Mensch•Mark For Elul 16 Cleaving to Friends - Dibuk Chaverim

We are all connected, part of a singular human tapestry

About the Mensch•Mark Series

The Talmudic tractate Avot, 6:6 provides a roadmap as to how to live an ethical life.  This passage includes 48 middot (measures) through which we can “acquire Torah.”  See the full list here.  For each of these days of reflection, running from the first of Elul through Yom Kippur, I’m highlighting one of these middot, in order to assist each of us in the process of soul searching (“heshbon ha-nefesh”).

Today’s Middah:

Cleaving to Friends-Middah Dibuk Chaverim

URJ’s Take:

Text
"And it came to pass that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul?. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul." (1 Samuel: 18:1; 18:3)

Commentary 
The friendship of Jonathan and David as described in the First Book of Samuel is perhaps one of the most poignant examples in the Tanach of the power of human relationships. Their friendship is held up as the ideal-a friendship in which neither made demands on the other, yet each gave unstintingly of himself.

In Pirkei Avot, "cleaving to friends" (dibbuk chaverim) is listed among the 48 virtues (middot) that one needs in order to acquire Torah. At first it may seem strange that the rabbis included friendship among such virtues as fear, awe, and humility. Yet there are many examples in Jewish texts of the importance placed on friendship.

Emunas Shmuel translates this week's middah as "careful choice of friends." It suggests that in order to successfully study and internalize Torah, one must surround oneself with friends of good character and intellectual clarity, who are both good-hearted and perform good deeds.

Our Sages taught the importance of friendship with the following words: "Either friendship or death." (Taanis 23a) They insisted that one must exert great effort in cultivating a friendship, even to the extent of giving up personal preferences to those of one's friend. In this way, each of the two friends will seek to please the other, and together they will build common goals and interests.

The Talmud suggests that "a good friend serves three functions: The first is as a catalyst for increased success at Torah study. The second is to insure one's mitzvah fulfillment, for good friends feel free to offer constructive criticism to one another. The third function is to provide good advice in all areas and to act as a confidant who does not reveal secrets to others. In fact, one who breaches his friend's trust will lose him as a friend, and justifiably so."(Midrash Shmuel) R. Yonah adds that a good friend also will gloss over any injustice committed by the other, thus endearing them to each other.

Jews of medieval times sought to guide their children by writing ethical wills. In these documents, the authors shared their wisdom with those who would follow, teaching how Jews ought to behave. From Hebrew Ethical Wills, we read: "Raise not your hand against your neighbor. Never be weary of making friends; consider a single enemy as one too many. If you have a faithful friend, hold fast to him. Let him not go, for he is a precious possession." (Asher b. Yehiel, 13^th century Germany and Spain).

My Take: One Human Tapestry

A lovely and popular Israeli song song speaks to how interconnected we all are. Its title is “Rikma Enoshit Echat” “One Human Tapestry,” and the translated lyrics go like this:

When I'm gone,

Something inside you,

Something inside you,

Will die with me, will die with me.

When you're gone,

Something inside me,

Something inside me,

Will die with you, will die with you.

For we all are, yes, we all are,

We all one human tapestry,

and if one of us fades away, something within each of us dies

But something of him remains in us.

The beauty of the Hebrew here is that there is a double meaning for the word Rikma, which is translated best into English as “tapestry” or “embroidery” – but in fact also is a word for human tissue.

When anyone dies, a part of us has died – and not just spiritually but physically.  We are all part of the same body.

In fact there is no real place where I end and you begin.  There is no dividing line. We are all joined at the hip, as it were.  The air we breathe is shared, not just with other humans but with all of creation, and we and the plants are engaged in act of mutual and reciprocal CPR as we barter Oxygen for Co2.   Every time I touch a doorknob my body is welcoming in millions of your germs.  Every time I sneeze, part of me is paying a visit to your immune system.

Think of the historical progression here in describing how human lives interconnect.  A century ago, people were talking about a melting pot.  It’s a great image.  But in a melting pot, all individuality is lost. So to enhance that, back in the ‘80s Mario Cuomo and David Dinkins called New York a “magnificent mosaic,” thereby preserving the cultural diversity, but what’s holding a mosaic together, except a little glue?  The tiles are otherwise disconnected, like many neighborhoods in New York.

But a Rikma, an embroidery, maintains the uniqueness of each thread, each strand, while at the same time validating that we are inextricably intertwined, body and soul.

Martin Luther King write in his letter from the Birmingham Jail, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

At the museum in Auschwitz, the shocking and ineffable photos of the intertwined bodies of the victims – hundreds, even thousands of them (at peak efficiency, they gassed up to 3,000 at a time in Birkenau) these images give us a completely new way to understand that network of mutuality.  In those photos, it is nearly impossible to detect where one body begins and another ends.  And there is nothing to indicate which victim was from Germany, from Hungary or from Slovakia.  There is very little determine who was a Hasidic, Reform or secular Jew; Jewish or just Jew-ish, or not Jewish altogether.

After Auschwitz, Rikma Enoshit Echat one human tissue, leads ultimately to that searing image of interconnection. We go beyond the network of mutuality, the melting pot or fabulous mosaic, or even the woven tapestry of our liturgy and we see Rikma in its most literal sense. We are one human body.

Now the Nazis were great at drawing lines separating people – with their racist theories going into minute detail as to what constitutes an Aryan or a Jew.  We see that in other photos at Auschwitz that depict the selection of Hungarian Jews just off the train.  Two perfectly straight lines.  One headed to slave labor, the other headed directly to death. 

They obsessively categorized things and people, until people became things. They defined a Jew as anyone with one or more Jewish grandparents, or someone married to a Jew.  It had nothing to do with belief.  A Jew who converted to Christianity was still a Jew, even if he became a bishop.

A prime goal of authoritarian regimes is to forge order out of chaos.  That’s not inherently evil.  Religions do the same thing.  We need order in our lives.  Two of our key rituals are even called “Order” (Seder) and “Separation” (Havdalah). Jerusalem is considered holier than other cities and Shabbat is on a higher spiritual plane other days.  Yom Kippur, called the Sabbath of Sabbaths, is the peak moment of holiness for the year.  Drawing lines and making distinctions in order to forge order has characterized Judaism over the centuries, but not to hoist one group over another, but rather so that all of us may rise to greater degrees of godliness.  A life of holiness is available to everyone.  

A rabbinic text specifically states that the righteous of all peoples have a share in the World to Come.  No distinctions are drawn where it matters most.  The rabbis lived in hard times – they could have easily fallen into the parochialism that is so prevalent in our world today.  But they rejected that.

But now, following the Shoah, we've reached a different place in the evolution of Judaism and human civilization. I believe we have entered a world of connection rather than separation and distinction. We’ve gone beyond simple friendship.

We are all connected inextricably.

Read more about this in my Kol Nidre sermon from 2017.