Shana Tova, friends,
If you’ve walked into my office in the last few months, you may have noticed that there’s an entire shelf of toys. Ok, I’m lying; there’s two shelves of toys. Action figures line the top shelf: Batman, Superman, Spider-man, the Incredible Hulk, Wolverine, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kanobi, and countless others posed in action poses. Below that shelf are Lego creations: airplanes, cars, trains, and spacecrafts. Plenty of you have seen this collection evolve over the summer, and innocently asked, “Are…those for Asher?” It makes sense that toys in my office would be for my 3-year old son, but when asked, I happily reply, “No, they’re for me.”
Asher has plenty of toys at home, and I have a secret stash of toys in my office just for him, so no, those shelves are for me. True, the toys on my shelves mostly provide a wonderful sense of nostalgia, a playful break from the informative and heavy books surrounding them and the seriousness of my job . In fact, I find that putting together Lego creations is a very “zen” moment for me, breaking away from work for just a few minutes to clear my head and focus on something creative. More importantly, however, the toys on my shelves are a constant reminder of what we can learn from things geared toward childhood. Legos teach us that things can go in specific ways, but also that we can experiment, that we can modify, that we can create. The action figures teach us that we can be heroes or villains in this world and that somewhere inside us lay our super strengths, our Jedi minds, our abilities to overcome the impossible.
It was this idea that led me to realize that perhaps there were more lessons to be found in the tools of our childhoods. I found myself, in this sense, gravitating naturally towards children’s books. The Dr. Seusses, Maurice Sendaks, Roald Dahls, and Shel Silversteins, not to mention all the new authors that have popped up since I was young. In our home, each night, Asher picks out three books to read before bed and either myself or my wife, Barrie, will read stories of adventure, life lessons, challenges to overcome, or amazing aspects of our world. Every once in a while, I’ll come across a story or a book that will have a transformative effect on me, reminding me of a life lesson or introducing a new perspective. And each time, I find myself thinking, “I have to share this.”
It is in that spirit that, this High Holy Day season, I have compiled what I believe are some of the most meaningful and relevant stories from children’s books that might benefit us all during these Days of Awe. One more recent book that I connected with this year was Zen Shorts, by Jon J. Muth. It had such an impact on me that I have tried, with great effort, to convince Asher to let me read it to him again and again (but alas, he’s on a Paw Patrol and Daniel Tiger kick). Zen Shorts is loosely based on the Zen artist and teacher Sengai Gibbon, who lived in the 18th century. The book features a giant panda character named Stillwater, who moves into a neighborhood and meets the local children, telling them classic stories from Zen Buddhist literature. The stories teach the children life lessons and, this holiday season, I’ll be sharing some of them with all of you. After all, what we are attempting to do this week, in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is to find peace, to become, as it turns out, the embodiment of the character of the book, Stillwater.
As we ask forgiveness from God and from others, we attempt in our High Holy Days to “still the water” around us. So let’s get in the Jewish Zen mode. The first story I’ll share with you is told by our friend, Stillwater, to a little girl named Addy. The story is about Stillwater’s Uncle Ry, who always gave presents on his birthday to celebrate the day he was born. The story is called “Uncle Ry and the Moon,” and it goes like this:
My Uncle Ry lived alone in a small house up in the hills. He didn’t own many things. He lived a simple life.
One evening, he discovered he had a visitor. A robber had broken into the house and was rummaging through my uncle’s few belongings.
The robber didn’t notice Uncle Ry, and when my uncle said, “Hello,” the robber was so startled he almost fell down.
My uncle smiled at the robber and shook his hand.
“Welcome! Welcome! How nice of you to visit!”
The robber opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.
Because Ry never let anyone leave empty-handed, he looked around the tiny hug for a gift for the robber. But there was nothing to give.
The robber began to back toward the door. He wanted to leave.
At last, Uncle Ry knew what to do. He took off his only robe, which was old and tattered. “Here,” he said. “Please take this.”
The robber thought my uncle was crazy. He took the robe, dashed out the door, and escaped into the night.
My uncle sat and looked at the moon, its silvery light spilling over the mountains, making all things quietly beautiful.
“Poor man,” lamented my uncle.
“All I had to give him was my tattered robe. If only I could have given him this wonderful moon.”
Makes you all warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it? The page that ends this story features the silhouette of a polar bear on a hill, staring up at the moon with wonder and awe.
