October 16, 2021
Author(s): Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger,
October 16, 2021 – 10 Cheshvan 5782
Bananas
with Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
It was 5:30 AM. Solomon and I were sitting in our usual seats on the boat behind the captain’s chair, watching the shores of Plymouth speed away as we headed towards our favorite fishing spot. After chatting with the captain for a while, Solomon decided it was time for breakfast. He walked over to our bags and pulled out a banana.
“Is that a banana?!” the captain asked, turning white with what seemed like shock.
“Yes,” said Solomon, “this is a banana. Why do you ask?”
“Do you need that banana?”
“I was going to eat it for breakfast, but…I guess I don’t need the banana.”
“Man, I’m sorry, but I can’t let you have a banana on board.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Um…what would you like me to do with the banana? I don’t feel good just throwing it overboard.”
“You can’t throw it overboard! We have to take it back.” The captain shifts the gears and starts turning the boat.
“We have to go back for a banana?”
“Yes.” Solomon and I look at each other in total confusion.
The captain pulls out his phone and starts a call: “We’re coming back…we’ve got a banana on board….I know, they didn’t know…we’re going to have to leave it on the dock… can you take care of it?”
Twenty minutes later, we’re heading back out to open water, watching the lonely banana on the dock recede into the distance, not quite believing what’s just happened.
“What’s the deal with bananas?” we asked the captain, “why the worry about having bananas on board…I mean, I know they can sometimes smell a bit, but is that why you wanted to take it back?”
The captain tells us you just don’t bring bananas on fishing boats. “Google it,” he says.
It turns out that in the 1700s, when banana transit was first becoming a thing, rickety wooden boats were racing across the oceans to deliver bananas before they rotted. It was a dangerous journey. Boats would get damaged and sink and leave behind only a trail of floating bananas in the water to mark where the boat had been. If sailors managed to keep the boat afloat, they would find that their food stores would rot more quickly on the journey due to the ethylene gas released by the bananas in the hold. And if sailors tried to fish to supplement their food stores, even those sailors who were good fisherman on other boats found that it was difficult to catch any fish on a banana transport. Bananas on board meant you were more likely to sink, more likely to starve, and more likely to have extreme bad luck. Thus, the banana ban.
But if you bring a banana for breakfast on a fishing boat today, you’re not speeding to a foreign destination, you’re not worried about other produce spoiling, and you’re not stuck going too fast to catch fish, so why do so many ship captains still refuse to allow bananas on board?
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Elizabeth Kolbert recently wrote a fascinating article in the New Yorker titled “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds.” As part of the article, Kolbert writes about some psychological studies performed at Stanford in the 70s. For example, in one study, participants were given an assessment and then told either that they scored higher or lower than the average participant. Then, these same participants were told that the purpose of the experiment wasn’t to assess their score, (in fact, they were told that their scores were totally made up,) but to assess how they felt they had scored. Even though the participants knew their scores were totally fake, researchers found that participants who were told they scored highly felt they did better than participants who were told they scored poorly. As the researchers noted, “[even after the evidence] for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs.”
We do this too.
How many of us remember the ways that other children would taunt us, would make fun of us, and the ways that we struggled as a child? How many of us still think of ourselves as that kid who has trouble making friends or as the child who isn’t good at math or science because we struggled in the 7th grade?
Or we have a bad relationship and instead of assessing the situation logically, thinking about the reasons why the relationship failed and what we could do differently next time, we start to believe the hateful things our former partner said about us, we start to believe that we are bad at relationships and write off the possibility that we could have a different type of relationship in the future.
In order to make a change, we have to be able to change our minds. We must be willing to evaluate our experience through open eyes; to interrogate our assumptions. And, more than anything, we must be willing to make different choices in order to create a different reality.
I think that’s why God’s first instruction to Abram is to go on a journey. God picks him and knows he is going to be the one to bring Judaism into the world, the partner God has sought out for so long. But God also knows that Abram cannot become this partner if he is doing all the things he used to do in the ways he used to do them. So God gives Abram a paradoxical instruction. Lech Lecha—g towards yourself. Get closer to your essential truth, come into your heart, be yourself. And, at the same time, God says go away from your land, your birthplace, your father’s home—go to a land that I will show you. The way you can get clear about what is true is by opening yourself to change—by changing your perspective, by changing your habits, by changing your surroundings.
It’s not only Abram who needs this reminder. Each one of us could use a lech lecha reminder. Where are the places where we are being untrue to ourselves? What are the actions, the patterns, the paradigms that keep us from seeing the truth about ourselves? How can we gain the perspective to make meaningful change in our life that will allow us to be God’s true covenantal partners in this world?
Let me tell you about someone I love. Lily Werthan was ostensibly living the dream. She graduated from college, travelled through South America, earned her master’s degree in Education, and then landed a great job teaching at a local school. She was earning a good living, had a good apartment in Colorado with friends, and was following the career path she had chosen. But Lily wasn’t happy. She found herself anxious and depleted at the end of every workday. She felt unfulfilled even though by every external marker, she had found success.
So, Lily decided to do something radical. She left her job as a teacher, without a real plan for how she would move forward and decided to take some time to follow her heart. As part of this process, she decided to interview people she admired and to ask them about their life stories, about what motivated them, and about the wisdom they needed to thrive. And then she turned that learning into a podcast called Open Explorations. I heard the premiere of this podcast this last week and was blown away.
Lily is my cousin. I’ve known her all her life. And I’ve always thought she was amazing, but never more so than when I heard this podcast premiere. It was so clear that she had found her calling. So clear that she is made for the podcast world—she asks brilliant questions and has this incredible presence on the air. And more than anything, she is happy. Lily transformed her life by putting aside what she had always done, by opening herself to new possibilities, and by taking a leap of faith.
In our lives, we have options. We can live stunted by the ghosts of our pasts, constantly shlepping bananas back to the dock. Or, we can do what Abraham did. Lech Lecha. We can find our core by going in new directions.