Downton Abbey and the Jewish Approach to Change

The fourth season of Downton Abbey just finished.  For those who may not know, Downton Abbey is a TV series about an upper class British family and their servants at the beginning of the 21^st century.

Spoiler alert:  I’m going to frame my comments with two scenes from the final episode of the season. 

There are two "grand dames" in the show – one British, played by Maggie Smith; one American, played by Shirley MacLaine.  They have a relationship that is icy at best.  Maggie Smith is all British restraint, subtle sarcasm, old money.  Shirley MacLaine’s character is brash American, overt hostility, nouveau riche.  In the final episode, they have kind of a showdown where Shirley MacLaine's character accuses Maggie Smith's of being a snob and says, in effect, you are clinging to the past and I am facing the future.

I want to talk about change.  The inevitability of change, our resistance to change, and the wisdom Judaism offers us regarding how to face change.

Of course, change is universal and changing circumstances impact all people, all countries, all cultures. 

Downton Abbey explores it in Great Britain.  Jumpa Lahiri’s novel, Lowlands, traces the arc of change and its impact on multiple generations in India. Khaled Hossein’s And the Mountain Echoed explores is in Afghanistan.

We need to learn how to handle change because it happens – to us personally and to our surroundings. 

Earlier this week, I participated in a conference sponsored by the Wexner Foundation, an organization which supported my rabbinical education and which brings together rabbis, cantors, Jewish educators, academics and communal workers across a full ideological spectrum. 

And it’s quite a full range.  I had dinner one night with a female renewal rabbi and a Lubavitch-trained rabbi serving a modern Orthodox congregation. 

The theme of the conference was response to change.

One thing which we identified is the depth of our resistance to change.  And it turns out, as you  might imagine, that our resistance often comes from a deeper place than we think.

Even if we identify something about ourselves that we WANT to change, it can be hard because of deep-seated assumptions that we have.

One example that was given: A person wants to learn to be a better listener.  So first he identifies the concrete things that get in the way.  He doesn’t make good eye contact or perhaps he instinctively looks toward his iphone while people are talking to him. 

And then, when he looks further, he realizes that it’s deeper.  He feels like he needs to solve people’s problems and is intimidated by that task.  He feels inadequate vis a vis the expectations of his parents.  And other things as well.

The resistance to change can come from feeling like we’re betraying something.  If we do this or that differently, we may feel that we are betraying the traditions of our family or our people.

Jews have a long history of needing to respond to changing circumstances, a long history of a range of creative responses.

I thought long and hard about how to encapsulate this, if there was a story, perhaps, that could demonstrate the point.

In very typical Jewish fashion, I would argue, there is no one story.  I actually came up with two that need to be understood in connection with one another.

First story.  When Jerusalem and the Holy Temple were being destroyed, Rabbi Yehoshua said to Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai:  The Temple is burning.  We can no longer offer the animal sacrifices that we used to offer in order to gain kappara, atonement.  How will gain kappara now? 

And Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai answered, we will do hesed, acts of kindness, for each other.  That will be our source of atonement, since God really wants chesed, not animal sacrifices. 

Second story, from the Talmud, Ta’anit 16a:

R. Adda b. Ahaba said: One who has sinned and confesses his sin but does not repent may be compared to a man holding a dead reptile in his hand, for although he may immerse himself in all the waters of the world his immersion is of no avail unto him; but if he throws it away from his hand then as soon as he immerses himself in forty se'ahs of water, immediately his immersion becomes effective,

Some background. Certain things according to Jewish law make you impure, and a dead reptile, a sheretz, is top of the list.  Immersion in the mivkeh, a certain body of water, is used to restore someone to purity.

If you are holding onto a sheretz, all the water in the world will not allow you to be restored.  The idea is that sometimes to achieve atonement, to move forward, we have to be willing to get rid of something that’s holding us back, even if it means throwing it away.

I think we need to consider these two stories in tandem with each other.  The first is about maintaining the core.  Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai wanted his colleagues to understand that even without the Temple, the world could be made better through our interpersonal actions.   The second story is about discarding the shell.  Whatever is obsolete, whatever may be holding us back or pulling us in an unhealthy direction – we have to let it go.

The Jewish approach to shifting realities in our world and in our own lives can be distilled as follows:  Maintain the core and, if necessary, learn to discard the shell.  Sometimes if you keep the shell, you lose the core.  Imagine if the ancient rabbis would have struggled to rebuild a Temple despite Roman objection and focused all of their energy on goats and sheep, instead of gradually crafting an approach to Judaism based primarily on prayer and good deeds.

Here are two examples of how this dynamic might work in our own time:

Perhaps we’re following the recent round of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, perhaps we’ve given up.  While in Israel this summer, I heard from two people involved, Tal Becker and MK Tzippi Livni. 

They shared a lot of details but what it boiled down to is this.  Each side needs to determine what’s essential that needs to be maintained and what’s unessential and needs to be let go.

So Palestinians who live with the keys to their homes near Haifa and Tel Aviv may need to let go of the realistic expectation that they will return to those homes.  They may need on some level to accept that their future lies in Ramallah, not Ramla.  At the same time, they can, and should, embrace the possibility of building a nation with all of the cultural, economic and spiritual opportunities that implies. 

Israelis who believe that both sides to the Jordan are our God-given right may need to let go of that as a concrete aspiration.  Perhaps truly being am hofshi b’artzeinu, truly being free in our land, will mean understanding the possibility that less land in this case may yield more freedom.

Both sides may well need to let go of the shell in order to strengthen the core.

For any of us who are involved with, or have thought about, raising children, whether we are the parents, aunts and uncles or grandparents, this dual imperative is alive and well.

Often times we are frustrated at the decisions our children and grandchildren make.  We would rather they choose this profession and that they choose that profession.  We would rather they live here and they end up living there.

It might be helpful, during our most frustrating moments, if we could take a step back to ask ourselves, what are the core issues?  What really matters to us in terms of the kind of people they are, in terms of the basic values that animate their lives?

And then, perhaps, the smaller choices will be easier to accept.  Preserving the core sometimes requires us to discard the shell. 

At the end of the last Downton Abbey episode of this season, the service staff was at an outing at the beach. 

The head butler, Mr. Carson, and the head of the maid staff, Mrs. Hughes, who have been flirting in a very proper, understated British way, are standing in the water near each other.  Mr. Carson rolls up his trousers and starts to wade in.  Mrs. Hughes tells him to come in further.  He asks, what if my trousers get wet?  She says, then we’ll dry them.  He asks, what if I fall in?  She replies, what if there’s an earthquake?  What if the sky falls?

And then she says, “You can always hold my hand if you need to feel steady.”  He says, “I don’t know how, but you managed to make that sound a little risqué.”  And she replies, “And if I did?”

And then she says, “We’re getting on, Mr. Carson, you and I.  We can afford to live a little.”  And the two of them wade, hand in hand, into the sea.

Changes internal and external are inevitable.  Though much often holds us back, the right balance of thought and courage can help us determine what to preserve and what to discard. 

If we’re fortunate, we will preserve the core of what really matters.  As for the rest, we may need to let go.  Or redraw the map.  Or just learn to live a little.