Writing Each Other Off

Twenty-five years ago, I had my first introduction to my wife’s extended family.  The occasion was her cousin’s Bar Mitzvah.  I was asked to read Torah and although I had a fair amount of experience, I was a little nervous.

Before the Bar Mitzvah, I had a chance to meet De’s cousin.  He came across bright and personable.  His family was concerned because he had some learning issues which made reading a challenge for him.  English was hard enough, and now he had to work backwards and navigate the Hebrew.  He worked extra hard to prepare for his Bar Mitzvah.

I did my reading and the bar mitzvah boy did just fine. And then the rabbi got up to speak and he spoke about how the boy had gotten kicked out of Hebrew school classes again and again due to poor behavior and how disappointing his Hebrew school performance was.  And I was waiting for him to say, “but look how well you did today and we are going to make sure you continue your Jewish education” but he never said that or anything like it.  He spoke about the grandfather of the bar mitzvah and his involvement in the synagogue and then the speech just ended.  I was kind of surprised, to say the least.  I didn’t know the family well enough at the time to ask them about their reactions.

I can see how the rabbi might have been frustrated by the bar mitzvah boy’s Hebrew school situation – it’s difficult for a school to manage students who pose challenges of one kind or another. 

It saddened me that the school had not succeeded at finding a way to engage this child up to that point.

And it also seemed that there was no plan, or even consideration, about how to engage him in the future.

I felt at the time that this emerging young man had been written off, and would continue to be written off – set aside as unworthy of investment and incapable of achievement.

The sad truth is, that often, at every stage of our lives we write each other off.  We decide who’s in and who’s out, who makes the cut and who doesn’t, who is worthy of our attention individually and institutionally and who isn’t. 

We tend to write off people who learn differently or who behave differently than whatever might be the established norm.  People who don’t meet our “expectations.”

Deanna’s cousin, who struggled to prepare for his Bar Mitzvah and struggled throughout high school, was always thoughtful, always enjoyed talking with me about religion in general and Judaism specifically. 

He always had an entrepreneurial spirit.  A few years ago, he founded a company that organizes and books musical performances.   The company started out small and grew steadily. 

There’s an annual music festival which brings thousands of people together to hear top entertainers for a few days in the heat of late spring.  People camp out and have their choice of performers to listen to.  Deanna’s cousin and his company started that festival.

I saw him recently on Mother’s Day and we spoke about life, work, religion.  He asked about our synagogue.  Had some interesting ideas about marketing and goal-setting.  He’s warm, intelligent and ethical. He'd be a great asset to any Jewish community insightful enough to welcome him.

I’m not saying it’s easy to handle a kid who misbehaves in religious school, but imagine what might have happened if he had been engaged differently all those years.  And there are kids who don’t learn easily in the conventional ways and kids who misbehave and have all sorts of other issues and who knows what they’ll go on to do.  No matter what, we can’t write them off. 

What might we do as a community to extend our definition of what constitutes a “good student” or, for that matter, a “productive adult”? 

If Moses were sitting in one of our classes today, or mingling at the Kiddush, would we write him off because he had difficulty speaking? 

There are children and adults who don’t fit whatever the mold is that has been established explicitly and implicitly but are pulsing with creativity and curiosity.  Inappropriate behavior is never acceptable, but isolating the perpetrator should not be the end of the conversation.  It’s the beginning.  Isolating becomes, then, not quarantine but individualization that leads to more optimized learning.

No one should be written off for how he or she learns, for what he or she asks, for the challenges that he or she poses to accepted convention. 

If the window of what we value is too constrained, then children and adults will do whatever they can to squeeze through.  They will lie and they will cheat and, worst of all, they will believe that they have little to offer unless they squeeze through that window.

As a community, we have the obligation to create structures and opportunities that value all of the gifts that children and adults bring and the highest gift that we each bring is the divine spark we carry within us which counts infinitely more than any score we achieve on any test. 

The other night, my family attended an evening of the arts put together by my son’s school.  It featured displays of visual art, music, poetry and dance.  It had some very funny moments, like when the 11^th grade Latin class sang “O Susanna” in Latin, of course – complete with harmonica. 

And it had some poignant moments, including a film called Hurricane, about the stormy inner life of a young male student, leading to him totally trashing his room.

