Go Forth.
November 11, 2016 § 2 Comments
Our Torah portion this week advises Abraham to go forth, to leave behind what is comfortable and familiar, to leave his father’s house.
Go forth from the land of your birth, from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
Anything worthwhile requires a risk, a departure, a breaking-away from what has gone on before now.
We are at a crossroads as a nation, deeply divided. We do not even agree on the basics: who is at fault here for our divide? What is at stake in this election? Is this outcome a good thing or a bad thing?
Go forth from the land of your birth, from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
What we do know is that there are large numbers of people in this country who feel like their way of life is threatened. They disagree profoundly as to what exactly is causing that threat. But the feeling itself, that perception, has its roots in something real.
On the afternoon after the election, I was scheduled to teach “Introduction to Judaism” at Plattsburgh State. The class has seventeen students: fifteen are between eighteen and twenty two years of age; the remainder are older than I am.
Our topic on this day is Shtetl life: the experience of Jews in Poland, Russia, and Lithuania in the late middle ages/early modern period. In other words, on this day I am trying to bring to life the world that is depicted in The Fiddler on the Roof.
Hoping to attract their interest, I try linking the lecture to the storyline of Fiddler. Most of them have never seen it, but the two older students know it well. Singing snippets of songs as I lecture doesn’t rouse the enthusiasm of the rest. They look glum. Not surprisingly, shifting to a discussion of the history of pogroms in Russia does not improve their mood.
As for me, I am working on five hours’ worth of sleep, having stayed up way too late for the election results. After experiencing a lifetime of gender discrimination myself, I really wanted a woman to win. I spent most of the evening practicing meditation techniques whenever the state results came in too close to call. I was hoping to celebrate.
Okay, I tell them. I get it. We’re all tired from last night.
That’s when some of the students started talking about Trump; that is when we found out that they voted for him. That’s also when it became clear to me that the rest of the class could not understand whatsoever how a sane, reasonable person could vote for the man. They just don’t see the appeal. From their point of view, a vote for Trump was a vote for racism, sexism, and bullying. Why would you admit that in public?
There are pictures taped up in the hallways of the campus. They are color pictures of Trump, printed on copy paper. Someone has taken a sharpie marker and given him a Hitler mustache. They appear every ten feet throughout the halls.
That is where the conversation started: “I think that these pictures of Trump as Hitler are disrespectful of Jews and the Jewish experience,” ventured one of the two Trump supporters.
“Well,” I pause for comic effect, “I wasn’t the one who put them there.” The class laughs, including the student who raised the point. Good. I was hoping to lighten the mood a bit. We are all tired and still raw. It has been a long year.
I would have liked to address his concern in depth, to explain why a significant portion of the population feels that the comparison to Hitler is apt. But it was not the time or place, not yet. He was not yet ready to hear that I have friends who are actively planning to emigrate because they are quite literally afraid for their lives; the rest of the class was not yet ready to hear why I don’t think that emigration is necessary. It has been a long year, and we are all tired and raw.
So let me tell you what I told them:
I am a member of a cusp generation. I link what went before to what comes after. I went to a liberal arts college – emphasis on liberal – twenty-five years ago, where we necessarily learned about European history but did not necessarily learn Chinese history. The knowledge of other cultures that you are expected to know, now, as an undergraduate, is vastly different than what I was expected to know. But that was changing, even then, and changing quickly.
I grew up in a world where the white Protestant culture was considered normative, and everyone else was ‘ethnic.’ Nowadays that kind of thinking is labeled ‘ethnocentrism.’
That’s when I introduced an example: as a member of the cusp generation, I am in fact fully engaged in technology. I tweet and text and use emoticons and the like. But, unlike the native-born, those for whom this technology was present at birth, I routinely use the wrong one. I texted a red heart to my niece, who promptly wrote back hahahahahaha. I was oblivious to the distinctions between the pink hearts (which are family friendly) and the red hearts (which mean a relationship kind of love). What I know, I explained, is not what you know. What I take for granted, I said, is not what you take for granted. They seemed to be a lot more responsive to that message. It gave them a concrete example as to the difference between our worlds.
So, I said to them – and I say to you now – here is your charge: go find someone really different from you. Seek out someone who sees the world in entirely different terms. Get to know them. Get to know why they think the way they do. Avoid lapsing into stereotypes and false generalizations. You may be filling in reasons for them that are not actually true. You may be engaging in projection or fantasy. You will not know until you ask.
I have been engaging people, respectfully, on Facebook as well as I can. Last night I had an eighty-message exchange with a letter carrier and veteran from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho – a friend of my cousin – and that conversation was both enlightening and helpful. Today, though, he decided that the conversation could go no further. We won’t change each other’s minds, he argued, and emotions are still too raw.
I hope that he is wrong about that.
Anything worthwhile requires a risk, a departure, a breaking-away from what has gone on before now.
Want to make our nation great? Go forth.
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[…] Go Forth – Rabbi Kari Tuling, PhD. […]
Fine message. The “going forth” however, is with trepidation on my part. As one ages, the desire to embrace the newness and creativity is still there, but the physical ability to do so sometimes is limited. However, I’ll limp along as best I can. Thank you.