On Middot - 7/7/2024

Hello everyone and thank you for joining me today. Today marks the 275th day of the ongoing genocide in Palestine. According to official records, which we know are far from being able to capture the totality of the destruction in Palestine, over 40,000 people have been killed across Gaza and the West Bank, thousands have been imprisoned and tortured, or are missing, under the rubble, injured, sick, or some combination of those. While it is hard to understand the full devastation, I pray that it will end and that Palestinians will know safety and freedom soon.

This week, I got to thinking about a practice and part of Talmud that I hadn't thought about since I learned about it in my Jewish Day School because it came up during an episode of Judaism Unbound, a podcast that seeks to be a bit of a home for Jews who have felt left out by mainstream judaism. In Mishna Middot, which describes the second temple in Jerusalem, how it was built, arranged and the rules around it, we learn about the following custom in chapter 2, verse 2. 

All who entered the Temple Mount entered by the right and went round to the right and went out by the left, save for whom something had happened, who entered and went round to the left. The person who was going to the left was asked, “why do you go around to the left?” They responded, “because I am a mourner”. The person circling to the right responds, “he who rests in this house should comfort you.” If the  person circling to the left replies, “because I am excommunicated”, the person circling to the right would respond, “he who dwells in this house should put into their hearts and they will draw you near.”

There is a lot that is really interesting about this passage and many things that feel pertinent as a Jew who is mourning Palestinians when much of mainstream Jewish communities would think my actions odd.

My first thought is: isn’t it really nice that there was a ritual where someone mourning was immediately brought into a community. By circling the opposite way, the mourner is greeted by people who will listen to them and are mandated to hold their grief and offer comfort. This happens whether or not the two people know each other or have any bonds other than the fact that they occupy the same space. 

My second thought was: wow, this actually sounds so uncomfortable. I think that a lot of people do not know how to handle grief, either their own or someone elses’. I still do not really know how to respond to someone who has experienced a death. Yes, I say the very Jewish line of: may their memory be a blessing, but then what? People have such different responses to grief that the last thing that I would want to do is say something triggering or pry into a subject someone doesn’t want to talk about.

Having experienced loss, no one actually was able to say anything, especially at first, that made me feel any better. Mostly, people saying that they were sorry for my loss felt hollow and like the end of a conversation that neither of us really wanted to have. And I am not sure how it would feel to be obligated to either comfort or be comforted by a stranger, especially if that stranger and I are only tied by being in nominally the same community. 

Another piece of discomfort comes from being singled out. Sure, there is a time and a place to declare that you are someone who experienced something hard, and need a little extra help and comfort. But what if the thing that you actually need is a sense of normalcy? Returning to routines can be healing, especially in times of hardship. So, does singling yourself out as someone experiencing grief actually give the person any comfort or is this an obligation that will just make things feel worse. 

The third thing that stood out to me was about the juxtaposition it presents: why does this text discuss excommunication and grief together? How are these two things related and why is the remedy to either the same. And as I thought about it more, I realized that there are a few ways that these states are related.

Part of the shared likeness may come from or be related to the discomfort I just named. When a person is grieving, that energy can be really contagious such that people not going through that same emotion may want to take their distance. They do not want to have to be around someone who is emotionally unregulated, or sad and they do not want to make it worse or have their own questions about how to respond. In the worst cases, the mourner may be de facto excommunicated, or at least ostracized by a community that may not genuinely invest in their comfort.

In the converse, excommunication can carry grief. When I left my synagogue on October 9th, I was bereft. I was losing a community because of the fact that I knew that anti-Zionist politics would not be tolerated within that synagogue. No, no one told me that I could not take part in services, but I know that I would have to stay silent about my belief that Zionism is a moral evil meanwhile having to listen to propaganda that feels like the antithesis of why I am Jewish to begin with. 

Having disaffiliated, and having understood that mainstream Jewish institutions would only become more hostile to me, I lost a bit of myself. When we lose community, either by our own choice or by the choice of the members of said group, we lose a bit of ourselves and to be welcomed back in can be similarly uncomfortable. 

For example, a number of months after I left the synagogue, I volunteered to read the Megillah for Purim at an event hosted by members of the synagogue. I felt deep discomfort having to try and act normally when talking with the event coordinator. There wasn’t hostility on either of our ends, but neither was there any recognition that there was rupture either. We went through the event as if things were normal. Would it have been any less awkward if we had named and confronted the rupture? Maybe this ritual of circling in an opposite way would have put the cards on the table and made it easier to share space.

So what does all of this have to do with us? People who gather in public to mourn an ongoing genocide and do so as Jews and Jewish allies and do it in a very public space where right over the bridge, there is often another world where no one is thinking about the ongoing genocide, or at least not doing so visibly? 

We are effectively circling to the left as everyone else is circling to the right. When I stand here with you all, and watch the passers-by, I wonder what they're thinking. Do they perceive us at all? Do they have any sense of what is happening here? If they did would they join us? Would they yell at us? Would they turn to us and say: I hope that you are comforted? Would they see as as excommunicated, grieving, both or neither?

In the ideal world, the people circling us to the right would be curious and want to understand why it is that this seemingly random group of people come together each week to read the words of an aramaic prayer together for people who they do not know. I would love for them to  stop and say that they understand our grief, and also want to live in a world where Palestine is free, and there are no empires that rely on the bloodshed and destruction of a population.

And perhaps, the thing that we are doing, and doing so importantly, is creating a little discomfort. We are reminding the world circling around us that we are not living in a normal time, where we can only do business as usual. We are witnessing the mass murder of Palestinians, as well as those in the Sudan, Congo, Yemen, and live in a country where life is expendable. We are mourning boldly and ensuring that people on this Sunday afternoon can not entirely look away.