Transforming Loneliness into Opportunities for Community (Rosh Hashanah 5785/2024)

Posted on October 11, 2024

 

Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon 2024

Transforming Loneliness into Opportunities for Community

Rabbi Lisa Eiduson

Temple Shir Tikva   Wayland MA

 

The English writer and scholar Noreena Hertz reflects on her childhood:

“‘My throat hurts. It’s burning. It really hurts. I can’t go to school.’

It is a year of constant sore throats, streaming noses, bouts of the flu.

I was in primary school. The year I felt the most isolated, excluded, alone. Every day I would sit on my own, watching the other kids from across the playground as they skipped and played, hoping they would ask me to join them. They never did.

Hertz continued: It may seem a stretch to connect how lonely I felt back then with my swollen glands and sandpapery throat. But it turns out that loneliness has corporeal manifestations. And a lonely body is not a healthy one.” [1]

This story, in Hertz’s book The Lonely Century (2021) could belong to any one of us. We are a indeed a lonely country living in a lonely century. Tonight, on this eve of the New Year, in this familiar place, surrounded by familiar people, lonely might even describe you.

Whether it is a headache, a stomachache, a sore throat or a stiff neck, loneliness is not just in our minds. It finds its way into our bodies – down to the cellular level. Just last year, the U.S. Surgeon General called it a public health emergency: “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” And COVID19 is not entirely to blame.

The statistics are easy to find. Over 60% of adults in the United States feel lonely, with the loneliest ages 18-22. The number of people who live alone has increased by 30% in the last few decades. While Massachusetts fares well at the ninth least lonely state in the country, Maine and Vermont come in at the first and second loneliest states. And New Hampshire is not far behind at number 9. Social isolation is as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.[2]

Over the past several decades, back decks have replaced front porches, our homes are larger, but our neighborhoods are shrinking. Americans spend 87% of our time indoors, plus an additional 6% alone in a car.[3] The business lunch has all but disappeared. Some of us communicate with Alexa and Suri more than we talk to our partners or housemates. Coffee shops are built with more drive-through windows and pick-up stations but fewer tables and chairs.

Kerry Cronin, a Boston College professor who teaches personal and spiritual development, noticed how apprehensive students were to interact with one another face to face. In her class on relationships, students asked how to invite someone out on a date. Realizing that society is evidently losing this social script, she offered students extra credit if they asked someone on a date. The instructions were strict, with credit only given for an in-person date that was not at a movie theatre, did not involve alcohol, and was not physical beyond a friendly hug. The two people had to look at one another and have a conversation (Hertz, p. 97).

We have become a lonely society of disconnected people. Whether we are texting someone in the next room, staring at a screen being interviewed through an algorithmic assessment process rather than by a human being, or sitting on the couch next to a companion robot watching TV, it is shocking just how far we have departed from the communities of our childhoods.

The writer Claire Ronan said: “If loneliness was a color it would have to be a dark grey because that is what it feels like when it hits you right in the stomach; it is a horrible, gut-wrenching feeling… no one knows how you feel inside.”[4]

The Hebrew word for loneliness, badad, is used twice in the Hebrew Scriptures to describe individuals, and both times, in the negative. In Genesis, Adam, the first human, is told by God that he should not live alone. And then in Exodus, Moses is chastised by his father-in-law, Jethro, for doing the work of leadership by himself, without help. From ancient times until today, the implication is that humans need to be in company with others – not alone.

And, as we look back over the past year, we have added a new type of loneliness to our identity as Jews. It is a collective, post-October 7 loneliness that one year later still feels as imminent as it did when we woke up on that morning and realized that life in the State of Israel had changed forever. It is a shared Jewish loneliness that has left us feeling misunderstood as a people, alone as a community. Whether we live in North America, in Israel or elsewhere; child or adult, religiously observant, less so, or not at all – even if we have never stepped onto Israeli soil – Jews worldwide feel isolated, let down by our neighbors and allies, disappointed in diplomacy, despondent in the face of antisemitism. Ashamed. Unseen.

Michael Oren writes: “Antisemitism stems on the Left from anti-racism, anti-meritocracy, and intersectionality; and on the Right, from claims of Jewish power and conspiracy. Either way, the result is Jewish isolation. The results are campuses that Jewish students worked slavishly to get accepted to only to find themselves unwelcome, and social media in which Jewish memes intermingle with those of adorable kittens.”[5]

At the level of Jewish peoplehood, this existential loneliness is profound because it is directed at us all, with hate-speech and hate-crimes, threats of violence. The reality today is that we are being shunned by people who just yesterday we thought were our friends.

When we look closely at Jewish history, we see that what we feel is not new at all. We are living out the declaration made by the non-Jewish prophet Balaam in the Biblical Book of Numbers where he refers to the Jews as עָם֙ לְבָדָ֣ד יִשְׁכֹּ֔ן “a people that dwells apart.” Or even earlier, when Abraham, the first Jew, is called “Ivri” – meaning, “one from the other side.” From the very beginning of our story, Jews have been the people who are different from the rest – and not just demographically as a people from Mesopotamia, the other side of the Jordan River — but as a qualitatively different community with a distinct message.

Abraham was a monotheist in a polytheistic world. His innovation was in his vision of a single God who demanded not just obedience, like other ancient civilizations, but also morality. This divine demand was not only difficult, but different; it required radical change and courage. The Midrash comments: “Abraham was on one side, and the world was on the other.” Ethical Monotheism, beginning more than 3000 years ago, has been a lonely mission; one that calls us to be a people that dwells apart.

