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May 28, 2022
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parshat Bechukotai
May 28, 2022 — 27 Iyyar 5782
Hidden Story, Healing World
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
How do we think about the person whose views are not only different from our own, but antithetical to our own? What they stand for, we stand for the exact opposite. And yet we share a planet, we share a country, we share a community, perhaps we even share a family. They are not changing. We are not changing. They are here. We are here. How do we see this other human being on the other end of a contentious issue in a contentious time?
How do we think about, for example, somebody like Novak Djokovic?
Djokovic is indisputably one of the greatest tennis players of all time. He has won 20 Grand Slam titles, just one below Rafael Nadal for most ever. He has been ranked the number one tennis player in the world for a record 370 weeks. And he is the defending champion of the French Open, which is taking place now. If he wins the French Open again this year, he will tie Nadal for most Grand Slam titles ever.
But here is the rub. A recent ESPN Daily Podcast bears the evocative title Will Novak Djokovic Ever Be Beloved? This podcast points out that the other two tennis greats, Nadal and Roger Federer, are both beloved. People love Roger Federer. People love Rafael Nadal. They do not love Novak Djokovic, and this podcast asks the question: why not?
Though Djokovic was not beloved before the pandemic, he is especially not beloved now. Even those who don’t follow tennis were caught up in the drama at the Australian Open where Djokovic, unvaccinated, misled Australian authorities about his Covid status. There were what he called “mistakes” on his application for a visa, like swearing that he had not traveled in the 14 days before coming to Australia, when in fact he had traveled to Spain within that period, which he neglected to tell the authorities. He conducted an interview and photoshoot with a French journalist while Covid positive, unmasked, without telling her. His visa was revoked, and he was kicked out of the country for being unvaccinated.
Many people, the ESPN podcast observes, put him in a box as the anti-vaxxer. Since the stakes are so high, since so many have died and suffered from Covid, many understandably have no use for a prominent athlete who refuses to get vaccinated, and whose refusal might motivate others to refuse to get vaccinated, all of which causes more illness, death and suffering. I confess that before I heard the podcast, that it what I thought about Djokovic. To channel the very expressive and effective diss of my late Bubbe, Sarah Gardenswartz, Feh! Feh on Djokovic! Feh on Djokovic the anti-vaxxer. He is not beloved. He does not deserve to be beloved. I would root for anybody but Djokovic, and I would hope that he never wins another Grand Slam.
That is what I thought, at least, before I heard the ESPN podcast, which changed my thinking, and which made me think of a Jewish source of wisdom, and an American source of wisdom, that are super helpful when we put them together, like an excellent wine and cheese pairing, where each brings out the best in the other.
In Pirkei Avot a sage named Yehoshua Ben Perachya teaches hevei dan et kol hadam lchaf zechut, judge every person as charitably as you can. See every person in the most favorable light.
And Brene Brown, the popular Ted Talk speaker, teaches that every person is carrying around some ordeal, some nightmare, some brokenness, that the rest of the world knows nothing about. It is a hidden story. To the rest of the world, we present a façade. I’m good. I’m great. Everything is just fine. But behind the façade is the hidden story of brokenness that the rest of the world knows nothing about. And, very often, it is this hidden story of brokenness that motivates and shapes and creates the person the rest of the world sees, in ways that are never acknowledged.
If we put these two together, Yehoshua Ben Perachya, and Brene Brown, we get a perfect wine and cheese pairing. See every person as charitably as you can by being open to, curious about, their hidden back story of pain that makes them who they are.
Which brings me back to the ESPD Daily podcast on Novak Djokovic which highlights two facts about his back story that can at least explain—not justify, but explain—where he is coming from in his refusal to get a vaccine.
The first has to do with his physical health. Djokovic was born in 1987. His tennis career has two totally different chapters. In his late teens and early 20s, until he was 23, he showed sparks of promise, but he could not win any Grand Slam titles because he always battled physical maladies. His back hurt. He was out of breath. He would feel a sudden weakness. He would play brilliantly only to succumb to illness or weakness.
