The Who

These past months have given us ample opportunity to consider and re-think our lives.  Hopefully, we have reflected on the meaning of our relationships, our work, our spiritual selves and perhaps we have set new objectives and priorities in our lives as a result of this thoughtful deliberation.  If this has happened, or if we are still in mid-process of reassessing our priorities, we have used this time of confinement wisely.  After all, what is pain, if not an opportunity to change and grow?

Shlomo Carlebach reminded us that there are two essential questions that we can ask of one another.  The first is “what” and the second is “who.”  What is the difference between the two questions?

When we ask, “What are you?” the answer is usually something like “I am a nurse.”  Or “I am a businessperson.”  “I work for the labor department.”  Or “I am Jewish.”  “I am Methodist.”  These responses elicit a positive or negative reaction.  If we approve of how they define themselves we let them know in spoken or nonverbal ways – either with a look of disapproval or word of positive engagement.  

The “what” question does not get to the heart of the identity of the other.  It only wants to categorize the person; put a label on them.  Once we have successfully labeled them we know where to put them on the hierarchy of importance.  This person is good because they have such-and-such skills.  This person has little value as anyone could do what they do.

When we want to know the “who” of our brother or sister, it means we want to understand them; what do they value, what are their needs, soul to soul.  Once we connect to the “who” of a person we can build strong, deep and healthy relationships.  

“What” does not build.  It does not heal the wounded.  It does not give tzedaka.  Only the “who” does these things.  The “who” repairs” hurt feelings; it feeds the hungry, it visits the sick, it nourishes relationships.

An observation from a hitchhiker: When you have a short distance to travel and need a ride people generally do not want to give you a ride.  But a driver who passed by a hitchhiker long before and did not bother to stop has a nagging conscience that they could have helped someone but did not.  So, they are the only likely person to pick up the lone traveler.  Their guilt is assuaged.

Each day we have the opportunity to see others as a “what” (a means to fulfill our needs) or a “who” which enables us to see the deepest levels of another human being and thus do mitzvahs as we see others for who they really are.  This is Torah.  When you read and learn Torah you understand the profound way in which we are called to see other people.  Do not miss the opportunity every person represents.

I pray that this time of the pandemic has not only made it possible for us to reassess our values but readjust the way in which we see everyone else as a “who.”  If so, this period of solitude has been well worth it.

A Favor

Few are the tales that escaped the flames of the camps.  That is because the remnants of once-vast Jewish community were so few.  It is also because the survivors that emerged tried desperately to forget.  Those that attempted to relegate it to he distant past were haunted by unrelenting demons of the night.  Remembering was too difficult; forgetting too painful.

            One of the handful of stories that came to us was of Rabbi Kalonimus Kalman, who became rebbe of the Warsaw ghetto.  Many are the legends that surround the man...but they are the stuff of myth.  The Rebbe took children under his gentle arms and taught them while the unspeakable erupted all about them.  Daily he took the little ones and taught them Holy Torah while outside the walls the Torah was desecrated; menschlichkeit where there was inhumanity;  holiness in the depths of depravity.  An angelic grace hovered over the study hall, or so they said.

            After years of sifting through the ashes, one lone deformed survivor was found.  Reluctant to confront the ghosts of the past, he finally rested his old, frail body and began to tell a fragment of a Shabbes tale with the Rebbe: 

“We danced, hundreds and maybe thousands of children, and the Master was singing a song to greet the holy angel, and at the mean he would teach between every course. ‘Kinderlach, der grosser zach in de velt iz tuen emetzen a favor.  The greatest thing in the world in simply to do someone a favor’.”

            The Rebbe --along with all his holy students -- were murdered at Treblinka.  Five years in Auschwitz this lone, poor man saw what no human being should see, what no creation of G-d should endure.  And, still, throughout all the torments, despite all the depravity, when he wanted nothing else than to just die, the words of the Rebbe came back to him- precisely when he wanted give up, “The greatest thing in the world in simply to do someone a favor.” 

            From his perch resting his battered, crippled body, his eyes lifted to heaven with a radiance and he said, “Do you know how many favors you can do in Auschwitz?

            Perhaps we should all become disciples of Rabbi Kalonimus Kalman.  Maybe on the edge of this year we could bring the heaven of the Rebbe into our own lives.  - from the tales of Shlomo Carlebach