May 25, 2024
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parashat Behar
The One Thing That Lasts Forever
May 25, 2024 — 17 Iyyar 5784
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
What, if anything, lasts forever? What is impervious to the ravages of time? What can we do today that will still be talked about a hundred years from now?
I have been thinking about these questions since May 13, which is the day that a great writer named Alice Munro died. Alice Munro won the Noble Prize in Literature in 2013. She was an absolute master of the short story genre. I had never read her work before her death, so I started reading a collection with the title Too Much Happiness, published in 2009. As you might imagine, the title Too Much Happiness is ironic. The characters in this collection do not have too much happiness.
One story is about a recently widowed woman named Nita. She had been married to a man twenty years older named Rich. They expected she would be the first to pass, because she was fighting cancer, and because he had gotten a recent clean bill of health from his doctor. But soon after the doctor’s appointment, he passed suddenly and unexpectedly while on the way to the hardware store.
It dawns on Nita that her life has changed not temporarily, but permanently. Rich is not coming back. The patterns they used to enjoy will not happen again. Who she used to be, a wife to Rich, she is no longer. And she faces this new reality with her own health challenges. She used to be a voracious reader. When Rich died, at first she thought I’ll just read. So she would sit with her books in her comfy chair. They kept her company. She liked the feel of them. But she realized she could not read them anymore. Her medical treatments had diminished her attention span. What she used to be able to do, she can do no longer. Is happiness when circumstances change permanently still possible?
Munro’s story captures a dilemma that many of us find ourselves in. The world is changing. Our world is changing. And we wonder is it changing temporarily. Or is it changing permanently? It is not always easy, or even possible, to know for sure. Think back to the worst of Covid. In the darkest days of the pandemic, we wondered whether we would we ever be able to gather in big, robust, happy gatherings without worry again. Now we know the answer is yes. But we didn’t necessarily know it at the time. There is a recency bias. The moment we are in is so powerful. Remember how we all felt in the early days of the pandemic.
Now we have a different set of questions. What will be with Israel? What will be with the American Jewish community? Is our golden age over, or will the spike of anti-Semitism pass like Covid 19 passed? Will our relationship with our alma mater ever be loving and uncomplicated again?
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. And I could not find the answers in the short stories of Alice Munro that I have read to date—though Nita’s story surfaced the question. But I did find a super helpful way to think about these questions in the commentary of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on our Torah portion this week, parshat Behar. Rabbi Sacks notes that our portion contains two great truths.
The first is that Israelite land ownership does not last forever:
The land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but
strangers resident with Me.
In other words, land ownership is not forever. What is true of land ownership is true of so much else in life. The house we live in, we won’t live in forever. Somebody else will live in it. The car we drive we won’t drive forever. Somebody else will drive it, or the car will be in the junk yard. The job we do we won’t do forever. Somebody else will do it. The transience of the human condition just is. What do we do about it?
Which leads us to the second truth: shmitah, release, or what we might translate as letting go. We let go of the use of our land every 7th year. We don’t reap and sow, we let it go. We let go of debts, we release debtors from what they owe, during the jubilee every 50th year.
Rabbi Sacks connects these two truths. The transience of the human condition is the problem. Nothing lasts forever. Releasing, letting go, is a beautiful response to this problem. We are measured in life not by what we accumulate; not by what we own; but by what we give away, by the difference we make. Rabbi Sacks puts it this way: “In life, ask not, “What can I gain?” but “What can I give?” Be a blessing to others and you will find that life has been a blessing to you.”
Which leads to the one and only thing in life that lasts forever: what we give away, what we release, what we let go of, for the sake of a greater good. This week our community saw a vivid example of this truth.
On May 20, 1929, our beloved Rosalie Whitehill was born, and this week, on May 20, 2024–95 years to the day–we celebrated her life at her shiva in the Gann Chapel. Rosalie’s life story embodies Behar’s message about what does not last, and the one thing that does last.
Rosalie was a force of nature, irrepressible and resilient, but not even Rosalie could live forever. After 94 years and 360 days, God called her soul.
Rosalie loved learning. She moved in her 80s to Lasalle because of the learning. She loved her classes. But learning and intellectual attainment do not last forever.
Rosalie loved exercise. She was proud to be the strongest 80-something and then 90-something at Lasalle. But physical strength does not last forever, and nobody in the history of the human race has been able to exercise their way to immortality.
Health does not last. Intellectual attainment does not last. Physical strength does not last. But there is one thing that does last. What we give away does last. In her 80s and 90s, Rosalie would travel to Israel to do service. She did this during the Second Intifada, when Americans were not traveling. She would fly by herself. Live by herself. Take care of herself. And volunteer teaching English. One year she tripped and fell and broke her arm. Somehow, she flew home. She had surgery. She recovered. The very next year, she got back on the plane to serve again. That story inspired Israelis for whom this 80-something and then 90-something widow was present at the time, and it inspires us for all time to ask what can I do for Israel?
She was passionate about civil rights. She personally partnered with African Americans, white and black together, to integrate dining hall after dining hall at Indiana University. That story mattered at the time because it resulted in the integration of a major university’s dining facilities. It matters for all time because she inspires all who knew her to ask: what can I do to promote justice and human dignity?
When she moved to Lasalle in her 80s, she inspired a Lasalle bus to go to a pride parade, and to fly a rainbow flag at Lasalle and put a rainbow flag on the Lasalle bus. That story mattered in its own time and for all time because it inspires all of us to ask: what can I do to love people for who they are?
There are some things we cannot control. We do not know whether the changes to Israel, to our country, to our relationships with the universities we used to love, are temporary or permanent. And we may not be able to control the outcome. If things we love change permanently, is there anything we can control?
Absolutely yes. There is a paradox at play. It is beautiful. It is powerful. And we are in total control of this paradox, regardless of what happens in the world at large. The love, energy, and goodness we give away is ours, our children’s, our children’s children, and our community’s, forever. Shabbat shalom.