"Difficult Discussions"

Delivered 2nd Day Rosh Hashanah 5767
By Rabbi Joshua Heller
Congregation B’nai Torah
rabbi@bnaitorah.org

There are a lot of reasons why we wait too long to say what's on our minds. If we ever do. Sometimes we are afraid of conflict, we are afraid that we are going to get a negative response: After Stalin died, Kruschev was giving a speech criticizing the excesses, the purges of the Stalinist regime. (You remember Kruschev, he’s the one who banged his shoe on the lectern at the U.N.) Kruschev finishes his damning critique. From the midst of the crowd a voice piped up: "Comrade, and why did you not say anything?" Krushchev thundered back "Whoever said that, please stand up." The room was in terror, and of course, no-one stood. Kruschev continued: "And THAT is why I didn't say anything.”

Other times, we are internally conflicted and are afraid to even admit the truth to ourselves. We practice self-denial, but in the end these things come out. There is a story of a Jewish woman who arrived at an exclusive resort in Myrtle Beach. As soon as they found out that she was Jewish, they unceremoniously refused her entrance. She was determined to get in. She went off and got lessons in elocution. She bought a new wardrobe, bless her heart. She changed her name. She returned next year as a fine Southern Lady. They welcomed her with open arms “dear, of what religious persuasion are you?”
She responded “Goyish, of course!”

And so, we avoid difficult discussions. We avoid them at work- sometimes we'll tell a client, a vendor or a boss what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear. Sometimes we wimp out and let the information get out without us. Earlier this year, Radio Shack fired 400 employees via email. “You’ve got… severance.” Or we leave issues unresolved until they boil over or spiral out of control.

We avoid sharing our true emotions with our families and with those who are so dear to us. How many of us actually say "I love you" to our spouses, parents, children every day? How many of us have the chance to tell them that they are proud of them, that they appreciate them. If we do, do we mean it? I don't want to get all "Cat's in the cradle,” but I'll be in a hospital room with someone who is going through a difficult stretch, and they will say "You know, I'm so proud of my children, I wonder if they know." I can only have one response “Why don't you tell them?”

And even if we manage to share the things which are hard to say, but good, even if we say I love you, sometimes we can't talk about the difficult stuff. I can't tell you how many times I sit with couples in trouble: their interests have drifted, the sex is not what it used to be. But that’s not even what gets them. It comes up as a dozen tiny things- what they watch on TV, where to go for dinner, who gets to park in the better spot. Sometimes you can stuff it back under the rug. Maybe you can hold it in. Maybe you hold out. There’s an old joke about the couple who came in to see the rabbi at age 98. Rebbe, ve vant a divorce!” The Rabbi asks: "why now, after sixty-three years of marriage?" “Ve vanted to wait until de kids died.” But that's not how it usually works. Delaying a difficult conversation does not necessarily make things better. Like a coke that's been left in the freezer, you touch it and it explodes everywhere.

The story we read this morning in the Torah is really all about that which is unsaid, and about difficult discussions which are avoided, and the bad things that can result . It begins with God saying "Abraham." Abraham says "hineni" here I am. God says- Abraham, - take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac. Take him to Mount Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering. It's a very one-sided conversation. What's going on in Abraham's mind? God is telling him to slay his favorite son, his only son, and he's stoic. After all, when it came time to send Ishmael away, there was no shortage of consultation and discussion. Here, he just gets up and does it. The rabbis are so troubled that they construct responses for Abraham, turn the monologue into a dialogue.

Of course, we all know how the story continues: they go up the mountain, and at the last moment, the angel calls out to spare Isaac's life. It would seem like a happy ending, but it's not really. For if you read carefully, Abraham and Isaac don't come down the the mountain together, and the Torah never records them speaking again. Abraham stays in Hevron and Isaac goes to Be'er Sheva. Isaac is not even mentioned when Sarah dies, and even though Abraham sends a servant to fetch Isaac a wife, the two of them never discuss it directly. The rabbinic commentaries take the story in a more surprising direction. Isaac may survive, but there is another casualty of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. If you keep reading in the Bible, the very next thing that happens, the beginning of the next portion, is that Sarah dies. The rabbinic tradition, as cited by Rashi in Genesis 22:23, asserts that this juxtaposition is not accidental- that Sarah's death is actually a result of the events of Mt. Moriah.

What might have happened? In many other situations, Abraham and Sarah are in dialogue. He tells her she is beautiful. They discuss the issues with Ishmael. But here she is totally absent from the story. Abraham never consults with her, it would seem, before taking her only son to certain death. The Midrash (Tanhuma Vayera) suggests that Abraham was afraid to tell Sarah what he intended. So instead he tells her that he is taking the boy off to religious school (some boys would prefer the first option).

