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June 3, 2023
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parashat Nasso
June 3, 2023 — 14 Sivan 5783
Strangers
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
I promise that in the fullness of time I will, one day, give a sermon that is not about the Boston Celtics. But today is not that day. We have to process Game 7. What happened on the court Monday night was not just a sad basketball story, if you happen to be a Celtics fan. It was also a confusing, perplexing human story.
How do we understand our team losing the first three games, including two at home, and then winning the next three games, including two on the road? How do we understand the Celtics’ stunning, last tenth of a second victory in Miami on Saturday night, and then their utter collapse at the Garden on Monday night? So hot, so cold. So dialed in, so not dialed in. So inspiring, so disappointing. Same team. Same players. Same coach. Same week. I had a friend who was at the game. OK, it’s Matt Hills, and he and Lisa were at the Garden instead of the Gann Chapel, which is why the team lost. But I digress. Matt observed that the teams’ body language told the story. The Miami Heat players were focused and intense. The Celtics were listless.
The intense team of Saturday night became the listless team on Monday night. I always think of this as the sudden stranger syndrome. What happens when somebody you think you know, somebody you know and love, starts acting so strangely that they become a stranger to you. You think who are you? I don’t quite recognize you.
It can happen to our children. Our young adult child goes off into the world and picks up a new idea, a new trend, a new fad, and they get really into it, and they are just different.
It can happen in a marriage. One spouse evolves in a whole new way, leaving the other spouse to wonder: who are you? What happened to the person I married?
It can happen with our friends and work colleagues. We get an email out of left field which causes us to scratch our head and wonder: where did that come from?
And it can happen when we look at ourselves in the mirror. When we are struggling with our own inner demons. When we are struggling with temptation. We feel something that we don’t want to feel, but we feel it. We can become strangers to ourselves. Who am I? Who am I becoming?
What is a helpful response to the sudden stranger syndrome?
As the Celtics kept shooting and missing three-point shots, television commentator Shaquille O’Neal observed, and I quote: “Don’t shoot another three. Shoot another three and I’m gonna punch you in your face.” When his fellow commentators laughed, Shaq said he wasn’t kidding: “No, seriously, This is a Game 7 closeout game. If my team is zero for 10 in the first quarter, I’m going to the bench to say, ‘Next person to shoot a three, I’m punching you in your face.” Anger is one move.
We can perhaps understand this reaction. Sometimes we want to say to the stranger: Stop it! Just stop it! Shape up! The grammar is an exclamation point. We are angry at the new conduct, and we let the other person, or ourself, know it.
There is only one problem. Anger seldom works. Anger seldom changes somebody’s conduct. Reproach and judgment seldom change somebody’s conduct.
Perhaps that is why the Torah opts for a different move. Leviticus 19:34 commands us: “you shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Lord am your God.” The Torah approaches strangers through the lens of vulnerability. What is going on in their life to cause this strange conduct? How can we love them through it? Literally that is the Torah’s command, to love the stranger. What would that look like for us when we or a loved one are the stranger?
Let me give you an example. There is a wonderful Talmud professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary named Eliezer Diamond. He once did a JTS podcast called What Now? The idea of the podcast was to ask JTS rabbis and professors what is the worst thing that ever happened to you personally? On a 1 to 10 scale, if 1 is losing your keys, and 10 is the Book of Job, what is your 10? What is your Book of Job? How does the Torah you teach at the Seminary help you personally in your most vulnerable hour?
Rabbi Diamond shared that the concept that was most helpful to him was what he called vidui, which literally means confession, and it is part of the Yom Kippur liturgy. But as he used the term, vidui means naming who you are in all of your layers and complexity. Owning who you are. Accepting who you are. Making peace with who you are, including your strengths and your brokenness. When he was about 40 years old, he was contending with two problems. He had a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder. And he had developed an addiction to alcohol. So he checked himself into a hospital for treatment of both conditions. It was the hardest chapter of his life. Here are his words:
While I was [in the hospital], I had a spiritual crisis. And the spiritual crisis was
that I felt fraudulent. Because I was a rabbi, and I was telling other people how they
should lead their lives, and giving them all kinds of great advice. And I didn’t know
how to live my own life. I felt like a fraud. And I didn’t want to go to the Jewish
chaplain, because I figured… it’s somebody I know….
So I decided to go to the Catholic chaplain. I called him up. I said, this is my story. I
need a spiritual guide. You’re it. He said, sure, come, talk to me. And I went. And I
poured my heart out to him. And he said, so I want you to know that you will be a better
rabbi now than you have ever been. Because you’ve looked at yourself. You’ve accepted
who you really are. You’ve accepted your brokenness. You’ve also accepted your
strengths. And so now when you talk to people, you’re going to be talking out of
that place of honesty and self-understanding. And also the part of you that’s broken.
And you will be able to help people in a way that will be far beyond what you’ve been
able to do until now.
When Rabbi Diamond became a stranger to himself—who am I, I am a fraud—he found a helpful response not in critique, not in anger. He found a helpful response in love and understanding. The Catholic chaplain helped Rabbi Diamond see both his own brokenness and his own strength. That takes love and understanding.
Can we see the vulnerability that often drives strange conduct and respond softly? What would it look like if, when faced with strange conduct, from ourselves or our loved ones, instead of anger, we tried to channel our own version of this compassionate Catholic chaplain, leading with softness and gentleness.
Here is the good news. A dose of gentleness, rather than anger, can be so powerful. A dose of gentleness can literally change the world for somebody else, and can change the world for yourself. Consider what happened to Rabbi Diamond.
At the time of his Book of Job moment, at the time of his struggles, Rabbi Diamond was so troubled by his challenges that he would not see anybody he knew, or anybody who might know somebody he knew. He could not see a rabbi. He could only see a Catholic chaplain, so nobody he knew would know what he was going through. But now he is so deeply healed that he shared his story with the world on a JTS podcast. The story that was once so closely guarded is now a click away for the entire universe. How did that happen? The chaplain’s gentleness changed Rabbi Diamond. He adds this coda:
[My chaplain] said, “Do you want to pray together?” [For a moment I thought to myself I am a Jew, and he’s a priest, like who are we praying to? What’s this going to look like?] [But] if you trust somebody, you trust somebody. So I said, yes. Let’s pray together. And what he actually did was, he put his hands on my head and he gave me what we as Jews would call a Mi Sheberakh. He blessed me. He said, “May the God who blessed Abraham, Isaac, Jacob…and he kept going up to and including Isaiah, “Bless this man. And give him health and strength and joy in his life.”
[T]he feeling of having him put his hands on my head and channeling God’s blessing, because that’s what it felt like, was one of the most powerful experiences that
I’ve ever had in my life. It was the kind of religious experience that I don’t have a lot… a profound tacticle experience where I could almost physically feel being blessed. Receiving God’s blessing.
Can we do that? When faced with the sudden stranger syndrome, can we resist the urge to anger and answer instead with gentleness? Can we channel our own version of the Catholic chaplain?
After all, the sudden stranger syndrome is real. Our loved ones can become strangers to us. We can become strangers to ourselves.
When that happens on the basketball court, as it did Monday night, there is nothing we can do about it, our team loses, and life goes on.
When that happens in life, though, we have agency. There are better options and worse options, and we get to choose. Anger does not heal. Berating does not heal. Judging does not heal. But love and listening can heal—turning that stranger back into a friend. Shabbat shalom.