Picking Others Up©

Re-Post from Rosh Hashanah 5777/2016

Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh

Who in here has ever seen a Sefer Torah fall to the floor?  Raise your hand if you have.  Those of us who have are part of a special little club.  It’s really a rare phenomenon, but it is a sight that strikes fear in both religious and secular Jews.  Even the risk of it falling gets our hearts beating faster and faster.    

The one and only time I saw a sefer torah fall was when I was an 18-year-old counselor at Camp Ramah Darom.  It was a normal Monday when we read Torah.  Campers and counselors alike sang loudly, smiling as we escorted the holy scrolls back to the ark.  A fellow counselor, a young woman around my age, was in charge of securing the Torah in the ark.  She tied the sefer Torah in place, closed the ark door, and then, you can guess what happened, the Torah fell out and hit the floor with a loud thump.  

A silence fell that was just as loud as the singing had been.  The campers looked to us, the counselors, for guidance, but except for picking up the Sefer Torah, we didn’t know what to do.  And so, we looked to the three rabbis for counsel – have you ever heard the term two Jews, three opinions – can you imagine how many opinions rabbis have?  

The first rabbi said we should take turns fasting – a different person should fast each day for 40 days.  

The second rabbi said fasting is an outdated practice, fasting won’t bring any good to the world, and we should devote ourselves to 40 days of Tikkun Olam, healing the world.  

The third rabbi said being kind without Torah misses the whole purpose - 40 people should study Torah for 40 days.  

We had multiple meetings and learning opportunities about what to do about the fallen sefer torah.  But something was missing in our studies; we were overlooking something.  

During one of our learning sessions, I sat next to the girl who tied the sefer torah in the ark and noticed something: she was quietly weeping.  For days, she would not smile.  Finally, I asked her if she was ok.  She thanked me for reaching out, and, in fact, no one had before.  She said she felt that everyone was judging her for dropping the Torah.  

As we argued over what to do, days after we picked that sefer torah off the floor, we couldn’t see this young woman still on the floor.  

Every year, rabbis have been giving you sermons about this day; we've been telling you: you need to treat every person as if they were created in the image of God, B’tzelem Elohim. But the image of God is an abstract thought – on the other hand, a sefer torah - now everyone knows what that looks like; everyone knows how we treat a sefer Torah.  

When it falls, we pick it up.  

An old teaching from the Ramban, Nachmanides, says that each of us is a sefer torah: our bodies are like the parchment, and our souls are the letters written on that parchment. 

Creating a Sefer Torah also parallels creating human beings.  Both of us are made from the skin of an animal, and it takes almost a year to create a sefer torah.  Both of our creators take great pains to ensure that every detail about us is perfect in our own way.  

Can you imagine looking at everyone, every person, as if they were a Sefer Torah?  

Today, I want to tell you why it’s so important to change the way we view our fellow human beings.

I want to tell you what to do when we see a walking, breathing sefer torah fall: you pick it up.

I know that the election seems to be the topic of discussion around many tables, but the lives that were lost this year to senseless violence weigh heavily on me…I’m sure they do, too.  

The number of casualties we heard about this year is almost unbelievable, incomprehensible.  We see bloodshed on our television screens, on our phones – it seems almost constant.  

But it’s not just lives lost; it’s also about a scary reality.  Terror attacks:  Knife attacks and bombings, a reality that Israel has long come to grips with, and mass shootings and violence against civilians and police.  

What do you do when so many Sifrei Torah have fallen to the floor?  

We aren't the first generation to witness this much bloodshed, and I don't think we'll be the last either.  

We’ve been here before.

What did we do?  We picked them up, as many as we can…

Many of you know an old story…

A young man is walking along the ocean and sees a beach covered with thousands and thousands of starfish washed ashore. Further along, he sees an old man, walking slowly and stooping often, picking up one starfish after another and tossing each one gently into the ocean.

He asks, “Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?”

“Because the sun is up and the tide is going out, and if I don’t throw them further, they'll die.”

The young man looks at him with astonishment:  “Open your eyes, old man!  There are miles and miles of beach and thousands of starfish!  You can’t possibly save them all; you can’t even save one-tenth of them!”

The old man listened calmly and then bent down to pick up another starfish, showed it to the young man, and flung it into the sea. “It made a difference to that one.” 

It’s a nice story, but I actually learned the lesson from my great-grandfather.  He saw countless starfish on the beach.  

My great-grandfather and my grandfather were prisoners at the Mauthausen concentration camp.  Day after day, they would see Jews being worked to death, thousands of Jewish men, women, and children walking into the gas chambers to their deaths.  

They used to go on marches, death marches, because if you fell, you were shot.  My grandfather walked with his father, and other father-son couples marched with them.  On one march, a young man’s father collapsed from exhaustion.  The Nazi guard pulled out his pistol, shot him without hesitation, and holstered his gun.  The man's son couldn’t believe what he'd just seen.  He collapsed to the floor – he grabbed his father's dead body.  The Nazi saw the boy on the floor out of the corner of his eye – he put his hand on his pistol once again.  

In seconds, my great-grandfather rushed to the boy, picked him up and threw him upon my grandfather.  My great-grandfather rejoined the two boys, whispering things to that young man who had just lost his father.  And the three of them walked off together.  

Many years had passed; my grandfather was sitting in a cafe in Netanya, Israel.  A man around his age stared at him, then approached. 

He said, “I remember you - you were at Mauthausen.”  And so they talked about their experience, sharing the stories of when they came closest to death.  The man told his story, about being on a death march, about seeing his father falling, about trying to lift him up.  He said, “I would have died right there, but an old Jew picked me up and led me away.  He saved my life.  He told me I had to live for my father, and that if I needed someone to lift me up, he would be there.  That man was my angel.  I tried to find him after that day, but I never could.  I really thought he was an angel; he picked me up, saved me, and then he vanished.  I wish I could have found him.”  