But how did that lack of communication, how did that unhealthy silence, lead to Sarah's death? The classic Modern Orthodox Bible Commentator, Aviva Zornberg, brings together several different retellings. Two of them reflect on what can happen when the regular channels of communication are disrupted when we delay difficult discussions. Of course we can be harmed by falsehood. We can be harmed by the truth, if it comes through the wrong channels. We even can be harmed by truth delayed.

The first Midrash is from Pirkei D'rabbi Eliezer. Satan comes to Sarah and says- "Do you know what your husband has done, the old fool? He sacrificed Isaac on the Altar. She cried out three times, and died. Abraham returned home to find her dead. Sometimes, if we don't come out with what is difficult to say, if we don't get the truth out there, the lies and assumptions are worse.

A second version is more surprising. Isaac comes and says "my father took me and led me over hill and dale. He took me to the top of the mountain, put me on an altar, and bound me on top if it. Had God not told him "don't stretch your hand against the boy" surely I would already have been slaughtered. He did even not manage to finish the story when Sarah let out three cries and her soul departed.

It's the same classic ironic turn Shakespeare would later use in Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo sees Juliet, lying as if dead, and takes his own life not knowing that she will soon awaken from the apothecary’s potion. We can blame Sarah- if only she had been patient. If only she had listened to the end of the story. After all, she saw Isaac standing right in front of her!. If only she had held off her conclusions, put aside her predispositions!

Of course, all of this begs the question- what would have happened if Abraham had consulted with Sarah to begin with? What if she had been aware from the beginning? Sarah was a woman of remarkable faith, strength and courage. She stood by Abraham's side through every test- leaving everything she knew for some new religion. She was kidnapped into Pharoah's harem. She was willing to bring a surrogate mother into her home, and her bed, so that Abraham would have the son he wanted. And having Isaac was no small test either. It's one thing to be the father of a newborn in young age. It’s another thing to be the father of a newborn at 55. It's another thing to be the mother of a newborn at 55. Imagine being the mother of a newborn at 90! If you are the mother of a son, imagine Sarah's feeling at Isaac's bris. (Abraham, you know, the religion down the street only wants a 5-year pledge to the building fund!)

Abraham never gave Sarah the opportunity to be present. How much more powerful might that moment have been? If Abraham had come to her and said "Sarah- God has given me an awesome, awful task" how could she not have been horrified to imagine what might happen to her son. But perhaps, sharing Abraham's faith, she would have done as she did on other occasions- prepared victuals for the journey and send them off to do God's will. What if Sarah had come with them? What if Sarah were walking side by side with Abraham as they trudged up the mountain. So when Isaac asked what was coming, she could tell him, prepare him, lovingly, caringly for what was to come. What if Sarah had stood side by side, trembling and tearful at the altar, waiting for a sign from the divine? What might have happened? What might she have lived to accomplish?

Some of the most important discussions in life are difficult ones. So, how do you do better that Abraham and Sarah? How do you sit down to have a difficult discussion? The most important thing is to recognize that it's difficult. I recently read a book called "Difficult Conversations How to Address What Matters Most" by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen. It’s from Harvard, so you know it has to be good! They identify three characteristics that define difficult discussions.

The first they describe as "what happened"- when there is a temptation to find blame, to dwell in the past. You have to move beyond that by being open, by recognizing the contributions on each side. You have to recognize that each side has an agenda. That each side has its own story. Let me give you an example, something that happened to me at Costco.

I love going to Costco. I might move my office there. I run into more Jews there than I do in synagogue. True story- the synagogue originally owned the land that Costco was built, on and then sold it to buy land and build a building in the current location. So when all the Jews go to Costco on Saturday afternoon, they are following an ancient religious homing signal gone awry.

Anyway, I’m in the checkout line at Costco with my kids. Caleb went through a pirate phase. He had a plastic hook, just like Captain Hook, except that it was blunt plastic, plus a hat and an eyepatch. He had smuggled the hook in with him, and was waving it around, with Amelia next to him in the cart. A concerned citizen behind me in line (the Yiddish term for this is “nudnick”) scolded me “he’s going to take out her eye with that.” I responded- “well, I hope so, otherwise what will I do with the eyepatch?” To have a real conversation, you have to understand that your goals may be very different from those of the other guy. You have to respond to the other person’s story not with a no, not with a but, but with an AND- I see the situation as I see it, but I recognize that you have a point of view, too.

