Trust - a little caution and a lot of courage

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The topic was the challenge of broken trust. It was discussed by a group of Jewish school girls, sitting in a circle, with Calisha, a Muslim woman in a hijab who was co-facilitating the session with me.

Trust is earned, they said. When I lose trust in her, it is because of what she did, they asserted. We insisted that this was not the whole story. Trust is not just the result of other people’s choices. Trust is sometimes a choice we make and a gift we give.

We asked the girls if they ever noticed teenagers yelling at their parents, “You don’t trust me!!” It is screamed accusingly, with great emotion, usually anger and indignation. It is as if the teenagers are saying, “How dare you do this terrible thing to me and withdraw your trust in me?”.

Calisha and I are both parents of teenagers. We put it to the teenage girls that the accusation seems ridiculous. Isn’t the reason the parent doesn’t trust the child because the child behaved in an untrustworthy way?! 

The girls reflected on this. One girl suggested that sometimes the child feels that they are more mature now than when they let their parents down last time. Perhaps. At its core, it is because the child wants the parent to not think about what went wrong last time, and the time before, and instead to give the gift of trust this time. It is hard to feel loved and mistrusted at the same time.

I am thinking about this. Each of us has been let down so many times. There is an almost irresistible urge to take charge, take control, and refuse to let anyone hurt us again. I trusted before. I showed goodwill. I hoped. I was disappointed. I will not be hurt again.

To be at peace and in friendship with our peers or others we might need to apply a little caution to protect ourselves, but we must also show a lot of courage.  

C.S. Lewis wrote: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable…”. [1]

In the spirit of this quote, told them a story about a magnificent tree in a forest.

The tree was delightful. Its leaves and flowers were the most beautiful colour, and dense. Its shade was cool. Its trunk healthy and radiant.

Mr Wombat, waddled over to the tree, and looked up with deep appreciation and joy. Wombat said to the tree, you are beautiful and I feel such joy just looking at you.

Magnificent Tree said to Mr Wombat. I feel so touched and loved. The tree opened its heart and invited the wombat inside. Wombat was amazed by the beautiful diamonds inside the tree’s heart. Magnificent Tree said to Wombat, please take one diamond home. Wombat reluctantly agreed. As soon as Wombat returned home, he gave the diamond to Mrs. Wombat.

Fox saw Mrs. Wombat’s diamond and was envious. He too went up to Tree and offered gushing compliments, none of which were sincere. Magnificent Tree was naïve and invited Fox inside. Fox did not wait for an invitation to take diamonds, he grabbed diamonds right and left, tearing and breaking Magnificent Tree’s delicate heart. The tree was hurt and furious. Its heart snapped shut, trapping Fox inside.

And from that day on the tree’s leaves were mostly drained of their colours, there were fewer leaves, the trunk lost its shine and the tree smelled vaguely awful. A really skilled nose would pick up the scent of dead fox. Like CW Lewis’s heart in a coffin, refusing to trust and love hurts us badly.

As believers, we are invited to trust God. Despite natural disasters and human ones, God did not stop. We are still called to believe in his infinite kindness. This is not easy.

Trust and faith are practices, not static states. Our behaviours build our faith and trust or allow them to wither and die.

Every seventh year the Israelites would not plant or harvest [2], pausing their “hustle” to make a statement of trust in God. “You might ask what will we eat [3]?” God says trust me. Many Jews trusted God and downed tools for the Sabbatical year, some do so to this day, but some did not trust or stop farming.

The fury of God’s disappointment in the failure to observe the Sabbatical year is intense. “I will make the land desolate so that your enemies who settle in it shall be appalled by it…And you, I will scatter among the nations, and I will unsheath the sword against you…Then shall the land make up for its sabbath years throughout the time that it is desolate and you are in the land of your enemies; then shall the land …observe the rest that it did not observe in your sabbath years [4].

Failure to give God the gift of trust leads people in a hustling [5] mode, or a controlling mode of being, working the land hard, refusing to take time out for spiritual reflection [6], and being unwilling to “let go and let God”.

This is hard work and I hope we all respond with compassion to anyone struggling to trust after heartbreak. It is cruel to judge people for failing to do this hard work. On the other hand, the consequences of not letting go and trusting again are devastating.

A few minutes before the session ended with the girls, Calisha and I gave them one last gift of trust. The game, Pattern-Ball, can become rowdy and silly but we chose to trust them that they would do it sensibly, even though some of them were unsettled after over an hour of learning with us. One girl reminded us that we “do not want to smell like a dead fox”. There was no way to know if the trust in the girls would be vindicated. It was.   

