With My Whole Broken Heart

Image by John Hain, Pixabay.

We are in relationship with one another.
We are in relationship whether I know you in the sense of knowing your name or not. We are in relationship because if you are reading this there is some community we share. Maybe we are a great deal closer than that.

I have come to often experience relationship as painful. 
Or at the very least, so complicated. 

The relationship between God and Moses as it is depicted in the Torah is intimate, personal, face-to-face as it were. Then here in this week’s parsha in a moment of deep pain for Moses, a moment when he is told he will not be going into the Land toward which he has been traveling for all these years – for a lifetime - we have “v’lo shama eli” . . . we have Moses saying, “And God wouldn’t listen” . . . wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t pay attention. Not for all of Moses’s pleading. 

And my heart breaks. 

Again. 

And I go sifting through the text for a remedy. 
Would God really refuse to listen to Moses? 
Refuse to make space for him? For his feelings?

In our Torah, in Deuteronomy, in this parasha, in chapter 6, in verse 5, there is a single word: L’vavcha. You may recognize right away that this section of the Torah has become our v’ahavta, our prayer about actively loving God that follows the shema. You may recognize it from the text on the scrolls inside our mezuzot. The usual form of this word would render it with one vet: livcha. Rashi teaches us that there are two vets – lamed-vet-vet-finalchaf – because we are meant to love God with both our yetzer hatov, our elevated inclination, and our yetzer hara, our base inclination. Our whole heart. 

I pause here because I wonder if a heart can be whole if it is not heard. 
I wonder if that second vet is actually a mirror. I wonder if that vet-vet is our heart and God’s heart reflecting each other. Seeing each other. Hearing each other.   

I know you are probably so over this pandemic.

If you are, I hear you. I read your posts. I see your memes. I listen to your announcements after services. I pay attention to the language you use in your surveys.

I know many of you are tired of zoom. I know many of you want to be in person. If you have spoken or written new psalms or memed or communicated - I have heard you. I see you. It’s hard and it’s exhausting and it’s not the life you imagined. Not the life you want. 

I am sad, frustrated, and angry about the pandemic, too. 

And I am also thankful - beyond words - that I do not have to leave my house. I am thankful I don’t have to navigate trying to eat with people. I am thankful I don’t have to deal with food I cannot eat and the social dynamic of kiddush or oneg. 

I am not the only person with chronic health issues for whom in-person gathering was a constant hard thing before the pandemic. I am not the only person with serious dietary needs and allergies that were ignored or repeatedly disregarded by places of worship as either unimportant or irrelevant before the pandemic. I am not the only person who had to adapt and adapt and adapt myself because the space and the people in them could not manage to adapt to me before the pandemic. 

I know I don’t really know how many others feel this way because like me, they are invisible. They are invisible to me, too.  

I was invisible before the pandemic.  

No matter how much I smiled and tried to kindly advocate for myself, requested, asked, offered. (Can I provide the cooking oil for everyone so things can be cooked in oil that I can safely eat? No? Oh.) I could either adapt to make everyone else comfortable and maybe get a little space for myself, or I could stay home. The message has been loud and clear. Before the pandemic. Mostly I adapted and showed up. I showed up smiling while in pain, I showed up with my core muscles shaking from exhaustion, I showed up with a promise to my spouse that if I thought I couldn’t get myself home safely – at 4 in the afternoon – I would call her. I showed up for the meeting and napped in the car for 30 minutes before driving safely home. A lot of the time I just . . . stayed home. 

And now?

I like gathering by zoom. 

Amazingly, I have been able to go to a Jewish educator’s conference, to join people during meal times without worrying about my allergies, to hang out and schmooze with people without the constant pressure of “aren’t you going to eat anything?”, to greet people without having to fend off face-kisses and handshakes. Yeah, we can’t have a Torah procession. I know that is a loss. For me that also means I don’t have to choose my seat based on where I’ll be too far away from an aisle for everyone to reach to shake my hand and - this is key - get offended when I won’t. (But I’m not dirty/sick/whatever. But I’d never get you sick. But we are like family.) Since we are all physically distanced, I don’t have to be the only one to distance myself or risk my health. It means I don’t have to balance my germ environments: How many people was I around yesterday? What’s reasonable today? Because I’m going to shul on Saturday, I can’t do the large group thing on Friday, and probably shouldn’t go to the theater on Thursday night. Now I just zoom into whatever I want whenever I want. 10 people, 110 people, it’s all good. Night? When driving is hard for me? I don’t have to drive. It hasn’t been winter yet, but my prednisone-damaged knees won’t have to risk the ice to get to a meeting, to go to an immigration justice action, or to get to work. 

For me, in some ways this pandemic has meant liberation. 

Not all ways. I don’t get to hug my beloved bonus grandchild who lives just 5 blocks from me. 

But in so many ways. 

And then I’m reminded - constantly - from very powerful spaces - that my liberation, that adapting to me, was never of interest. That this physical distance isn’t really for me at all. That it continues to be a burden, an unreasonable burden, on everyone else.

Can you imagine how it sounds to me, lands on me, to hear people complaining about - writing “psalms” lamenting about - having to see my messy bookshelf behind me in a zoom frame as another burden? Having to see pictures of my family behind my head as a negative thing? That my face on a zoom screen isn’t enough? That even in this way *I* am not enough? That taking the best care of myself that I can will always mean distance because no matter what we just can’t actually see all of us?

