I love
the way my friend Rachael Welt sees the world, and the way she tells stories.
We learn
together once a week, and our conversations always weave our Torah learning
through the text of our life stories. Today’s stories illustrate one of my
favorite principles.
"This is what the
Holy One said to Israel: My children, what do I seek from you? I seek no more
than that you love one another and honor one another; and that you have awe and
reverence for one another." -- Tanna d'Bei Eliyahu Rabba, 26:6
Rachael
recounts a recent trip to the Mahane Yehuda shuk.
“I have
never seen at one time so many people using walkers, walking on crutches,
walking with canes,” she said. “And the shuk was packed with people. And of
course, walking behind all these people with walkers and so on made it very
slow going. Still, not one person started screaming ‘Why are you moving so
slowly? Why did you come to the shuk? Don’t you know you could fall down? Why
don’t you move out of the way?’
“This is
the shuk I’m talking about, where people regularly yell and scream at each
other – and not one person rushed these people. Not even the shuk workers with
the heavy pallets they carry everywhere. Those guys never have any patience!
But that day, they did. Everyone waited patiently for the old and infirm to
make their way through the shuk. It was amazing!”
Rachael’s
face glows when she tells stories about the good in her fellow humans.
She tells
another “only in Israel” story.
“I was
in Jerusalem, getting the car repaired. I was feeling a little faint, because I
hadn’t eaten enough before leaving the house; so I decided to go to a nearby
supermarket. As I started in the door, the guard, a man in his sixties, put up
a hand and stopped me. ‘We don’t open until ten,’ he said to me. I checked my
watch and saw there would be a bit of a wait. And then I saw the line of people
with shopping carts. I’m thinking, I don’t need a big shopping cart. I only
need a few items.” Nonetheless, she joined the line, prepared to wait with
everyone else until the guard allowed entry.
“People
started to say to the guard, ‘Nu? It’s ten minutes to ten. Let us in already!
It’s five minutes till. C’mon, let us in! See my watch? Let us in!’ But the
guard had his orders, and he was used to this. He held his ground. ‘Ten
o’clock,’ he insisted calmly.
“This
one guy ahead of me, but still pretty far back in the line, decided he’d had
enough. He pulled out of the line, pushed to the front, and tried to get by the
guard. The guard stopped him, and the guy started yelling at him.
“The
guard, still calm, said to the guy, ‘You know what? You’re a zvoov,’ a
fly. And the guy yells at him, really angry now, ‘And you’re a juke!’ a
cockroach.”
As
Rachael tells the story, I am laughing a little, because I am convinced that
these conversations, with this much invective, could never happen in America.
People might yell at each other, but it is never this colorful. The two men
went at this for several seconds, the guard speaking calmly, the enraged
customer getting so upset, and louder and louder, to the point that Rachael was
praying he didn’t have a knife. She could just see herself being witness to a
terrible incident.
“The man
kept yelling, and saying he was going to complain about the guard, and not only
complain about him, he was going to write a letter, and he went on and on,
getting more and more excited.
"The
guard told him, without raising his voice, to step back. The man stepped back
only a step or two. ‘Only this far,’ he said. ‘No further. I’m staying right
here.’
“Suddenly,
the guard walked over to the man, and stuck out his hand, and the other fellow
took it. ‘Please forgive me, my friend. It will all be okay. I ask
forgiveness.’ And the other guy calmed down. A moment later, at ten o’clock on
the dot, the guard allowed the stream of people with their carts into the
store.
“But
that’s not the end of the story,” says Rachael, with her patented Rachael
smile.
“Later,
as I was going through the aisles, the guy came up to me. ‘You see?’ he said,
‘He apologized to me. He admitted he was wrong, and I was right.’ I said to
him, ‘I think you were both a little bit wrong, and a little bit right.’ (After
all, calling someone a fly was not a nice thing to do, and certainly calling
someone a cockroach and threatening him is wrong.) ‘The main thing is, you made
peace.’ I don’t think he really understood me, because he really thought he was
right and the guard was wrong. But I saw that the guard kept calm, offered his
hand, and the man took it! And the guard asked for forgiveness. What an amazing
People!”
I
believe that Hashem teaches us to see Him as a Parent so that we can know how
to behave toward each other. As a mother, nothing makes me more distressed –
dare I say enraged? – than when my kids are unkind to each other. Conversely,
nothing causes me to feel more overjoyed and elated than when they get along
and speak well of each other.
Rachael
and I learned a lot today. But I am convinced that the holiest moments of our
learning were when Rachael spoke aloud words of validation about the behavior
of God’s children toward one another. If our learning together doesn’t bring
Mashiach closer by itself, surely the stories of Jews rising above their
pettiness to respect one another inches the Geula just a bit closer.
15 Iyar 2018.
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