The following was shared by Rabbi Robert Nosanchuk, Senior Rabbi and Will & Jan Sukenik Chair in Rabbinics, at the July 5, Shabbat Service at Congregation Mishkan Or.
A doctor in a hospital learns her patient wants to be transferred to a different medical facility. She is surprised. The doctor felt good about the care given to her patient. She stops at his room and asks, “Murray, why do you want to be transferred? What is it, the food?” Murray replies, “The food is fine. I can’t kvetch.”
She asks Murray: “Is it the room? Your bed? You want another blanket?” Murray answers, “No problem with this space. My room here is beautiful. I can’t kvetch.” The doctor asks, “Well then, what about the staff?” Murray says: “They’re great. The nurse who checked me in… the people who brought me to my x-ray, the guy who just dropped off my lunch, they’re all polite, encouraging and kind. I really can’t kvetch.”
“So, if all that is good, and you are getting better. Why would you want to leave?” To this, Murray replies “Honestly the reason I asked to leave is… I can’t kvetch.”
I’m not entirely sure why I see myself in that joke. The only two clues I gave to signal we’d find something conspicuous in it were the patient’s name Murray and the ubiquitously-known Yiddish word for complaining to “kvetch.”
The logic of the story is that in the forest outside Murray’s panoramic hospital window, if a tree falls in that forest and he can’t kvetch about it, did it really fall?” It doesn’t matter whether his full name is Murray O’Flanagan and his Doctor is Allison Berkowitz. To kvetch or not to kvetch” is a predicament faced by people of every culture. The Yiddish just helps us listen to that story and laugh at the odds of the doctor hearing such a smart-aleck answer. That, my friends, is distinctly human and irrevocably irreverently and #tragically Jewish.
Earlier in my career, I’d joke with friends that title for my autobiography could be “The Day the Jews Ate Me Alive.” But here in this sanctuary, joining a clergy squad including such incredibly talented forces to be reckoned with as Kathy Sebo, Elle Muhlbaum, Vladimir Lapin, Roger Klein, Yael Dadoun and Joshua Caruso, along with Senior Rabbi Emeritus Rick Block and Cantor Laureate Sarah Sager, I have perspective. I see now that the kvetches of the Jewish people I’ve answered daily for more than three decades could turn out to be no more than a footnote in the story of my work.
Two years ago I couldn’t see that. I was too far from the border of light where we now stand. I didn’t see a next chapter where you all would dare to cross that border and dream as big as we are dreaming tonight. Yet buoyed by study and inquiry, I see an opportunity ahead for all of us in on this bimah to partner with you in fulfillment of the ancient ethical instruction of Judaism- to find 100 blessings to utter each day.
Can you imagine the joy we could take in being partners with you in finding and making such blessings come alive? I see us going a step further. I’d like our new congregation to be a place where we model learning from people with whom we agree and those with we disagree.
This seems to be a giant obstacle in our modern culture. We hold differing positions on numerous aspects of living out Jewish wisdom in the world. But we didn’t merge to stay sheltered from others. We did so in profound commitment to build civility, humanism and compassion into our encounters with one another in a world needing repair. In merging, we haven’t given up our individual values. We’ve just given up sitting in separate temples. We dream of becoming a Mishkan Or, a dwelling place of light, one that radiates open-heartedness and open-mindedness in such abundance that we have never allowed to fuel our path in the previous wilderness.
I’m speaking in such grand and bold terms because tonight is the first Shabbat in Cleveland’s newest Jewish congregation, that is simultaneously Cleveland’s oldest congregation. I come to this lectern to teach verses from our ancient Psalms which reverberate within my soul. The Psalms ask one of Judaism’s oldest and most continually new and relevant questions. From Psalm 34 this verse asks plaintively. Mi-ha’ish, he’chafetz chayim; Ohev yamim, lir’ot tov, which I interpret to mean: “Who is the one, who grabs meaning in this life, loves each of their days in order to delight in seeing goodness in them?”
Mi Ha-Ish? Who is the one? Psalm 34 extends this query in an outcry. The query asks to know: “Who… are you? Where… are you? Is there anyone who will see this day as one in which to fashion a world of goodness, lir’ot tov, a world of pure, unstinting unflinching optimism? I don’t know if that’s the best reading. I welcome others searching to offer an alternate idea.
But with relative certainty, I can apply this Psalms verse to the unification of our temples. The historic merger that created Congregation Mishkan Or was not based on shared kvetching about the enormity of the challenges the world holds over our heads. This was not about doom and gloom and all going down together. No, when Michael Frayman and Beth Dery, Todd Silverman and Michele Krantz heard a worthy proposal to consider partnership let alone merger, they did not enter into such discussions from a place of fear. They walked with vision, holding their noblest and most imaginative qualities and rose to the occasion. It would’ve been more convenient to set vision aside. It’s why many flagship institutions skip by opportunities to act on vision and innovation and operate out of a mentality of scarcity, later regretting a slow steep decline into obsolescence.
But that’s not our story! What awakened our spirits was the prominent thread of Jewish faith that tells us to make positive presupposition our guide. This helps us in encountering the motives, values, assets and liabilities, insights and invaluable revelations of depth of character between people. Beth and Michael, Michele and Todd, you and the exploration teams were fueled by belief in your people. With nearly two thousand families, you’ve begun to co-create a congregation with a bright outlook. I describe our outlook as bright because we have discovered within our communities already exist our ohavei yamim, people across the timeline of Jewish life who show themselves capable to love each day they are alive. You gathered here are our ohavei yamim. You’ve demonstrated by your presence your willingness go with us full-blast with us on compassion (rachamim) glory (tiferet) kindness (chesed) and hope (Tikvah). This is not just for us but for our people around the world and the citizens and inhabitants of Israel eager to be able to live our highest held ideals out safely.