I truly believe this holiday, Rosh Hashanah, reminds us to pick others up, even those who are different from us, even those we might be fighting with.

The Torah reading that was chosen for today is strange, isn’t it?  Today marks the anniversary of the creation of the world, yet we read the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, and Ishmael.  But there's a story in here that I think we wince at every time we read it – when Sarah and Abraham throw Hagar and Ishmael out of their home, giving them some bread and water.  After the food and water were gone, Hagar leaves her son Ishmael under a bush to die.  Hagar and Ishmael are on Death's door; Hagar cries out:  “Let me not look on as the child dies!”  She has fallen so low she cannot even say his name, Ishmael.  Far away, she bursts into tears.  And then, God hears the cry of the boy, and an angel comes:  

Kumi Se'i et HaNaar v'Hachziki at Yadech Bo Ki L'Goy Gadol Asimenu

Come, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”

But a literal reading of the words hold him by the hand is actually ‘make your hand strong in his.’ The Torah is actually giving us a remedy for despair. As if to say, “Find someone else to help; find someone you can take by the hand and guide to a better place. You won’t only help that person, but you will help yourself.” 

An angel tells Hagar, you must lift him up, with my help, with God's help, but it's you who must do the work.  

It's the people who pick others up that should be our heroes.  

This summer, the Olympics had many heroes.  But I want to tell you about my personal heroes.  It sure wasn't Ryan Lochte, but Michael Phelps wasn't my hero either.  Getting to the Olympics is a lifelong dream for these athletes.  Since childhood, they've been preparing for those moments.  Can you imagine making it almost to the end of that race, and falling?  

New Zealand Distance runner Nikki Hamblin and United States runner Abbey D’Agostino were four laps from the end of the 5000m in Rio when they collided.

Hamblin, bunched tightly in the mass of runners, stumbled and fell face-first, causing her US competitor D’Agostino, who was running directly behind her, to hit the track as well and fall onto her side.

As Hamblin lay in the fetal position on the track, D’Agostino jumped up quickly and pulled the New Zealander to her feet.  They started running, but D'Agostino began limping; she couldn't finish.  She fell to the ground.  Hamblin could have continued, but she stopped.  

D'Agostino said she felt a hand on her shoulder and heard, ‘Get up, get up, we have to finish this!’

They came in last place, but through their actions, they showed the world what true heroes could be.  Hamblin said the following about this moment of kindness she wasn't expecting at the race:  

“When I look back on Rio 2016, I’m not going to remember where I finished, I’m not going to remember my time … but I’ll always remember that moment.  Sometimes I guess you have to remember trying to be a good human being is more than, you know. If I hadn’t waited for her or tried to help her, I would have been 10 or fifteen seconds quicker, and what does that matter?”

When we pick others up – we gain purpose - 

Sometimes, the world seems dark.  It seems like the earth is scorched, like so much needs to be done, and yet we are paralyzed: what can I do?  

Again, we've been there before – thousands of years ago.  An old story goes: Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai was walking with his student, Rabbi Joshua, near Jerusalem after the destruction of the Temple. Rabbi Joshua fell down on the ground and looked at the Temple ruins and screamed: “Alas for us! Oy Lanu! The place which atoned for the sins of the people of Israel through the ritual of animal sacrifice lies in ruins!” Then Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai picked him up and said the following: “Do not grieve, my son. There is another way now of gaining atonement even though the Temple is destroyed. We must now gain atonement through gemilut hasadim, acts of lovingkindness...”(Avot d’Rabbi Natan 11a)

Part of my job is to lift others up through acts of lovingkindness. I'm happy to do it; I love doing it, but alas, I'm only one man.  

I once received a call from a congregant: "Can you visit so and so?" He's in the hospital.  I said, I cannot today; can you?  

“No, I don't do that.”  I never asked why.  Perhaps they didn't see themselves that way; how could they do what I do?  You probably need a title to visit someone, to lift them up – like a chaplain or a rabbi.  

But I'll let you in on a little secret: you don't need a title to bring God's light to the world. Each of you was born with a hidden light, and through our acts of kindness, we show that light to the world.   

We bring pieces of God to the world by picking up those who have fallen.  

My friends, I need your help because others need your help.  

We are starting a new group at Shaarei Kodesh – the Sunshine Team.  You don't need to be a Torah scholar; you don't need to be shomer shabbat either – all it takes is you lifting someone up this year – to bring light to the darkness

By visiting and delivering food to someone who cannot leave their home... 

By visiting someone in the hospital just to talk to them, just to listen...

I know some of you here aren’t part of our community year-round, but you are part of the human community.  So, will you do one thing for me?  You know the toiletries that you get from hotels, those little soap bars and shampoos.  Will you put them in a small bag and give them to homeless people on the corner who are asking for money and food?  Showing them a little kindness, letting them know they are human beings just like you, and that they deserve to be clean, would make a big difference in their lives.  

You might be wondering how that man reacted when my grandfather told him his father saved him.  The truth is, he never told the man who picked him up that the angel was his father.  And maybe it’s because we are all angels.  In the Torah, the line between angel and human is often blurred, so our job is to lift others, shine the divine light inside us, and be angels for others.  

Those who pick others up don't always get the credit they deserve; they often don't get the gold, silver, or even the bronze, just like you don't get an award for picking up a sefer torah that fell – and perhaps it's fitting that we don't.  The most famous tzadikim, righteous people, are anonymous.  And so, while we congratulate and honor the champions who donate money to tzedakah, as we should, we also know that it’s the tzadikim, the people who pick others up, that make this world go round.  By picking someone up, you can make a difference for one person, and we all know that one person can make a world of difference.