Dara Horn, the author of People Love Dead Jews relates an incident about what it means to be a people that dwells apart. It took place in Amsterdam at the restored Anne Frank House where Anne and her family had lived in hiding from the Nazis for more than two years before they were captured in 1944 and sent to Auschwitz. Today the Anne Frank House is a living museum, and hosts over a million visitors each year.  Horn writes: “But when a young employee at the Anne Frank House tried to wear his kippa to work, his employers instructed him to ‘hide it under his baseball cap’…[They worried that] a live Jew in a kippa might ‘interfere’ with the museum’s ‘independent status.’ Dara Horn concludes: “The museum finally relented after deliberating for four months and permitted the employee to wear his kippa in public, which seems a rather long time for the Anne Frank House to ponder whether it was a good idea to force a Jew into hiding.”[6]

We cannot be forced into hiding, and we must never be silenced. This past year, perhaps more than any other since the Holocaust, reminds us that being a people apart means facing the deep pain that comes from being hated and othered. For American Jews born after 1948 the temptation to hide is a new experience. The muscle memory of the many generations before us who had to repel the forces of antisemitism has been forgotten.

We are scared. We watch our words and our backs. And, just as we feel pushed aside by the peoples of the world who are external to us, we are also being pulled apart from the inside by dissent within our own Jewish circles. The pressure to conform, our fear of rejection, and our inability to respond in a unified way to the challenges of this moment have left us bereft, confused, directionless.

Yet, it was Einstein who said, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” I would add: “And in the middle of loneliness we find community.”

And it is with this optimism that we arrive at the New Year, Rosh Hashanah. It is the birthday of the world, the chance to begin again. And tonight we resolve to set our loneliness aside. It is time to come together as a community in reflection and anticipation. Tonight we join Jews throughout the world and commit to that road less traveled – to the uniquely Jewish activity of teshuva – turning. Turning our individual loneliness into deeds of social justice, turning our existential aloneness into opportunities to create authentic community, turning our inclination to hide into acts of repair – of tikkun olam. Tonight, we renew our promise to step up and improve the world. And this year, we need to double down and be bolder and stronger than ever before. We need to take the gifts that previous generations transmitted to us and enact them – now. We need their gifts of resistance, their skills of survival, their unflagging energy to push our remarkable Jewish story forward in time and space. We are here to ensure that Judaism will not only survive but thrive; we are here as guarators that the Jewish people will not just continue, but that we will loudly and proudly fulfill our mission to be a light to the nations.

Over and over again, community has saved Jews and Judaism. It is not always easy. We have never been a homogenous monolith. We disagree, we diverge, we differ. But it is in our diversity, that we find unity.

Now is the time to step out of our isolation and despondency, to overcome the shock and horror of one year ago and draw closer to our community, our synagogue and one another. We need to listen to one another, to celebrate and mourn with each other more passionately than ever before. Like our High Holy Liturgy, we need to replace the words I and me with the language of we and us. This year, at the sounding of the shofar, we must wake up and live out the ethical monotheism that we promised the world.

We face the future with optimism and hope.

In an interview with the New York Times shortly after October 7, Rabbi Sharon Brous, told this story from the Mishnah[7]:

When the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the people would take pilgrimages there to observe the holidays and festivals. They would ascend the steps to the Temple Mount, and then they would go through an arched entryway. They would turn to the right, and then circle around the perimeter of the courtyard.

Finally, they would go back under the arched entryway and exit the courtyard. Except, the Mishnah says, for those who were broken hearted. Those people would also go up to Jerusalem. They would ascend the steps, walk through the same arched entryway, but instead of going to the right, they would turn to the left and circle the courtyard. And every single person who would pass them coming from the right would stop and ask a simple question: What happened to you? The person would answer “My loved one died. I’m worried about my child. I am lonely.”

Those who were walking from right to left would listen to the broken-hearted and offer a blessing before continuing their pilgrimage. Imagine. Your whole life you have dreamed of going up to Jerusalem, to the holy Temple, and as you finally arrive and circle the courtyard, you are required to stop and ask a person who’s coming toward you and in a vulnerable state: Are you OK?  What’s your story?  Why do you suffer?

I would guess at that moment neither group really wanted to stop, look a stranger in the eyes, and share sorrows and blessings. But this is the lesson of Ethical Monotheism. What takes precedence on that day — like on any other — is seeing people in their suffering. Asking them to share their stories. Blessing them.

We need stories and we need blessings. Even when it hurts. Especially when we are at our lowest and loneliest. Today we walk in health and strength from right to left; but tomorrow, we may be circling from the left, hoping someone might see our pain, listen to us, and offer blessings of healing and hope.

 

 

[1] Hertz, N. (2021). The lonely century: A call to reconnect. Sceptre.

[2] Elias, M. (2024, May 23). 49 loneliness statistics: How many people are lonely? Discovery Therapy.

https://www.discoveryaba.com/statistics/loneliness#:~:text=Over%2060%25%20of%20adults%20in,smoking%2015%20cigarettes%20a%20day.

[3] Roberts, T. (2016, December 15). We spend 90% of our time indoors. Says who? Building Green. https://www.buildinggreen.com/blog/we-spend-90-our-time-indoors-says-who

[4] Ronen, C. (2015, September 7). Lonely people – your stories: The kind of loneliness that makes my heart ache. The Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/lonely-people-your-stories-the-kind-of-loneliness-that-makes-my-heart-ache-1.2343121

[5] Oren, M. (2024, March 18). Jews have been cursed to be lonely: The war is a reminder to fight back against that fate. The Forward. https://forward.com/opinion/593849/jews-lonely-israel-gaza-war/

[6] Horn, D. (2021). People love dead Jews: Reports from a haunted present. Norton.

[7] Klein, E. (Host). (2023, November 17). Ezra Klein Interviews Sharon Brous [Audio podcast episode – transcript]. In The New York Times: The Era Klein Show. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-sharon-brous.html