Consider the inspiration we can draw from the Israelites wandering the wilderness. This Shabbat in our Torah, they could just begin to make out Canaan, and our ancestors had a choice to make. Last Shabbat our Torah portion told of how 12 scouts engaged in a reconnaissance mission. Only two of the twelve fulfilled said mission and expressed confidence. The other ten return to their encampment and do exactly what Murray did when he transferred to a new hospital – to kvetch!
Our scouts saw in Canaan the outline of Anakim living there…a strong, tall tribe of people, with some presence in the land God promised us. Ten of the twelve scouts return from Canaan to describe its contents through the lens of fear. The height and might of the Anakim intimidated them. So they enacted the oldest Jewish story in the book. They came. They saw. They went home. They kvetched.
According to Rabbi Moses Alshich, when Moses heard the reports of the spies he wasn’t disturbed by the kvetching. Why? Because he saw the giants’ presence in the land as a net plus for us. Moses modeled what is called positive presupposition. He felt the presence of giant people should be considered a good signal, and as evidence the land nurtured strength and heroism among those who dwell there. The mistake of the majority of those scouting the land was to see people they didn’t know and “other” them, filling in what they didn’t know with suspicion and malevolence.
Rabbi Stacy Nolish Blank, contemporary Israeli Reform rabbi who grew up at Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple, teaches “it is easier to believe that other people have bad intentions, especially if we encounter them in ways that evoke fear. But Pirke Avot 1:6 in rabbinic tradition admonishes us to overpower such instincts and instead to judge each person favorably.”
She is hinting that to “judge others favorably” is the ultimate positive presupposition. It’s not at as simple as speaking it into existence. The best way I’ve personally found to positively presuppose goodness emanating from a person I encounter is to try to clear my mind of everything I’ve heard described in sinister tone about a person. I’ll write down only facts about them and try to read aloud those facts without the assumption of a foreboding confrontation. Even if the facts describe someone with whom it will be difficult to contend, I assume what I’ll learn about them was meant for goodness. I’m not talking about naively looking at the world. If something specific can disabuse me of casting my eyes upon people in such an optimistic way, I’ll listen carefully to the contrasting insight.
But the scouts raise a ruckus born out of panic. They look into the land and see giants across its border, the Anakites. Then they confess before the whole community that “we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them” (Num. 13:33).
Mishkan Or Rabbi Elle Muhlbaum pointed out to me a midrash on this passage that indicates God forgave the Israelite scouts for their deprecating self-perception that they were grasshoppers to be easily squashed. But they went too far when claiming the Anakites also saw them as grasshoppers. God wouldn’t stand for this. In the midrash. God says: “How could you know what you look like in their eyes? How do you know I didn’t render you angels in their eyes? What are you doing to yourselves?”
I think we know all too well what the Israelites did to themselves. They got caught up in proximity to panic and blew it up into a kvetch-filled drama. The same pattern fails the rebels who join Korach in Parshat Korach this Shabbat. There is a divisive rebellion led by a cousin of Moses. Korach is punished swiftly for the way his fear manifested in setting himself apart, confronting his own people and “othering” anyone not interested in dramatically rebelling against Moses.
In the Women’s Torah Commentary, Rabbi Rachel Cowan z’l, explains how each of us gets “triggered by different emotions: fear, anger, anxiety, greed or doubt” and react poorly. Rabbi Cowan explains that the worst part is when “we lose sight of the whole and become caught up in our own inner dramas. Our needs eclipse the needs of others” She urges us to follow the path demonstrated in this part of Torah by Moses…and move as best we can from the narrow place of doubt, fear, anger, and jealousy to an expansive covenanted life in a community of mutual care and responsibility.” Do covenant, mutual care, responsibility, safety, wisdom and compassion speak to you? I commend these goals to us all tonight.
It is a night when history has its eyes on us. It’s our first true Sabbath together. We’ve unified. We’ve determined to share our destiny. But the path ahead needs more than greased wheels and more than a map to guide us. We need fuel if we are to arrive at our new community with the world redeemed rather only act based world now impinging on Jews sense of safety and self-determination.
We have a choice to make between fear and limitation and vision and opportunity. In Hebrew only one vowel separates, fear, Yir’ah, from vision, Yireh. One is the path that Korach follows in the Torah. He dies a rebel who barely represented his cause. The other path is the one treaded by our Hebrew prophets, visionaries who saw ahead of them a river of righteousness in which to wade.
One is the path of ten of the twelve scouts, who model a world in which the only way to communicate is to kvetch about what could’ve been or should’ve been. The other is the path of Miriam, a sterling prophetess who could celebrate her role in delivering every kind of sustenance to come to the singular prophet with whom God connected face to face, her brother Moses. It was Moses our teacher who stood (in Yiddish terms), punim el punim with the Holy One of Blessing.
If you ask me which choice to make, I think you know which one. I pray we can take turns in this congregation, realizing our dreams of the world we want to arise. Let’s go the way of the prophets. Shall we? I ask again, shall we? If you are with me, then consider what Isaiah says when God places a vision before him of a world needing his attention. Isaiah says: here I am. He says: send me. Here I am. Send me. That’s the way a person speaks who cherishes this day and the holiness it may yet bring, Let’s gets started following that path right now. Let’s get to it!
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