Selichot 5783
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read it below.
This evening I wanted to tell you about a man named Dashrath Manjhi. He was from a village in the East Indian state of Bihar called Gehlaur. He fell in love with a woman named Falguni Devi and they were married. Like many villagers they had to climb mountains daily to get the water, food, medicines, and other things they needed on a daily basis. One day in 1959 she was making this climb and she fell from a mountain. Her husband tried desperately to get her medical help but the only way to get to the hospital tens of kilometres away was either to climb the mountains, or to go all the way around them. He was unable to get her to hospital in time, and she died of her injuries. Manjhi resolved that nobody should experience what he and his family had. And so he took a hammer and a chisel, and he spent 22 years cutting a path 110m long through the mountains. When he was done, he reduced the distance it would take to cross that route from 55 to 15km. When he died in 2007 it was with the title ‘mountain man’, he featured on a postage stamp in India, his act of love and of repair has become legendary.
I came across his story through one of those ‘good news’ aggregators, websites or twitter accounts that are dedicated to publishing stories designed to renew our faith in humanity. And there’s no doubt in my mind that this is a wonderful act of love, a real testament to the soul and character of the mountain man. And another part of me is wondering, who left him on his own for 22 years with a hammer and a chisel, where were the authorities? What about the rest of the local community? He’s a hero, but should he have ever had to have been?
I think if I’m honest, that’s often part of my reaction to stories of incredible human endeavors against hardship. Constantly amazed by the lengths that people will go to, constantly impressed by the strength of the human spirit, constantly inspired by the power of love, and constantly wondering why people had to find themselves in these situations in the first place. It’s not that people aren’t capable of amazing things, but it is astounding how alone people can find themselves against the challenges of the world, it is quite overwhelming sometimes to be reminded by the asks that life makes of us.
And there’s another response I have, one stirred by the headlines of some of the many articles that have been written about the mountain man- ‘an act of true love’, ‘this is what love looks like’, ‘we can all aspire to love like this man’. It’s not that they’re not true, but it is also simultaneously true that for many of us the love and devotion that we show the people who we are close to in our lives will not involve spending 22 years with a hammer and a chisel facing a mountain alone, but I’ve spent a lot of this year thinking about how even though it might not measure up to a mountain, it’s no less remarkable.
Last year I officiated at a funeral for a man who was legendary in his street for the time he spent in his garage. It meant that whenever someone on his road’s car wouldn’t start in the morning, he always seemed to be first out there to help them. When someone was out doing DIY, he always seemed to pop up with the right tool to help in the right moment. Kids on their street knew him as the person who would spot them first when they fell off their bikes, and neighbours remembered him fondly for always being there for a chat when they felt lonely.
There’s something so ordinary, so human, so un-historic about his behaviour. It might not make a great netflix movie, but it certainly made for a great, for a remarkable life.
In shul life, I’m constantly moved by the little but huge things people do for each other. The people who have visited others for decades, the people who notice problems and fix them unnoticed, the little sprinkles of salt of the earth that working in community means you get to see on a daily basis.
They remind me of a George Elliott text that comes before Kaddish in the Liberal siddur, it reads:
‘The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs’
Unhistoric acts. We’re not all going to make movie-worthy history, but it's these deeds which the world turns upon.
The Jewish journalist and writer Nora Ephron wrote in her script for the movie ‘you’ve got mail’ the following words in the voice of her character Kathleen Kelly:
'Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around?'
I imagine many of us lead what might be termed ‘small lives’, or in Ephron’s words ‘valuable but small’. And reaching this moment of selichot and this annual season of self reflection and evaluation we are confronted with the question of whether we did enough, whether we were enough, whether our impact has been great enough, perhaps in the words of Kelly's question. Whether we’ve been brave enough, bold enough; whether our love for those we care for has measured up to the extents of love shown by others, whether our care for the world around us has matched in deed the strength of our feelings. So much wondering, so much being asked of our liturgy, is this the life we want recorded in the book of life? Is this enough?
‘The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts’, reminds George Elliott. For most of us, it’s not about the big stuff, it’s about the fine tuned details. I wish I could say to the Kathleen Kelly in all of us that the world needs the big, bold, brave landmark deeds, but it also needs the small lives, that most of life is lived in the world of small places, and that’s where the real work of building lies. The chances are most of us will not make headlines this year, but it doesn’t mean we won’t make the headlines of someone else’s life, it doesn’t mean our deeds are not consequential, they might be unhistoric, but that doesn’t make them unimportant.
In the gemara in tractate kiddushin we are taught that ‘a person should view himself as though he were exactly half-liable and half-meritorious. In other words he should act as though the plates of his scale are balanced, so that if he performs one mitzvah he is fortunate, as he tilts his balance to the scale of merit. If he transgresses one prohibition, woe to him, as he tilts his balance to the scale of liability’. Maimonides, in his hilchot teshuva, makes it even clearer: 'Therefore we should see ourselves throughout the year as if our deeds and those of the world are evenly poised between good and bad, so that our next act may change both the balance of our lives and that of the world.'
As we enter together into this season of reflection, of measurement, and of accounting for our actions. I wonder if we can allow ourselves to not just look to the headline moments of our years and lives, but instead to think small. To know that the balance of things is in the tiniest details of our interactions with others and the world. Sometimes the most unconscious or inconsequential seeming acts of chesed, of love, that tip the balance, as much as it is sometimes the most off-hand or careless slips that damage the fabric of relationships we hold with others.
May this be a season of opportunity, of healthy soul searching and reflection, and a year where we are able to treasure the unhistoric, the ordinary that creates the extraordinary, and to nurture the attributes that weave a stronger, kinder, healthier and better world.
