Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Sarah Woller Bat Mitzvah
Shabbat Kedoshim
May 7, 2005
Love of Neighbor – What’s Possible?
I want to tell you a true story this morning for two different reasons. The first is that world Jewry is about to observe Yom Ha-atsmaut, Israel Independence Day. The modern State of Israel will celebrate its 57th birthday this coming Thursday. As all who follow the news of the Middle East closely know – after four years of intifada – there is currently a cease fire. There are agreements which point, God willing, toward peace. How realistic is that possibility for which we all hope and pray? Dr. David Weiss is a distinguished scientist at the Hebrew University Medical School. This is his story.
On a blustery night in December my old Volkswagen decided to give up the ghost. The battery was viable, but pumping the accelerator led to no more than a whirring noise from the engine. I got out of the car and lifted the hood. For no good reason, really, because I can make about as much sense of a vehicle’s entrails as my mechanic can make of the insides of a patient undergoing a laparotomy.
I should have known better than to turn off the main highway to Jerusalem onto this narrow side road which winds steeply through the hills. The car had been diagnosed as near terminal more than once during the past months; somehow it had been kept going by the mechanic, but I was advised not to push my luck. Now I had ignored the warning. Road work along the highway was slowing traffic to a crawl and I was anxious to get home; the seminar in Tel Aviv had gone on longer than expected and I had a class to meet early in the morning.
Not a good place to break down here. There was not another car in sight. It was cold and had begun to drizzle, and the side road passed close to several Arab villages. Incidents were not infrequent – rocks thrown at cars; soldiers waiting at a bus stop kidnaped and killed, their bodies never found or discovered only years later in shallow graves dug in the sand.
I drew my revolver from its holster and placed it on the engine block. I peered at the engine dimly lit by my pocket flashlight that had also reached old age. Seeing myself standing there in the dark, I thought how ridiculous, trying to save a quarter hour’s time. Now I am helplessly stranded, no cell phone, and the only thing I know how to work is a loaded revolver. I often take the gun with me when I travel or hike, just in case. That evening as I stood next to my expiring car, I was glad I had it. But a few minutes later, I wished that I had not drawn it from the holster under my jacket.
A car appeared from around the bend and stopped some meters from mine. The driver and the man sitting next to him stepped into the road. We saw each other clearly in the headlights of their car – I with a knit kippah on my head, the two middle aged men wearing kefiyas. Approaching, the man who was the driver called in greeting: "Marchaba?" and then in Hebrew: "Ma kara?" – what happened? Can we help?
"Alsalam aleikam," I said, and before they were at my side I grabbed the gun and slipped it into the pocket of my trousers. I dearly hoped that they hadn’t seen it.
"Can we help?" the man had said and it sounded like he meant it. Greet two strangers with the sight of a gun? Is that to be the intermediary between strangers, Jews and Arabs, meeting in the night? And if the offer was not sincere? Never draw a gun unless you are going to use it – the instructors at the firing range were insistent on that. Would I shoot at men on no other grounds than distrust and fear?
"Abdullah," said the driver. Pointing to his companion, "my friend, Maher."
"David . . . Dauod", I said.
They bent over the machinery beneath the raised hood. "You need a stronger light," Abdullah said. He went back to his car, drove it along side and clipped the cable of an electric torch to his battery. "Now we shall see what has gone wrong."
Two other men, in their twenties, got out of the back seats. "My nephews," Abdullah said. Taking turns, the four of them checked and probed spark plugs and wiring, ignition and choke and carburetor and other things with the tools Abdullah had pulled from a locker in his truck. It was raining hard now.
"Try the motor," he instructed after each testing. The better part of an hour went by. On the third try the motor caught, coughing and sputtering. "The trouble is with the carburetor, I think." Abdullah pronounced. Maher differed: "More likely it’s something with the ignition."
