Don't Walk Away

Click here to watch Rabbi Shira Stutman's Rosh Hashanah sermon.

There is a game that I often play with my friends. Perhaps you play as well. It’s called, “if the election doesn’t go your way in November, where will you go?” So many people played this game the day after the 2016 election that the Canadian immigration website crashed from too much use. The escape fantasy is strong. We want to wash our hands of all the pain of living in this country right now, and wager that if we go elsewhere the pain will evaporate or at least not be apparent. Is this a game that you play? I personally choose Costa Rica; you?

One option: (Not really, because it’s a fictional location) Omelas, from the Ursula LeGuin story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” It’s a city filled with people who are happy. They just love their lives. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?

Except. “In the basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas...there is a room….In the room a child is sitting….nobody ever comes.” This child is born, grows, and dies in the dungeon.

“They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas….they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery….”

In order to live their lives, the people of Omelas have both to know about the child in the dungeon, but refuse to really care.

“But sometimes, [a person] falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people...keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates….they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back.”

Where do they go? Canada, maybe.

Do you locate yourself in this story? Think of what we’ve experienced just these last months: pandemic, massive economic upheaval, and the once-again-surfacing of race-based atrocities. In these last months, as you have seen video after video of Black people shot and murdered by police, as those of us who live in DC and many other cities around the country have smelled the gas as nearby peaceful protestors are tear-gassed on the streets of our beloved goldeneh medina, as you have heard lies--straight lies--from the mouths of officials who are supposed to protect all of us but are more interested in protecting themselves.

What have you done, sitting in your towers? Have you felt yourself free from the responsibility, or does it weigh on you? Is the fact that you feel the weight of the responsibility enough, you don’t actually need to do anything about it? Have you planned your escape to Costa Rica, or just to willed ignorance? Or are you going to stay exactly where you are and refuse to see what is right in front of you?

Baruch Atah Ado-nai Eloheynu Melech Ha-olam, pokeyach ivrim. Every morning, we say the blessing thanking God “who opens the eyes of the blind.” Now even thousands of years ago ancient rabbis were clear that this is actually a blessing of gratitude for comprehension, not sight--they ruled that even those who are visually impaired should say this prayer. That we all experience and sometimes even choose to obstruct perception and understanding, and that we need help removing the obstacles in our way. That there are moments we just refuse to see what is in front of our very eyes, and that we should fight against this instinct.

Today’s Torah portion has one example of how dangerous it can be not to choose to see what’s truly before us. Hagar and her son Ishmael are forced into the desert with some food and water, but it soon runs out. “When she finished the water,” we read in the Torah, “Hagar left the child under one of the bushes, and went and sat down at a distance...for she thought, ‘Let me not look on as the child dies.’ And sitting thus afar, she burst into tears.”

God hears the child crying, and sends an angel to call out to Hagar. מַה־לָּ֣ךְ הָגָ֑ר אַל־תִּ֣ירְאִ֔י כִּֽי־שָׁמַ֧ע אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶל־ק֥וֹל הַנַּ֖עַר... “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy....Then God opened her eyes and she saw: a well of water. She got the water for her son, and she slaked his thirst.” (Genesis 21:17-19) She, and her son Ishmael, not only lived, but became the forebears of a whole new civilization.

Hagar’s work--ours as well--was to widen the scope of what you take in. This is frustrating work, to be sure, because it requires not only awareness of what is happening within you (fear, overwhelm, insecurity, inherited trauma), not only learning to name these feelings and how they’re affecting you, but also the ability to make a conscious decision to widen your view beyond your own experience to ask about, be curious about, learn about, and act upon other people's experiences and feelings.

When I was a senior in high school, my two paternal grandparents died within five months of each other. I have such a clear memory of talking with my dad at shiva for his mom, who died second, and having him say to me, “I’m an orphan now.” And it was truly mind-blowing, because even though I knew I had grandparents, I had never truly connected it to the idea of my dad having a mommy and a daddy, parents who changed his diaper and helped him study for tests and were proud of him at his Bar Mitzvah. And who was sad at the loss of his parents just as I would be at the loss of my parents, whenever it would happen. And the very word, “orphan,” the untetheredness of it, how did my relationship with my father shift when I saw him not just as the person who took care of me but also as the person who people took care of--and who as of that week had one fewer person to take care of him? What fears did it generate for him, for me? What was my responsibility in this new moment?

It’s terrifying, sometimes, to see what has been right in front of you, all along.

Another very human story, this one about our forefather Yaakov, Jacob. Perhaps you know it. When we dip into his story, he has just stolen the birthright from his twin brother Esau. His mother Rebecca has helped him do it, then told him to escape before Esau kills him. Jacob’s parents send Jacob to Haran, to meet the family he does not know.

So Jacob runs. We can assume that he is terrified. The text teaches that a certain place, on a certain night--perhaps even his first night all alone without his family-- Jacob stopped, put a stone under his head as a pillow, and fell asleep.

He’s come from a place of manipulation and is running for his life. But now he sees...what, exactly? What do we see differently through the lens of divine presence?