The second is that there are feelings involved. The issues are not merely rational, they are emotional. They are here (in the gut) and here (in the heart) not just here (in the head) You have to recognize and validate those feelings.

Thirdly , a difficult conversation revolves around identity: How does who I am hinge on the results of this conversation? If I accept, if I even consider what the other person says, how does that challenge my competence? How does that challenge my love for the other person? How does that challenge my faith? How does that challenge my commitment? That's the toughest thing. You address it by recognizing that your identity is more complex that just this one topic. Sometimes there isn't a simple bottom line- sometimes we are more than the sum of our stances on what we think are the key issues. Sometimes our values can withstand appropriate compromise. We can move from but, or don't, to and.

As a congregation, we face what could be a difficult discussion. It's a discussion that we have danced around for quite some time. It's a discussion that we have deferred, and I think, up until this point, appropriately. It's the question of women in our ritual life. I hear about it at the shabbat kiddush table. I hear about it from old-time members and prospective members, from our bar/bat mitzvah families. It comes up at every ritual committee meeting.

It's a question that predates me. On the questionnaire that you sent out, looking for a rabbi. you were asked: “What religious policies/traditions should the next Rabbi make sure to preserve?”

Your response was illuminating: . “Traditional (non-egalitarian) practices, while allowing women to participate in services to the largest possible extent.” Let me repeat that…. In the history of mixed messages that's a classic. I took that mixed message to heart, and I made a concious decision when I arrived that I would do my best to be "Agnostic” (if a rabbi can say such things). And I spent a lot of time listening- going to services, (well, more often than not). Talking to people, going to their homes and offices. Getting a representative sample.

And this is no different than any other difficult discussion. First of all, there there are two stories here. And we need to be able to appreciate both of those stories. It is the story of the men who get up at 6:00 in the morning to help make a minyan, and who devote so much time and energy to ensuring that it continues. It’s the story of people who make sure to be here at 9:00 AM on Saturday morning so we can start on time. It’s the story of people who are being faithful to the traditions that they were raised with in Savannah, Charleston, Birmingham, Johannesburg and Capetown, or even at Beth Jacob. By the same token, those who are interested in change are not any less religious. This is also the story of the woman a father who wants his daughter to be able to read from the Torah at her bat mitzvah, or the mother who wants her daughter to be able to say kaddish for her, but she won't be able to even if she is the 10th person in the room. A woman who wants to share in the honor of the Torah is not necessarily more or less religious than a woman who is uncomfortable doing so.

It's about feelings. It's about the feelings of men and women who are fine seeing a woman as university professor, about seeing a woman as mayor of our city, as a judge, or as a president of a synagogue, but a woman at the ark, or a woman on the bimah, or a woman rabbi, is like a punch to the gut. It's about the feelings of women who grew up at this synagogue, who grew up facing this very bimah, and are frustrated and hurt that the thing which is most important to them is closed off to them, no matter what their skill or piety.

This is ultimately about identity. Some people in the community are templted to pigeonhole B’nai Torah in terms of what we don’t do- women don’t come up to the bimah, but we don’t have a mechitza.. But you know what, I know, and you know, that B’nai Torah is not really about don’ts or can’ts. B'nai Torah is, above all else, the most warm and welcoming place I know, where people care so deeply for each other. When scholars in residence come to visit us, there are two things that they say. The first is that they talk right over our heads. The second is that they always tell me how welcoming the congregation is, how haimish we are. And that’s ultimately why I chose to bring my family here.

B'nai Torah is about being a place where past, present and future meet.

Where different generations can come together. Where people who grew up in many different kinds of synagogues, people who people who grew up in NO synagogue, can come together. Where the ritual reflects a concern for the tradition, but a desire for accessibility.. B'nai Torah has always been a place of compromise. Our synagogue is not about but or don't. It's about and. In fact, I would argue that our identity as a TRADITONAL synagogue goes beyond what women do or don't do. It's about the saying almost exactly the same prayers that were said by our great-great-grandparents, using the traditional melodies. It's about the feeling of a participatory, unabridged. service. More than that- it's about what goes on elsewhere in the synagogue: kitchen, the eruv, the mikvah. Perhaps you can be traditional AND inclusive.