 

Notes

[1] C.S. Lewis - The Four Loves https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3058-to-love-at-all-is-to-be-vulnerable-love-anything

[2] Leviticus 25

[3] Leviticus 25:20

[4] Leviticus 26:32-35

[5] Brown, Brene, Rising strong

[6] Seforno

Sabbatical of the Torah and Corona Behar -Bechukotai

In this 2008 photo a resident of Holon, Israel,
announcing that the fruits on the trees in his
backyard are hefker (abandoned property) on the
occasion of shnat shmita, the Sabbatical year. 

At this terrible time for those who lost their lives or livelihoods it would seem wrong to talk about anything else. However, alongside care for those who are suffering, there are other valid concerns such as the emotional wellbeing and spiritual development of all people.

People like me still have jobs and our health. Yet, there is something that feels a bit off for me. It is hard to put my finger on it. I feel disoriented after not having gone to the office for two months and a little detached from the world of work, despite working long hours.

I wonder if this “disruption” might lead to a social reset so that when it is over we might be better for having been through this. My colleague, Shaykh Wesam Charkawi thinks it is possible. He wrote that “in this current time, people are faced with a situation that [forces them]... to disengage from the general worldly interactions into the sphere of “tajrid”, …similar to what the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) did when he went into the cave to contemplate and reflect” (1).

The Torah’s process of a Sabbatical year once every seven years has some interesting parallels to our current experience. The Sabbatical year requires withdrawal from harvesting, planting and any way of showing ownership of one’s land (2). Instead of the normal farming process, the people were meant to live off their savings and surplus from other years and to share whatever grew by itself between landowners, all people and animals.

While some would explain the Sabbatical as a form of land management (3) this seems implausible in light of the emphasis on this practice as a Sabbath for God (4). Instead, it is explained as a year of withdrawal of one's focus from material matters, to be redirected to spiritual ones (5). It is a time for finding joy in both body and soul, in reading the Torah and away from the hassles of business (6). 

The Sabbatical year is a time for developing the capacity to let go and be more relaxed about ownership of our possessions, to relinquish control, and have faith that things will be OK (7). While private ownership is legitimate according to the Torah, it exists side by side with an obligation to ensure that the poor also have what they need. The Sabbatical year that loosens the grip of owners on their land for a year is meant to be a time for reinforcing caring for the poor. This link is clear when this practice is introduced in the Torah. It states: “Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but in the seventh [year] you shall let it rest and lie fallow. Let the needy among your people eat of it, and what they leave let the wild beasts eat” (8).

Desmond Tutu said, “I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.” There is something of this spirit in one tradition of the Sabbatical that forbids owners displaying ownership of their crops by gathering the produce into their homes and then distributing some of these to the poor. Instead the owner is told that by right they should be required to smash breaches in their farm fences, so that the poor can help them to produce as equals to the owners (9).

At its heart, the Sabbatical year is a radical ritual of disruption of the normal order of things. In addition to not working the land, all debts were meant to be forgiven. It has been described as “a harsh, severe and far-reaching reminder, the test of which, in reality, the people of Israel “never [fully] withstood”… instead finding and creating loopholes to get around at least some of the requirements (10).  One of my favourite stories in the Talmud involves priests working the land during the Sabbatical year, two scholars making excuses for them while their fiery colleague points out their failure to adhere to the rules of this ambitious social experiment (11).

There is a real risk that when this time is over we will all go back to normal in the sense of having learned nothing from it. I hope this is not the case. Over the long term, it is vital that we all learn to balance a sense of ownership of that which we are fortunate to have, with solidarity for our neighbours and fellow human beings so that all have what they need.  

Notes

1) Charkawi, Shaykh Wesam, 5/5/20 on Facebook.

2) Leviticus 25:2-7, see rashi.

3) Maimonides in the Guide for the Perplexed 3:39, also cited in Klei Yakar to Leviticus 25:2

4) Kli Yakar ibid.

5) Seforno  to Leviticus 25:2

6) Torat HaChido, p. 118.

7)  Sefer Hachinuch, p 193, Mitzvah 84, and as adapted by Alex Israel in a Facebook post 11.05.20.

8) Exodus 23:10-11 See Lichtenstein, A. https://www.etzion.org.il/en/shiur-22-conceptual-foundations-shemita

9) Mechilta, In Torah Shlaima, p.187, 140.

10) Lichtenstein, A. ibid, here refers to Pruzbul and Heter Mechira.

11) Sanhedrin 26a.

