This week's concluding Torah portion to the book of Leviticus/Vayikra offers a powerful metaphor for a question that haunts me every day and that we will explore in our upcoming Zoom series (details below).
In the context of the story, B'chukotai refers to what happens when we walk or don't walk in the way of how humans are meant to encounter life in this world. The particular passage that catches me in this writing describes what happens when humans are separated from even the possibility of connection to ourselves, to each other and all life form:
The sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight. Fleeing as though from the sword, they shall fall though none pursues.
Lev. 26:36
The passage expresses the state of fear and anxiety that so many of us live in these days. Yes, real danger lurks everywhere in a world where humanity is not yet freed from the stage of killing and humiliating each other in tragic attempts to mediate our pain and meet basic needs. Yes, our world overflows with danger from guns, bombs, hatred, aggression, all the violent and deadly manifestations of how we dehumanize each other.
And still, Torah warns, when you cut yourself off from recognizing that there is always another possibility, that all humans are made in the same image, from the same creative force, you will see only violence and hatred. You will not recognize the goodness and possibilities for living in harmony with each other that also are all around us. You will sink into hopelessness and despair.
I hear this as a survival warning. We need to create experiences for ourselves that nourish and nurture our capacity to connect to each other’s humanity. If I hear every disagreement, every differing narrative, anything that makes me feel uncomfortable, as a threat, as an insurmountable obstacle to connection, I will always be running away. I will never even glimpse the possibilities beyond war and separation that are always present. I will never experience being heard and understood by people who are different from me. I will be stuck in isolation, separated from any possibility of finding a way for us to survive as a species on this planet.
Torah is calling us to pay attention to how the meaning we make of other people's actions and speech feed either connection to or separation from our shared humanity. Torah’s strong language warns us to move toward taking greater responsibility for what our meaning making and our actions feed. How do we listen to and express words and actions in ways that reveal each other’s inner fears and vulnerability? That remind us and bring us into shared experiencing of life?
I was born into the community of Jewish Americans. When I hear people assuming that this means I support what they understand to be genocide against Palestinians or that there is something in the nature of Jews that is less than human, it hurts. It scares me for myself and future generations. And when I hear and interpret Jewish and other people's expressions as dehumanizing Palestinians it’s scary and it hurts. In both cases it’s often so painful I just want to dismiss the others and walk away. Or lash out. And I know people from every ethnic, religious and cultural identity are living with these same fears and responses.
When I recover from these moments, I try to remember, what can I turn and return to, to resource myself enough to open to other choices? How can I hear scary and uncomfortable messages when I am caught in fear that my suffering, my humanity, doesn't matter? So that I am not living in a state of fear and anxiety from being chased and haunted by falling leaves?
Since October 7 I have taken refuge in many communities in person and on line where we gather to share our suffering. I find over and over that listening to others with curiosity and without judgment, beyond agreeing or disagreeing with what they say, and being listened to in the same way, opens space inside of me to shift out of hopeless aloneness. Being together in this way helps free me to hold my pain and fear in a way that keeps me connected and engaged with others.
I draw on skills from Nonviolent Communication and Mindfulness to create connection in myself to the other person's pain. This can help generate trust between us that I care about their experience and pain, so that space unfolds for me to risk the vulnerability of expressing my pain.
I think often about a Tibetan Buddhist teaching that says, we can't cover the whole world with leather so that our walking on it is like a caress. So instead, we cover our feet with leather. How can I cover my feet with a caress so that I can walk on the Earth in a way that keeps alive the spark that energizes me to sit at the table together, to stay in the room together , to stay in connection when it's scary and vulnerable?
These are some of the questions and possibilities we want to explore in our upcoming series with the NVC Academy on how to talk about anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in this time of horrible violence. I hope you join us and find sustenance in heart to heart connection.