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September 16, 2023
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Rosh Hashanah Day One
Unstuck
September 16, 2023 — 1 Tishrei 5784
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
On March 18, 1980, a young historian named Marty Sherwin, then age 43, signed a contract with Knopf publishing to write a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb. When Marty Sherwin signed the deal, both he and the publishing house expected that it would be a five-year project. He was to get paid $70,000, $35,000 up front, and the remainder five years later when the book was to have been completed.
But, famously, five years later, he had not completed the book. In fact, five years later, he had not even started writing it. Marty Sherwin was a meticulous researcher, and he found himself in a rabbit hole. He would spend twenty years doing research on Oppenheimer. His research came to 50,000 pages of original sources, including 8,000 pages of FBI records. There were more than 100 records of interviews.
So for twenty years, Marty Sherwin accumulated box after box of material. Boxes in his attic. Boxes in his basement. Boxes in his office.
There was just one thing he did not do. He did not start writing. The book that was to have been completed in five years was still not started twenty years later. At first it became a running joke in his family. Marty Sherwin’s son Alex recalled that when he was growing up, his father would say to him: “Alex, do your homework.” To which Alex would say: “Dad, write your book.”
But as the years went on, it got less funny. Sherwin told his wife I am going to die without ever writing this book. Put the epitaph on my tombstone: researched but did not write the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
In a word, Marty Sherwin was stuck. S-T-U-C-K. Stuck.
Most of us are not stuck in the way Marty Sherwin was stuck. But who among us has not been stuck in our own way?
We are stuck in a job we don’t love, but we can’t figure out how to get out of it and what to do next.
We are stuck with our children. Little kids, little problems. Bigger kids, bigger problems, and often it is hard to talk about what really matters, so we let stuff go.
We are stuck in our marriage, okay, not great.
We are stuck financially, still worrying about inflow and outflow.
We are stuck emotionally, walking around with entirely too much worry and too many dark clouds.
We are stuck spiritually, another Rosh Hashanah, and the nagging question, have we grown Jewishly?
Our neshamah, our soul, our morale, our inner life, are all too often stuck in neutral.
If a goal of our life is to thrive, to live our best life now, in too many areas of our life, we are not doing that. In too many areas, we are stuck.
How do we get unstuck? We can learn from Marty Sherwin’s story how we can get unstuck.
The first move is to get help. Very often we cannot solve our problems by ourselves. Self-reliance will not help us get unstuck. The Talmud, tractate Berakhot, tells the story of Rabbi Chiya bar Abba who was sick. Rabbi Yochanan went to visit him, and Rabbi Chiya recovered. In the next scene, Rabbi Yochanan, the visitor from the previous vignette, is sick himself. A third sage, Rabbi Chanina, visits Rabbi Yochanan, who recovered. The Talmud asks the question: Why did Rabbi Yochanan need a visitor? He had just helped Rabbi Chiya recover, Why couldn’t Rabbi Yochanan heal himself? The Talmud answers: ein chavush matir atzmoh mi’beit ha’asurim, a prisoner cannot release himself from prison.
Marty Sherwin could not release himself from prison. But he reached out to a friend named Kai Bird, himself a historian, to see if they might collaborate. Kai Bird immediately diagnosed the problem. He said that Marty Sherwin had what he called “biographer’s disease,” the inability to know when it was time to stop researching and start writing. They agreed to collaborate, and five years later their book was completed.
When we are stuck, our first question is: to whom can we go for help? Who is the friend, the counselor, the doctor, the therapist, the pastor, the loved one, who can help release us from our prison.
Which leads to the second move, get humble. One could have imagined Marty Sherwin saying hey, I have spent 20 years amassing 50,000 documents. I want the lion’s share of the credit. But he got humble. Not only did he invite Kai Bird to co-write the book. Kai Bird is listed as the first author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. That kind of humility is amazing. Yes, he was stuck, and the book would not have gotten written without Kai Bird. But still, to let the guy who worked on the book for five years get listed first, while the guy who worked on it for 25 years gets listed second, there is a lot we can learn from that kind of humility. President Harry Truman famously observed, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you do not care who gets the credit.”
How do we operationalize this kind of humility? Shira often says there are three sentences that we cannot say enough. I was wrong. I am sorry. I need help. She is particularly enthusiastic about my saying these three sentences. But these are three sentences that apply to all of us on Rosh Hashanah, and it would be a perfect use of our prayer and reflection to ask ourselves how do these three sentences apply to me now?
When we are stuck, getting humble—I was wrong, I am sorry, I need help—can help us get unstuck.
Which leads to the third step: get moving. Start somewhere. Just get started. When their collaboration began, Marty Sherwin sent Kai Bird box after box of material about Oppenheimer’s early life. Kai Bird read it, then started writing the biography of Oppenheimer’s early chapters. He sent it to Marty Sherwin who said, good draft. But you are missing some anecdotes. Sherwin added the anecdotes. And so their process was born. Kai Bird would plough through boxes of material, write a draft based on that material, and send it off to Marty Sherwin, who would add missing anecdotes.
When we are stuck, it does not matter where we start. It matters that we start. Starting somewhere, anywhere, is better than not starting.
Which leads to the fourth move: get momentum on your side. Once Kai Bird and Marty Sherwin started their process, Marty Sherwin finally, after twenty years, got untracked when it came to his own writing. He not only added anecdotes to Kai Bird’s drafts, he started writing his own first drafts of chapters, and with time, got into flow, and the chapters kept coming.
Start somewhere. Get moving. And then momentum will be ours.
As is of course well known, when their 721-page biography came out in 2005, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, which Marty Sherwin and Kai Bird shared.
There is a coda to the whole story which is just so important. It is not just Kai Bird who helped Marty Sherwin. In helping Marty Sherwin, Kai Bird also helped himself. Before their collaboration, Kai Bird was struggling. He was 48 years old. He had written a couple of histories that were modestly successful. But he was a historian without a PhD, so he couldn’t become a professor at a university. He was basically underachieving as a historian. As has been widely reported, his wife was the primary breadwinner of their family, and she was tiring of that role. She felt that he was stuck. He also felt that he was stuck. By getting Marty Sherwin unstuck, he also got himself unstuck.
Which is the deepest resonance of their collaboration. They got each other unstuck, and their friendship deepened. Not only did they write a Pulitzer-winning masterpiece together. Not only did their book inspire the movie. Not only has Kai Bird been in great demand this summer. But their friendship emerged stronger than ever. When Marty Sherwin passed away in the fall of 2021, the two collaborators were still close friends.
Which means that being stuck is an opportunity to grow ourselves and to deepen our friendship with the people who help us grow and who help themselves in the process.
If we are stuck, do not despair. Get help. Get humble. Get moving. Get momentum. Get unstuck. Maybe get a Pulitzer. Maybe inspire a major motion picture. But even if we don’t, we will be living a better life, because we will have gotten ourselves unstuck, and we will have deepened a relationship with somebody that will invest both of our lives with greater meaning. And aren’t win-win relationships what life is all about. Shana tova.