Which is more important: struggling to mend our broken world or appreciating what we have been given? We cannot do one without the other.
The Jewish people are given two names in the Torah. Leah names her fourth son Yehuda, “gratitude.” “Yehudim” means “Jews,” or more literally, “the thankful ones.” Jacob struggles with an angel who bestows upon him a new name, “Yisrael,” meaning “struggles with God.” We are wrestlers. We will fight until dawn and not despair, no matter how bleak it looks.
How can we be both the thankful ones, grateful for what is, and also be the ones who struggle because it isn’t good enough? How do we live in awe of life if it is also in our nature to say, “this world should be better”? We must be comfortable living in the paradox.
It has been suggested: a person should carry in each pocket a slip of paper with one of our names. One reads, “I am Yehuda: I am grateful for what is,’ while the other reads, “I am Yisrael: I will always fight to make it better.” - Rabbi Mychal Copeland, Pirkei Imahot 3:2
Gratitude is one of the coping mechanisms that has been helpful to some of us as we make our way through this difficult period in our lives. (For some that is the pandemic, others may be experiencing difficulty in many ways.) We have been advised to be grateful for what we have, and our Jewish prayerbook reflects this - grateful for the roof over our heads, a place to sleep, food to eat, and clothing to wear; grateful to have loved ones (of birth or chosen family) with whom to share, even if they may not be close; grateful for employment, for diversion, for the ability to move from day to day. There is a challenge in gratitude. Not only can it make us feel complacent, sometimes it makes us feel guilty when we know that as bad as we may have it, there are so many who have it so much worse. It is important to validate - it is okay to feel bad. It is okay to not be thankful at every moment. Being grateful can be a worthwhile tool, but that does not wipe out the difficulties we may be living.
This month, however, I wanted to push the envelope of gratitude a further step. We are often grateful for the presence of others, or for the gifts the others bring, but I would encourage us to appreciate the patience of others. In dealing with tempers near fraying and emotions on the edge, when we reflect, we say to ourselves, “It is okay. This is a difficult time. People are having to cope with more than they may have ever had to cope with. We need to give them some space and be forgiving.”
Sometimes, we are that person - at the end of our rope, on the fourteenth Zoon call of the day, without a plan for a meal to feed ourselves or our families, not sure about whether it is allergies or time to stand in line for a COVID test. Still, in those moments, we are sometimes able to take a breath and choose not to take out those valid frustrations on other human beings. We can not only be grateful for that ability in ourselves, but also in others.
In this month, over a year since our lives so drastically changed, let us take a moment of gratitude for the Instacart employee who did not text us expletives, after we asked three times in a row (after they already left the aisle ten minutes before) for the other size of sliced cheese. Let us take a moment of gratitude for the Amazon delivery people, with aching backs, who took the time to ring our doorbell, rather than leave our package to tempt a passing porch pirate. Let us take a moment of gratitude for our teacher (or child’s teacher) who, being asked the same question, by e-mail, the fourth time in a row, took the time to answer, long after the school day had ended, while dealing with their own family’s needs. Let us show gratitude to our friends and acquaintances who, when we call or text them with things that are vitally important and timely, at least to us, they do not snap back a surly answer, but take time to listen and to think and be there as a friend.
It has been a long year. That we are still here and relatively sane (How sane, we may not know for a while yet.) is a miracle not just because of our own ability to go with the flow, but because of countless others who allowed us to freak out, without freaking back out at us. There is a wise lesson there for us to learn from this time - that as we are thankful for what we have, and energized to change the world to how we want it to be, that we live in a world filled with others who want to do the same, and we all need to do so, together, if it is to work out, in the end.
Thank you to all of you who have dealt with the challenges and mistakes that we on the Temple have made as we have tried to be there for you. Forgive each other as we (hopefully soon) emerge from our cocoons. May we come together again with a new appreciation not only for who we are, but for who we have tried to become.