“Your uncle sounds nice,” Addy says to Stillwater after hearing the story, “I don’t think I could have given away my only robe.”
“I know how that is,” said Stillwater. “but there’s always the moon.”
Now, I’m aware that we live in Indiana and I’m certain with all the “stand your ground” laws around the country, befriending the burglar and giving him a gift wouldn’t be terribly realistic. So instead let’s use this story as we’re supposed to use it, as we’re supposed to use our stories from the Torah and Tanakh–as an allegory, a life-lesson, something to take with us to help us live a more moral life.
The story teaches us that there will always be people who come into our lives and wrong us, take things from us, attempt to betray or steal, who hurt us. No matter how little we have, there will always be that person who creeps into our space in the middle of the night and attempts to take more. We have a choice at that moment. We can, on the one hand, judge that person in the worst way, villainize them, view them as the most heartless, evil person in the world for attacking us for no reason. Or, we can be like Uncle Ry: we can feel empathy for that person, we can turn judgement into wonder. We can wonder what it is that put them in this position, and let our anger and personal feelings melt away. We can present that person with kindness, with hospitality. Uncle Ry does what is so hard for all of us to do: he looks around his house and realizes that, despite how seemingly little he has, there is someone who has less.
Uncle Ry implicitly teaches a lesson that I was taught a few years ago at a URJ Biennial. That weekend, the keynote speaker was then Vice-President Joe Biden. Among the many wonderful things he said that evening, he told a story about something he had learned when he was a Senator. Years ago, on the Senate floor, Biden had witnessed Senator Jesse Helms from North Carolina speaking strongly against the American Disabilities Act and one of its prime supporters, Bob Dole. Biden, upset about what he was hearing, sat down with then Democratic Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, who said to Biden, “Joe, it looks like something’s bothering you.”
“Mr. Leader,” Biden said, “I can’t believe what I just heard on the floor of the Senate. I can’t believe anyone could be so heartless and care so little about people with disabilities. I tell you, it makes me angry, Mr. Leader.”
Mansfield replied, “Joe, what would you say if I told you that four years ago, maybe five, Dot Helms and Jesse Helms were reading — I think it’s the Charlotte Observer, the local newspaper — and they saw an ad in the paper or a piece in the paper about a young man in braces who was handicapped at an orphanage, who was in his early teens. And all the caption said was the young man wanted nothing more for Christmas than to be part of a family.”
Mansfield said to Biden, “What would you say if I told you Dot Helms and Jesse Helms adopted that young man as their own child?”
Biden paused and then said to Senator Mansfield, “I’d feel like a fool, an absolute fool.”
“Well, they did.” Mansfield said, “Joe, every man and woman sent here is sent here because their state recognizes something decent about them. It’s easy to find the parts you don’t like. I think your job, Joe, is to find out that part that caused him to be sent here.”
And then Senator Mike Mansfield said something that Uncle Ry in our children’s book was trying to tell us: “Joe,” he said, “never question another man’s motive. Question his judgment but never his motive.”
We have no idea why the people who choose to hurt us hurt us. We have no way of knowing what is going on in their lives. Is it about us? Is it about them? Is it more complicated? When the burglar creeps in through window, Uncle Ry doesn’t question his motive. He might question his judgement, but he would never presume to know his motive. So he greets him with kindness, empathy, pity, and does not let him depart without a gift.
This is our ultimate goal for High Holy Days. To remind ourselves that everyone is fallible, everyone has their own problems, and we must never question those motives. We should treat acts that wrong us with empathy because they may very well come from a place of pain or desperation in that person. How much easier is it to forgive when we think about it that way?
Uncle Ry also reminds us that even when things are taken from us, there’s always the moon. I love that line; I feel like it should be a phrase we just carry around. The Talmud teaches, “The other nations count by the sun, while Israel counts by the moon.” The moon is a central part of Judaism, and it is the basis of our entire calendar. Each new moon is the head of a new month, what we call Rosh Chodesh. It is how we begin each month. But most importantly, in Jewish mysticism, the moon is the symbol for the Shekhinah, the indwelling feminine presence of God, the creator. So in times of difficulty, when we feel we’ve given it all, when things have been taken from us, instead of feeling anger, we should look up at the moon in awe and wonder, “its silvery light spilling over the mountains, making all things quietly beautiful,” and we should think, “There’s always the moon. There’s always God.”