The Kotzker rebbe teaches that in the verse "Surely God was in this place and I, i did not know," the first “I” is necessary to indicate who is being addressed, But the second, “extra” I represents the ego. In other words, “God was here all along, and the reason I didn't know it is because I was too busy paying attention to myself." Religious life demands constant vigilance against the schemes of our egos to put our own selves in the center and refuse to take in all the other I’s around us.

We can learn a lot from Jacob by taking account of what he did after waking up from his dream, after realizing that there is more than one “I” in any story.

1. Makes a gratitude offering; he is grateful that he has experienced God’s presence in this sacred place, he knows that it will make him more resilient, more understanding of the world around him. Oof. That is the work of teshuva, of receiving a certain sort of push-back, that moment when someone lovingly or otherwise helps you decenter your own ego and you’re supposed to thank them for it.

2. Makes an offering of a tithe, of 10% of his income, because he recognizes that what he has isn’t truly all his.

3. Provides a kindness to his cousin (soon to be his wife) Rachel, by helping her feed her flock. He gives back to the community of which he is a part.

4. Cries. Weeps. Let’s have a little compassion for the tears and exhaustion that comes from the work of decentering your own ego, your own “I.” Sometimes it is a lot for our hearts to hold. But a full heart, a broken heart, a complexified situation--it can bring us to tears, but they will be the best kind.

These last few months, many white Americans have acknowledged and been forced to confront what we’ve long known to be true, which is that our understanding of what makes us feel “secure” is based on a lot of assumptions that are not shared by people of color, and especially indiginous, Black and brown people. This admission is certainly true in the white Jewish community, which experiences policing in America in ways arguably unparalleled in Jewish history. Many white American Jews understand police as a force that keeps us safe; when there is a shooting at a synagogue, Jewish museum, Jewish Federation or JCC, police run towards the scene of the crime in order to offer assistance (in some cases they were already there, hired by the community as an added layer of “security'") and not away. And it bears saying that this is not only in our imagination, that this is factually true, that whenever there is even a hint of an uptick in public antisemitism in DC, local police are in touch with Sixth & I almost immediately with offers of help and protection.

One of the most complicated parts of discernment, however, is recognizing that two things can be true at the same time: that DC police can protect Sixth & I as an institution and members of the police force--and policing as an institution itself--can terrorize Black and brown people, including Black and brown Jews. That some of the very same “protectors” whose presence make me, a white person, exhale with relief, cause BIPOC to inhale with fear. And that even though I feel safe when I see a police car outside our building, no Jew is truly safe until we have eradicated white supremacy in all its forms, including not only antisemitism but also anti-Black racism, not only in the streets but also in our government.

It’s all true. But until I decentered my “I” as a white person, and instead centered the experiences of people of color, I just couldn’t comprehend what I needed to comprehend. I couldn’t see what I needed to see.

Perhaps even more honest, God forgive me--seriously, on these days of teshuva please God, forgive me--I have known for some time that there were many people of color who did not feel as safe as I did, whose reaction when they were driving and saw the police lights behind them was not “oh damn I’m going to be late for my meeting” but instead “oh damn what if they shoot?” But there already seemed to be so little time in the day. How could I possibly begin to piece together this complicated puzzle?

And then I heard George Floyd call out for his mother as he was being murdered, and, like Hagar, “God opened [my] eyes and I saw.” And I understood: by refusing to bear witness to the agony of others, and by putting only my own personal experience and needs at the center of my narrative, I was complicit in the terror. Until the words “serve and protect” are true for the way that police treat all of us, I have no right to stand down.

In the Torah, both Hagar and Jacob were terrified, and didn’t want to see, even at their own peril. They somehow thought that “not-seeing” would be safer. But notice that when they actually comprehended what was in front of them all along, it provided a way out from their struggle. Hagar became the mother of a great nation. Jacob was ultimately able to build a life and reconcile with his brother. It is perhaps paradoxical at first thought, but when we are able to see what was in front of us all along, we can only gain. Insight, compassion, strategic knowledge. Power.

I get why we make the Canada joke. A little escapism is necessary. And if January 20 rolls around and we don’t have a new government, I will definitely turn wistfully south to the beaches of Costa Rica. For a moment.

But in light of “The Ones who Walked Away from Omelas,” the game isn’t as fun as it once was. Because I would be the one who walks away from Omelas, from America, from Israel. And if I go, who will fight for the child?

What if instead we decide to stay, to see, to transform, to build? For this, I refer you to another short story, written in direct response to LeGuin’s, entitled “The Ones Who Stay and Fight,” by NK Jemisin from her 2018 book How Long ’Til Black Future Month? The story is not uncomplicated, and I’m not going to be able to unpack it fully here. But it describes another kind of Utopia; in this one, no one remains in the dungeon. “So don’t walk away,” Jemisin writes. “The child needs you, too, don’t you see? You also have to fight for her, now that you know she exists, or walking away is meaningless.”

What are you ready to see, deeply, and to fight for this year? Is it your family? Is it your country--or your homeland? This--right now, even from your couch--is a moment of resolution: Hayom Harat Olam. Today the world was created, today we see it anew. One gift of this past year is that we have started to make the invisible visible. We are rattling the bars of the cages in which the children are kept. We have quite a long way to go, but it’s a start. Don’t walk away.

Shana tova.