I am exhausted, and if I’m being honest, I don’t think I’m the only one. This past year has brought a litany of unfamiliar experiences and emotions. This year, we’ve had to wrestle with questions like – Where do I fit in? And – what does it mean to live as a Jew, to be part of a local and global community, to be part of a peoplehood and also part of a modern society where we are an ethnic and religious minority?
Perhaps some of us are perfectly comfortable, we do not feel so different from anyone else around us. For some of us, this has been a persistent feeling throughout our lives – antisemitism, hate, feeling like we are on the outside, like we are other. For many of us here, this is a new reality that we have had to grapple with over the past year. Growing up, some of us rarely felt like a stranger among our peers, we never felt a sense of loneliness because we’re Jews. And moreover, some of us have had a new experience this year – a sense of exhaustion and tiredness by simply existing in the world as individuals who are part of the Jewish community in one way or another.
But this year, as we tried to join new communities, as we interacted with long time friends, as we walked the streets of this city, we were reminded time and again, that we are feeling something new within ourselves.
One of those new feelings for many of us is loneliness. One modern Rabbi and leading thinker, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, in his renowned 1965 work, The Lonely Man of Faith, may have summed up our communal feelings of loneliness best when he wrote: “I am lonely because at times, I feel rejected and thrust away by everybody, not excluding my most intimate friends.” Soloveitchik struggled to find his place in American and in Jewish society. In his book, he explores what it means to be a person of faith, coming from an orthodox background, but, also, wrestles with how to dwell in the modern world. He touches on a combination of feeling thrust away from those close to him, as well as a feeling of catharsis, a drive to show up, to do something. What is painful and enduring about Rabbi Soloveitchik’s words is that loneliness is simply a reality for anyone striving to live in multiple worlds – one of faith, of peoplehood, of holiness and one of modernity and worldliness. An entire philosophical and beautifully written book, all to wrestle with the loneliness that he and so many others have experienced.
The byproduct of this type of loneliness is nothing short of exhaustion, because it is exhausting to feel alone. Soleveitchik might as well have been living this last year beside us – experiencing loneliness in balancing between two worlds, but also loneliness in each of the worlds on their own. We feel alone amongst the people closest to us because we are part of the Jewish community. And we feel alone often in our Jewish community, unsure exactly where we stand and who we align with. We have felt alone and it has been exhausting.
Loneliness is not new to us, Rabbi Solevitchick teaches this and so does our Torah. Because at the root of loneliness is the feeling that we do not belong, that we are not comfortable and do not have a place. One of the first people in our Jewish narrative to truly experience this is Abraham. When God speaks to Abraham and commands him: Lech L’cha – “Go forth, from your land, and from your birthplace, and from your father’s house” (Genesis 12:1). God singles him out and this quote instructs that the way for him to grow, to be closer to holiness, and to begin that journey that is monotheism, he must leave behind everything he knows. In many ways, Abraham is told to begin a lonely journey that is rooted in the fact that he is, and will continue to be, different from those around him. Lech, L’cha, Go forth, WITH this understanding, that you are different. And so, Abraham’s journey begins with him being separated from his family, his ways and even those around him. It’s not hard for us to imagine the loneliness, fear and even exhaustion that Abraham must have felt in this moment. In many ways, he is alone, and we know how tiring that can be.
We encounter these same notions of loneliness and being marked as different when Abraham is buying a burial plot for Sarah. Only a few chapters later in Genesis, Abraham speaks to the salesman proclaiming:
גֵּר־וְתוֹשָׁ֥ב אָנֹכִ֖י עִמָּכֶ֑ם תְּנ֨וּ לִ֤י אֲחֻזַּת־קֶ֙בֶר֙ עִמָּכֶ֔ם וְאֶקְבְּרָ֥ה מֵתִ֖י מִלְּפָנָֽי׃
“I am a resident alien among you; sell me a burial site, that I may remove my dead for burial.” (Gen 23:4)
A resident alien, a stranger and sojourner. Think about what that might feel like. The medieval commentator, Rashi explains it this way, “I am a stranger having come from another land, but I have settled down amongst you.” I dwell here, but I know I am not fully a part of this society in one way or another. I am, in your eyes, “other, an outsider.”
So, one small task – buying a burial plot – becomes about so much more than mourning and remembrance, it becomes a web of questions for Abraham and the Rabbis throughout the centuries. We cannot simply buy a plot of land or bury our loved ones, without having to answer to another person about who we are. The resolution of whether Abraham is considered “other” in this society, is placed upon the salesman, maybe because it is easier that way, maybe because wrestling with that question ourselves is a continually exhausting process.