The dances were amazing.  I want to emphasize one thing in particular about the dancers.  Not all of the girls (there were only girls in the dances, btw) – not all of the girls had typical dancers bodies. 

Some of them might well be told, if they wanted to pursue a career in dance, that their current appearance is incompatible with such a venture. 

But here they all were, proudly presenting what they had learned, proudly presenting themselves – and they all looked confident.

In fact, at one point in the program a group of girls who had studied fashion design modeled the clothing that they themselves had designed.  My impression was that the girls whose appearance diverged from widespread expectation walked across the stage with more confidence and spirit than the others.  Maybe they had achieved a certain poise and confidence with their own bodies.  I certainly hope so.

I thought that was interesting and really great. 

What can we do, as a community, to help women early on and throughout their lives understand that their value is determined more by their courage, kindness and character than by their dress size?

What can we do, as a community, so that no one, male or female, feels written off for having an appearance that doesn’t conform to whatever the expectation happens to be?  So that people don’t feel such a strong necessity to conform to that expectation that they harm themselves by not eating properly and other means of subtle and not-so-subtle self-destruction?

What can we do, in fact, to reconsider a set of expectations to which very few can actually conform?

We can turn to others for guidance, but the responsibility lies within us and among us.  Can we, overtly and behind the scenes, just for starters, place a little less emphasis on certain ideals of physical beauty?

Have you seen the actress Judy Dench, Dame Judy Dench, on film?  She might not win a beauty contest in America, but her three minutes in Shakespeare in Love were phenomenal.

Imagine if some acting teacher in London had said to her, decades ago, “sorry, sweetie.  You don’t have the look.”

And how dare hundreds of on-line geniuses write on and on in the most cruel way about their sense of the physical unattractiveness of one of the female Supreme Court justices, as was reported in a recent article about issues that men have with women?

The Greco-Roman traditions depicted their divinities as physically perfect - the gods full of muscles, the goddesses lithe and nubile.

The Torah explicitly prohibits making a physical image of God.  It happened in ancient Israel but there was a strong push against it.

Actually – this occurred to me this past week – the Torah takes a revolutionary step.  Instead of having us fashion gods in some idealized way, we declare the opposite - that we were created in the image of God.  Which means every human being, regardless of size or appearance, bears the image of God.  How amazing is that, to turn the pantheon on its head?  Forget the hall of marble statutes at the Met – WE are the pantheon.  Tall, short, all sizes.  How amazing is that, if only we could help each other to believe it.   

The Torah does not always present an inclusive approach.  In fact several weeks ago we read about the deliberate exclusion from the ancient sanctuary, the mishkan, of individuals who were blind or maimed.  It is quite possible that our ancestors imagined that only those who conformed to certain physical ideals would meet the requirements for entering the sanctuary.

What I find interesting, however, is that the very same Torah speaks of not taking advantage of the blind, of honoring the elderly.  There seems to be a disconnect here.  The people who don’t conform to certain ideals have to be treated nicely, but they don’t get to enter the special place. 

Can these be reconciled?  I don’t know, and maybe the inconsistency is realistic.  Most of us value certain ideals of what we identify as academic or physical perfection at the same time as we understand that we have to be more inclusive.

But honestly, we have to do better, not to widen the circle out of pity, but because, frankly, who are we to decide who is in and who is out? 

Today we read about how the entire people, all the tribes, were encamped around the portable sanctuary marching through the wilderness together.

Tomorrow morning, right here in the sanctuary, we will celebrate the holiday of Shavuot.  We will recreate the moment of revelation at Sinai and we will read the words about how kol ha’am – the entire people were present at that mountain when God was revealed.

The Torah is not a simple book – it reflects our highest aspirations, but also our limitations – it’s a mixed bag, quite honestly – and it’s our task to understand it, to elevate it, to bring the best of it and the best of us into the world – le’hagdil torah ul’ha’adira.

So every girl and boy gets to dance, every girl and boy gets to learn, and the women and men they grow up to be also get to dance and learn no matter how they look and no matter how they learn.

And as we figure out how to make that happen, we will know that we have truly received the Torah and we have truly revealed the Torah. 

Who are we to write each other off when each of us is part of the story?

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on May 26, 2012