as peons in the vast, wondrous landscape of the world. Humility creates vulnerability.
On Yom Kippur, we allow our inner demons to surface so that we can make a personal reckoning and commit to change. Repentance creates vulnerability.
On Sukkot, we build small, impermanent houses and dwell there, casting aside our material comforts to live in the shadow of God's protection. Impermanence creates vulnerability.
Our vulnerabilities bring us to faith because they wipe away the veneer of independence, self-reliance and confidence that we use to walk comfortably in a world that demands them.
Maimonides of course would not agree. For him, emotions were not part of the divine being and human beings should not bring emotions into their decision making. All the great philosophers—from ancient to modern, religious and secular—marginalize emotion and stress intellectual reflection.
Yet the legal philosopher and classicist, Martha Nussbaum, argues against the perspective which identifies emotions as impulses separate from our cognition. She contends that emotions are at the centre of moral thinking.
Emotions are not just the fuel that powers the psychological mechanism of a reasoning creature, they are parts, highly complex and messy parts, of this creature’s reasoning itself.
Nussbaum identifies vulnerability as a key to realizing human good. “Emotions reveal us as vulnerable to events that we do not control.” Out of that vulnerability, we learn what others may need and can be sensitized and motivated to act for them.
Often people will tell me that the impact of a shiva visit by someone from their past made them realize how important it is to console others. After Jeff Perlmutter recovered from a massive coronary trauma, he took upon himself the mitzvah to visit others facing significant medical challenges to offer, through his presence, support. Vulnerability can lead us to see another human being as being in the image of God. How we experience our vulnerability determines whether it will lead to fear or faith, hate or hope.
We just received this letter:
To our dear Beth Tzedec and JIAS Family:
When we look at changes and a new beginning, I think of the changes and the new beginnings that the Beth Tzedec community have made possible for your Syrian Family. To know that they are no longer in danger, and that they have a new lease on life, is one of the most thoughtful gifts that you could ever provide. Tarek, Hanaa, Sanaa, Seba and Baysan will appropriately start their new year, new life and new beginning, in their new home right after Yom Kippur.
We would like to graciously thank you for all that you have done, and we wish that on Rosh Hashanah, it is written that, God bestows on you and your families, generations of smiles for every smile you have given our family, generations of happiness for every ounce of happiness you have brought to our family, generations of support for all the support you have given our family, generations of prosperity for all of the prosperity that you have enabled our family to have, and generations of unity for reuniting our family with us. Our prayers are that these wishes get repeated on a yearly basis for generations to come.
Thank you for making a difference in the world!
Wishing you and your families good health, happiness, peace and prosperity. Today and all through the year! L’shanah Tovah! Happy Rosh Hashanah!
Sincerely,
The Sarif And Alhamwi Family
In our unstable world, and in the tough neighbourhood in which Israel is located, we need both the vulnerability of fear and the vulnerability of faith. Our sense of vulnerability must help to protect us, as well as lead us to greater awareness and concern for others. As Rabbi Hartman indicates, we should not allow the fear to “destroy the soul that we want to protect”.
Over the years here, I have tried to be a strong voice for Israel within the Jewish community, with political leaders and among interfaith associates. I have tried to articulate and explain the real vulnerabilities that Israel experiences which are shared now by so many others. But I have also sought to articulate a vulnerability of hope and faith, for our personal aspirations and relationships, and for Israel and Jewish life. That is why we send teens to North Bay, young adults to Ethiopia, welcome Syrian refugees and host Israeli combat veterans. That is why I have led a Path of Abraham mission with Jews, Muslims and Christians.
In this, I hope we follow the path of Elie Wiesel, whose death this summer left us without his presence, but not without his moral legacy. In the words of Irwin Cotler, Wiesel taught that:
The genocide of European Jewry occurred not only because of the vulnerability of the powerless, but also because of the powerlessness of the vulnerable. ... So it is our responsibility … whether we be government representatives or citoyen du monde, to give voice to the voiceless, as we seek to empower the powerless, be they the disabled, the poor, the refugee, the elderly, the women victims of violence, the vulnerable child, whoever and wherever they may be.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/elie-wiesel-conscience-of-humanity/
Six days a week the realities of daily life define our sense of self. We feel the vulnerabilities, stresses and fears of the world around us. On the seventh day, we enter a time in which we experience vulnerability as a pathway to faith and hope. We need both senses of vulnerability, to protect ourselves and to ensure that the realities of life “do not come to define and exhaust the definition of our life … and exhaust the scope of our moral horizons”. (Hartman).
On this Rosh Hashanah and throughout the holiday season, let us acknowledge our vulnerability and our need for security. But let us not be limited by the vulnerability of fear. Let us also feel the vulnerability of faith which leads to a moral commitment to act with concern, care and compassion for ourselves and all people.