So, why do I raise this issue now. Why not hold it back, as I have done at other times. Didn't you already have enough to talk about over lunch (which by the way, is receding further and further into the future)? Because it's a question that isn't going to go away, and because to defer difficult discussions for too long is- detrimental. It comes up at evening minyan every time there are 13 people present, and we still have to go find someone to wheel in. Now it’s coming up in a different way: over the summer, the board empanelled a Strategic Planning Task Force to look at the issues facing the synagogue for the long term. It is a small, agile group, with members from every segment of our congregation- old, young, with many different activities and interests, and different skills. and different preferences in ritual. I've been invited to be a guest at their meetings, and there have been a lot of complex discussions- how big do we want to get? What are our clergy needs? Are there changes to be made to the facility? The group realized early on that the question of ritual was the most burning one. They had some very different preferences in terms of the answer to that question, but they know that we could no longer let this sit.

So, where do we go from here? As a Rabbi, I have to be honest about my preferences. I think that there are changes that are appropriate to implement within the context of Jewish law, and I believe that as individual Jews seeking spirituality within the tradition, we will ultimately be enriched by a change, and I furthermore think it will truly strengthen us as a synagogue. And yet, I will not make any changes unilaterally. It is true that I might have the capability as the congregation’s ritual leader to make certain changes by fiat, but that is not my intent here. I believe that my role here is better served as an educator, a mediator, an advocate and a guide as the membership finds its voice and its chosen path.

Ultimately, the only way to resolve a difficult discussion is to have what’s called a learning conversation. What is a learning conversation? First of all, we create an environment where we have the opportunity to truly listen. There’s a cute story about a man who goes the the audiologist and tries out hearing aids. The audiologist shows a few different models. The $2000 model is invisible, and you can hear a pin drop. The $200 model is kind of clunky but works. “Don’t you have anything cheaper?” “Well, we have a $2 model.” It’s a big button that sticks out of the ear, with a string attached. “How does that work?” “Well, with that thing sticking out of your hear, everyone sees that you need help listening and talks louder.” We need to learn how to project our listening.

And that's why today I'm not speaking about any of the practicalities of the issues- I've only hinted at the changes that we might consider. I think before we decide, Before we even decide how we are going to decide, we need to listen to each other. Over the coming months, the Strategic Planning Task Force will be doing a survey, and this will be one aspect of it. Over the coming months, I'll be offering classes and discussions, where the congregation is invited to understand the halachic, the spiritual component of this discussion, and to appreciate the different issues and implications, positive and negative. These will serve as forums for discussion as well. Only then can we begin to address the practical and political questions. In the past few weeks, I've met privately with some of those whom I know to feel strongly on this issue, a representative sample. I expect to talk to many more in the coming weeks. My door is open to everyone. I’d particularly appreciate if you came to my office hours on Monday and Thursday at 6:50 AM!

When you study the Talmud and all the literature that flows from it, the one thing that you must see is that we as Jews are never afraid of questions. You can free to be positively petrified by the answers, but questions are never out of place. Sometimes the rabbis in the Talmud ended a discussion with Teiku- leave the question unanswered until Elijah arrives with the Messiah. Even if questions defied a complete theoretical resolution, the next time the situation came up, they had to do SOMETHING. And usually later generations will record that even with a Teiku, the people ended up picking a side.

In conclusion, let me turn back to some broader questions. Sometimes the most difficult discussions are the ones that we have with ourselves. Those moments of self-realization when I sit in hospice with someone and they finally admit to themselves that they are dying. It can bring despair, but also hope- the ability to say goodbye, to let go. Those moments of self-realization that are helpful- when someone is willing to admit to themseles, to friends to family, something that they may have already known, but no-one would speak about. When we seek out a new path in life, or when we finally, in the still of night, find the courage to admit to ourselves that perhaps we must make a change. For this is truly the season of difficult discussions. This is the season of Teshuvah. What could be more difficult that going to someone you have harmed, someone who might harbor a grudge against you, and asking for forgiveness? What could be more trying than.opening yourself up to blame or criticism? What could be more scary than taking our difficult discussion with ourselves and opening it up to God, who is always right?

Abraham believed that maybe he and Sarah weren't up to a difficult discussion, so he held back. She missed out on an opportunity for spiritual growth, and the outcome was a terrible one. I don't want to say that I have more faith than Abraham, but I believe we can do better. We can listen to each other's stories. We can respect each other's feelings. We can have a deeper comprehension of our identity.

At this season of the year, we must enter introspection. We take on difficult discussions with ourselves, with God, with each other.

Let's think about the ways we won't defer those difficult discussions.

Let's think about how we will be more open with our families, with our co-workers. Let's be prepared to discuss our disagreements, at home, at work, even in the synagogue.

Let's all go up the mountain together. And next year, when we meet again- we may not have an answer yet. But we will have ascended together.