Or how it sounds that there will be an in-person safely distanced thing “for those who can” and others should stay home. Stay away. Or that “everyone” is excited for, hungry for being back in person in all ways? That this in-person will give “us” a “real” way to connect with one another. To . . . see one another. 

We could use different words if we meant something different. 
We could find ways to include those of us who will not gather in person for at least a year. Or even never again. If we wanted to.
It’s not only me. 

I am not the only one out here who is invisible in this way. 
And I am not the most invisible. 

I’m glad religious leaders are asking folks who are finding a few months of physical distance an impossible burden what they need and how we as a community can meet those needs. I am less glad to reflect that I have spent the past 9 years setting aside my own needs for the needs of those same people. Really longer. Really my whole existence in Jewish communal life has been oriented around needs that weren’t mine, but especially these most recent 9 years after leukemia, after almost dying, after a bone marrow transplant, after chronic graft vs host disease, after being immune compromised, after watching other BMT recipients die after becoming infected with something at a gathering - like a cold that became pneumonia or like the flu.  

I am one of the leaders in some spaces, but mostly I am an educator and a chaplain. I don’t get much say. 

At my shul I am just another congregant.

Since March, no one at my shul has asked me what I need or what would include me. They have had volunteers ask if I am lonely. I am not. They had volunteers ask if I’m doing “okay being isolated.” I have said, “yes.” They have asked when I would feel comfortable being together in-person again. With 10. With 25. With 100. 

I have not been “comfortable” or felt safe in-person for 9 years. I just joined in anyway. And now my risk/benefit balance is weighted more heavily on not worth it. 

Not 100. Not 25. Not 10. 
I will not gather in person even with 10. 
Everything echoes Biblical to me. 

I am not the only one. 
I have a ton of privilege. 
I am not the one most left out and left behind. 

God isn’t confined to our buildings. 
God has never been confined to our buildings. 
Today is Tisha B’Av. 
Our Temple is still destroyed. 
And still, we have Judaism. 
And still, we have a Jewish people. 
And still, we have Jews. 

No place for sacrifices? We have a Passover Seder. We have prayer.

Travel back in time and would we really choose rebuilding the Temple? Or would we choose - as our ancestors did - Yavneh? A future. A way forward. For all our lamenting, I do not believe it is actually the structure we are grieving. God forbid. I believe we grieve exile. 

Did exile ever feel like something we endure together?  

Amalek could only attack the weak, the orphans, the sick, the elderly by attacking the back if - because - we left our vulnerable in the back. If we found another way to think and to be, our vulnerable would be encircled within our communities. Seen. Known. Asked. 

Our “kiddush kit” ordering form could have a list letting us know what will be in the box, and prepared food could have a list of ingredients. We could be like the Israelites when Miriam had tzarat. We could wait until we know how to all go forward together and until then stay where we are. We could center our most vulnerable when we ask, genuinely, what going forward together could look like. We could celebrate the window into one another’s messy lives . . . the cats, the laundry, the messy bookshelf. We could celebrate who we are in our inside lives - isn’t it in our inside lives that we and God find one another . . . with our sleeves rolled up and schnapps on the table - and appreciate and feel honored that we get to see into each other’s homes. 

It’s nearly Elul when “the king is in the field” and not in some fancy sanctuary . . . and anyway, when we go to the palace we seek out the king who is our parent. We are going home. And we know that home, including the king’s home, is always messy - even if the throne room has been polished. 

We could remember that there is no such thing as “we all want.” There is “I want” and “what do you want?” There is “I hear that you want.” We could discern want from need. We could ask, “what do you need?” We could sit with not being able to meet each other’s needs all the time, and see those needs and each other anyway. 

We could choose to better see each other in so many ways. 

If you are tired of being isolated, tired of zoom, totally over physically distanced worship: I see you. I hear you. I get it. 
What would it take, what might it be like, if you who haven’t could also see me? 
For real.
And, of course, not just me. 
Because I am not the only one.

After sifting through the whole parsha and spending a lot of time with that one word I went right back to where I started.
And I noticed something.

Immediately after Moses says that God refused to hear him, he says that God sent him up to the summit to gaze about, to look on the Land, to see it, to imbue Joshua with courage and strength. And then he turns to instruct the people.

What happened in the white space between the refusal, the closing out, the not paying attention, the not noticing what was in Moses’s heart and sending him to the summit to gaze at the Land? To “look at it well?”

Maybe God’s heart picked up the reflection of Moses’s heart. 
Maybe God saw what Moses really did need. 
Maybe God even asked.

What if.

And maybe when we are charged to love God with our whole two-vet hearts, we are charged with remembering that we are created in God’s image and charged with having hearts that reflect the hearts of one another. 

If you were to ask me today what I need . . . sitting with where we are right now, with where I am in this particular day . . .
I don’t know. 
But I teach my students that when they don’t know what they need, or how they feel, there is space and time with me to figure it out. And I can and will wait for them to know. And I can and will listen for them to tell me when they do. 

It is the only way I know how to love with my whole broken heart.