Dis/Connect Between Lands and “their” peoples - Bechukotai

Recently, I joined a group of Australian born Muslim high school boys in watching a moving film called Before 1770, produced by Shaykh Wesam Charkawi. The film shows deep connections between Muslims and the land of Australia. We learned that “for hundreds of years, Aboriginal Yolngu and Muslim Macassans interacted. They married, traded, exchanged, [and] learnt from one another... The Aboriginal Yolngu have, to this day, preserved words, which were taught during the stay of the Macassans, [including the words] Allah and Muhammad” (1).

This outstanding film helps address the alienation that some young people feel from the place where they live. One of the issues that Muslims tell me is important to them is the degree to which young Muslims in Australia feel or don’t feel a sense of belonging in this country. There is a narrative out there that equates being Australian to being white, being of Christian and Anglo heritage and adopting a set of secular, cultural norms relating to modesty and drinking for example. If a young person accepts that narrative then the choice to identify with Australia can also seem like a betrayal of his or her religious identity. This film appears to separate the choices young people need to make between: connecting with the place of Australia and its long history on the one hand; and identifying with contemporary Australian society on the other.    

Let us put aside the broader question of how people with diverse beliefs and cultures relate to each other in the present and continue with the idea of feeling connected to a place and its history. Are places significant or merely a meaningless platform on which the real drama consisting exclusively of people plays out?  

In my tradition the relationship between a people and a land comes up in the reading this week. The Jewish people had an obligation to allow the land to rest for one of every seven years. In this week’s reading the Torah describes the consequences for the Jews of their failure to meet this responsibility, among other sins. “I will scatter you among the nations...Then, the land will be appeased regarding its sabbaticals. During all the days that it remains desolate while you are in the land of your enemies, the Land will rest and thus appease its sabbaticals (2).

The imagery of this verse is of a land that is resentful toward “its people”. The land is appeased only when the debt to it/her has been paid (3). It fits with a contemporary perspective about an exhausted, polluted planet earth-mother whose patience with her wayward human children is running out and her wrath is soon to be unleashed. This idea resonates for me when I walk in nature near my home, in the shade of nature’s abundant trees and the combination of its quiet and birdsong. The earth deserves care and respect rather than being exploited carelessly.    

It was disappointing to me to read the most popular Torah commentator, Rashi’s, interpretation of the verse above as referring to appeasing God rather than the earth (4). While that might make sense from a literal perspective it removes the opportunity to engage our imagination with the image of an aggrieved living land. However, I was pleased to find a supra-commentary that insisted that Rashi actually did embrace the idea of the land being appeased (5). (5). I was delighted when I found further proof about Rashi’s view in his own commentary on another verse in Chronicles where he is explicit about the appeasement of the land itself (6). The view that the earth itself is appeased is also supported by other commentators (7).

More controversially the relationship between the holy land and the Jewish people is interpreted as being expressed in profound loyalty between the land and “its people”. The Torah states that as part of the process of the Jews being exiled, God “will make the Land desolate” and “your enemies will “desolate [as a verb] upon it” (8). This is interpreted to mean that no other nation that occupies this land will ever truly thrive on it (9). “They will not manage to build walls or towers on it… as the land will not receive any nation or tongue… the land will not welcome anyone until her chicks return to her” (10). (Of course, these types of teachings can make it harder for religious Jews to truly listen to Palestinian narratives of loss of a thriving life on the land. This important and painful discussion is beyond the scope of this blog post.)

Returning to the group of boys at the beginning of this blog post, I can appreciate various ways that connections form between people and places. We are embodied spirits and our bodies exist in places. Our wellbeing is enhanced when we feel connected to where we live and care for those places. Having spent a few more sessions with the boys since we watched the film I trust that they will develop the connections between themselves, their place and accurate understanding of and positive connections with their multicultural, multi-faith diverse fellow inhabitants of this blessed country.

Notes:

1.   https://www.before1770.com
2.  Leviticus 26:33 and 34
3.  Chizkuni on this verse
4.  Rashi on 26:34
5.  Mizrahi, on Rashi 26:34, he explains that Rashi’s intention in shifting toward appeasing God is that ultimately, once the land itself has been appeased, the land, now reconciled to her people, seeks to appease God’s anger about how the land was worked during the Sabbatical year
6. Rashi on 2 Chronicles, 36:20
7. Chizkuni and Abrabanel, on Leviticus 26:33, Metzudat David and Metzudat Tzion on 2 Chronicles, 36:21
8.  Leviticus 26:32
9.  Rashi on Leviticus 26:32 based on Torat Cohanim/Sifra Bechukotai 6:8, 
10. Bchaya, on Leviticus 26:32