Abraham is not the only one in our tradition to experience the sense of being “other” and having to wrestle with what that means. King David calls himself a stranger in Psalms, in the book of Chronicles in the TaNaKh, we are called, “strangers before God.” Throughout history, the Jewish people have put down roots, we have settled and called many places home. Yet, time and again, no matter where we live, the time period or location, we do not get to be comfortable without wrestling with these questions and identities. We still need to ask – are we considered “other” in this land, as well? Or are we residents, is this home, is this a place we truly feel like we belong in our schools, our workplaces, our extracurriculars, our institutions?
We do not get the privilege of assuming any answers to these questions. This is not a new condition or experience for Jews, but it is a new experience for many of us – and it is hard, disappointing, disheartening and exhausting.
Even recent publications call out these exact feelings of exhaustion and otherness- in David Baddiel’s (bah-deel) book, Jews Don’t Count, he attempts to identify why even hate against Jews is not seen as equal to hate amongst other groups. Even feeling hated can bring a feeling of loneliness, as we do not even belong with other minorities. we are still somehow different, somehow other. Baddiel’s explains: “that Jews are the only objects of racism who are imagined – by the racists – as both low and high status. Jews are stereotyped, […] in all the same ways that other minorities are – as lying, thieving, dirty, vile, stinking – but also as moneyed, privileged, powerful, and secretly in control of the world. Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters.” (p19- Jews Don’t Count). He describes this phenomenon as a racist mythology.This is the very same mythology that has left Jews feeling like we no longer belong in liberal nor conservative circles in the US. It’s this mythology that tells us that we need to check our privilege, but that we are also victims.
It’s this same mythology that echoes in the back of our minds when we think – well, how oppressed are we? Well aren’t we privileged? Well weren’t we all refugees at one point? Did our families not struggle, too? This mythology leaves no room for an in – between, nor nuance, let alone discussion. Instead, it leaves us with lists of questions rattling in our minds and all of these questions remind us that we are different, we are “other.” And having to ask ourselves these questions is exhausting.
These are not just hypothetical questions or even the ones that may keep us up late at night. For myself, these questions have been almost daily. For example, earlier this year, in a group chat with close friends, someone posted a meme, an image, including misinformation about Zionists and Palestinians. My heart began racing. My body became tense. I could not focus on anything else. I sat for hours deciding if I should say anything as hundreds of questions flooded my mind.
Is it my responsibility to correct my friends? To speak out against misinformation? To make sure that my people are represented factually and accurately? Maybe I’m making this bigger than it is – he’s my friend, he’s well-educated, I don’t need to question if he meant anything deeper, do I? Is this all in my head? Maybe I’m taking things too personally? If I don’t say anything, am I perpetuating a narrative, am I becoming a bystander to misinformation that could potentially turn to hate speech? What if I ruin a friendship by calling him out? How would I even approach this? I went back and forth for hours. One simple message in a group text occupied my whole being until finally I sent a text. We had not even talked yet, and I was exhausted.
When we finally picked up the phone, I began trying to shuffle words together to talk to my friend about his post. To explain this impossible dichotomy. Whatever the words I said, I also know what I didn’t share. How long I thought before I reached out. How scared I was to start the conversation. And how incredibly alone, othered, and exhausted I was, that I cannot even exist in a casual group text, without having to navigate the realities of being Jewish in the US right now. If this isn’t enough, the past year, I received countless texts and calls from friends and family asking to explain social media posts and headlines.
I’ve heard from alumni groups at my Undergraduate University. I have been forced to either be silent or become an explainer, a defender and a corrector of misinformation. Even in the moments that I chose not to raise my voice, my mind was still flooded with all of these questions. I am physically and mentally exhausted.
On Rosh Hashanah, we come together as a community to celebrate, to bring in joy and sweetness and moreover, to lean into the theme of renewal. This year, renewal is not just something we sing about, but something we desperately need.
The prayer that we sing often throughout this season is Hashivenu, which translates to – “Return us God, to Yourself, And let us come back; Renew our days as of old!” The words come from Lamentations, a book that is, in itself, a book of exhaustion, asking questions that cannot be answered and instead, the people turn to words of poetry and to tears. The Book of Lamentations serves as the permission we do not often give ourselves- the permission to be sad, to be angry, to be exhausted, to cry and to shout.
Rosh Hashanah, reminds us that we are not alone in these feelings. We not only can turn to God and to prayer, but Hashiveinu, we can return to one another. We have community, we are not alone.
Yet, here we are on Rosh Hashanah- A time when we draw strength from community. We acknowledge that the people sitting next to us, have quite likely experienced these feelings of being “other,” of loneliness and exhaustion. Hashiveinu, we pray and we ask God to return and renew us, because we do not have any more bandwidth to ask ourselves. When we recognize and remember that we are not alone in these experiences, it gives us hope and gives us the strength to persevere, even in the face of our loneliness. Hashivenu – renew us God, give us a relief from this exhaustion, bring us back to moments of holiness, moments of peace, and God, help us to remember that while we are so often “other” we are never alone in these feelings and in this experience.
Ken Yiheye Ratzon, May it be God’s will