One day he is playing on Serbian national tv, he is in his early 20s, and the pattern recurs. Brilliant, sparkling play, and then he collapses, physically diminished. The broadcaster announces that Djokovic must be having asthma. A Serbian doctor is watching tv carefully, and he tells his wife. That is not asthma. This doctor meets Djokovic for lunch, and the doctor tells him: I think I can cure you. Let me do an experiment with you right here. Give me your hand. I am going to push down on your hand. And you resist me. The doctor pushes down, Djokovic resists, no problem. Then the doctor gives Djokovic a slice of bread. Place this bread on your stomach. Don’t eat it. Just place it on your stomach, and let’s repeat the experiment. This time, when the doctor pushes down on Djokovic’s hand, the tennis player is unable to resist. He is demonstrably weaker.
The doctor says: the issue is your diet. If you go gluten free, you will feel better.
That was in 2010. Djokovic went gluten free and then became strictly vegan. Both moves are apparently counter cultural in his native Serbia. According to the podcast, Serbians eat a lot of bread and a lot of meat. But his new diet enabled him to feel healthy for the first time in his life. Djokovic won zero Grand Slams while eating meat and bread. He has won twenty Grand Slams since not eating meat and bread.
His own personal experience testifies that “western medicine,” all the doctors who tried and failed to treat him before he changed his diet, are not always right. But that is only one hidden story, and not the most important one.
In the Serbia of Djokovic’s childhood, during the Kosovo War, Serbia was bombed by NATO airstrikes from March 24 through June 10, 1999. Djokovic was 12 at the time. During this harrowing time, Serbians sought shelter in underground bunkers. The ESPN reporter goes with Djokovic back to this bunker, to the very bunker that 12-year old Djokovic had spent time in with his family. They open the door that leads down to the bunker, and into the bunker they go, and the ESPN reporter, in real time, says it is dark, moldy, smelly, no fresh air, and no light. There was a stationary bicycle, the same one that was there in 1999, that if you ride it, it generates enough electricity to produce some light in the shelter. Djokovic has distinct memories of family members riding this bicycle to generate light. And then Djokovic tells the reporter, I was 12, I loved playing tennis, and I had a dedicated coach. This is what I used to do: After NATO bombed us, my coach and I would go to wherever they had just bombed, and we would play tennis right there, volleying over the craters and the rubble. We felt that if they had just bombed that location, they wouldn’t bomb it again. That was the safest place to play tennis.
In Djokovic’s mind, the west equaled the NATO bombing campaign that sent his family into the dark bunker, and that sent him and his coach playing tennis amidst the ruins. He was 12. He did not get the geopolitics of it all. That he was living under the reign of the tyrant Milosovic. All he knew is that the west was bombing him and his country.
Roll the film forward to the pandemic. There is this great and life-saving vaccine that western medicine has come up with.
But to Djokovic, western medicine missed his treatment for the first 23 years of his life. For Djokovic, the west bombed his country.
That is his hidden story of ordeal that shaped his resistance to the western vaccine.
His hidden story of pain does not make him right on the merits. He is wrong on the merits. It does not change the fundamental fact that getting vaccinated and boosted is conducive to life and health; and that rejecting the vaccine endangers your own health and the broader health of the society in which you live.
But if we appreciate his hidden story, at least we can say this much. He is not a bad person for not getting the vaccine. He is a human being who spent formative months in a dark bunker only to emerge after the bombs fell to play tennis amidst the ruins. That leaves scars. We can disagree on the merits without impugning his decency as a human being.
If we could not hate him as a human being, but understand the place from which he comes, the brokenness that he carries, perhaps that might create an opening, however slight, for dialogue. If our goal is to persuade him to get vaccinated, surely we have a better chance if we empathize with him than if we hate him. You get more with honey than with vinegar. And you get more with the honey of curiosity and genuine interest than with the vinegar of judgment and critique.
Saying feh ends the conversation and ends the relationship. Saying tell me more opens up a conversation and perhaps opens up a world with less bile and more understanding.
That would be an outcome we could all cheer for. Shabbat shalom.