"Whatever, you can get moving now," Abdullah said, "But I don’t think for very far." He spoke to the others in Arabic. Then, to me, in Hebrew. "This is not a good place for you to be stuck. This is what we will do. There is a gas station on the highway; it is open all night. They may have the parts that give the trouble, or you can leave your car there and call for a taxi. We will drive ahead of you; you follow. If the motor goes out again, we can start it up for you."
It did not go out. At the gas station we shook hands. "How can I express my gratitude?" I began. "You have gone so much out of your way and you are soaked . . . " I wanted to offer something but I wasn’t sure. Was this the thing to do? I was spared the decision. Abdullah said: "You would have done the same for us, right? How do you say it in English: ‘no big deal’, right? Now we have to hurry home. Shalom!" he said.
"Salaam," I replied.
End of story.
Friends, let me tell you what Dr. David Weiss – eminent scientist – says of this encounter, and then let me tell you how I respond to it as well. Dr. Weiss says: "I make much of encounters such as this one. I talk about them a great deal, and sometimes I am told that I look for them and that I greatly exaggerate what they mean. True. When there is an opportunity, I reach out in small ways to show that I am interested, that I want to make contact, be a bridge. But often the gesture comes first from the other side – from Arabs – like that night when my car broke down. And when I tell my stories to friends, I find that they too can recall similar encounters. Are these moments too easily passed over in the noise of gunshots and suicide bombs? They must not be passed over; they are moments of reprieve. They are what we have to hold us back from the callousness that would sweep this land, and I hold on to them. They are the hope."
Can we really understand what Dr. Weiss is saying? He is reminding himself, his friends and neighbors, and us, that there are rare but occasional incidents of menschlichkeit, moments when Jews and Arabs treat each other with kindness and respect. And even if these moments are not typical or not common, nevertheless, he holds on to them and they give him reason to hope that underneath the nasty rhetoric, and underneath the many vicious acts that are perhaps more common, there are moments when Jews and Arabs treat each other as befits people made in the image of God. When these moments occur, we need to pay attention to them, to remember them, to treasure them.
Dr. Weiss’ story means to me something in addition, the second reason I share it with you today. In this week’s Torah portion, from which Sarah chanted so well, is a verse which most of us know and are proud of. Leviticus 19:18 instructs – V’ahavta l’rayachah kamocha – you shall love your neighbor as yourself. We Jews sometime like to boast that we had this verse in our Torah long before the Christians copied it. But to tell the truth, it is a lot easier to boast that we had it first than it is to practice it. To "love your neighbor as yourself" is surely the most difficult mitzvah in the Torah to keep. Perhaps it is almost impossible to keep. Is it within human strength to "love your neighbor as yourself"? Who can do it?
Therefore, when we find an example of someone who does it – whether it is typical or whether it is representative – it does not matter. The very fact that it happens even once in awhile is a reason for joy. And if it happens not between neighbors, which is difficult enough, but between individuals whose communities – indeed whose peoples are at odds with each other – that is surely a wonder and a blessing that we ought not take for granted.
So here is my point, friends. If a deed of loving kindness such as happened to Dr. David Weiss happens only once, it is something to celebrate and be thankful for and learn from. If those four Arabs that dark night could do what they did to help Dr. Weiss, then the commandment we have been given is not beyond our strength. If those Arabs could come to the aid of an Israeli with so much care and consideration, then it is possible after all to observe Leviticus 19:18.
And is that not encouraging to us all? We know our limitations, our evil impulse, our ability to rationalize. We even know how often we avoid doing the good when it is inconvenient to do it, and surely when it is dangerous or threatening to do. We know that we are "only human", and we know how easy it is to use that phrase as an excuse for not observing Leviticus 19:18. And then we hear a story like this and it makes us wonder. Who knows, perhaps we are capable of more goodness than we thought we were. Perhaps if they could do such a thing, then maybe – just maybe – we can too.
So for me the challenge of David Weiss’ story and what I would like you to take away from this sermon today, is a question. How should we behave, we who are commanded to love our neighbor as ourself? Amen
I am indebted to Rabbi jack Riemer for much of this message.
