With the Resilience of the Reed (Kol Nidrei 5785)

With the Resilience of the Reed
Rabbi Rebecca Rosenthal, Kol Nidrei 5785

This summer, I got really absorbed watching Olympic surfing. Now, I’m a New York City kid through and through, so surfing is not part of my culture. But watching the surfing drew me in. There is the drama of the huge waves, never knowing if the surfer is going to ride them out or go under. There is the patience required to find the perfect wave, and there is the bravery in knowing that it is only a small board that stands between you and being pulled under. There is the danger that comes with knowing that a mistake could cause you to crash or, in the Olympic competition, to be hurtled into a shallow coral reef.

Watching and listening to the ongoing surfing commentary, I came to understand, to my surprise, that the more relaxed you are on the board, the more you can be flexible and bend, the easier it is to correct a mistake or ride out of a big wave. The minute a surfer tenses up and tries to stand and push against the wave, that’s the moment when all their carefully calibrated plans go awry. And, since I’m not a surfer but a rabbi, I can’t help but see a metaphor here.

For a long time, we have been living in a state of constant tension. Not just since October 7th, not just since the election ramped up, not just since COVID. I can’t even identify when it started. We can feel trouble coming closer and closer. Or maybe it is already here, a wave that will soon overtake us. Each of us has our own rushing water coming at us from behind—for some it is the feeling that the Jewish community is under attack, for some it is the feeling that the outcome of the election (whichever side you are on) will lead to catastrophe. For some it is private waves of illness or grief. For some, it is the literal flood waters of a hurricane. But for all of us, it is the utter exhaustion of having to live like this. We appear to have only two options: fight it or figure out how to adapt and change in response to the rushing water.

There is a story in the Jerusalem Talmud_¹, where King David is digging the foundation of the Temple in Jerusalem and he comes upon a broken piece of pottery, which is blocking the waters of the deep from rising up and flooding the world. David is about to lift it out and the shard stops him, saying I was put here to block the rising waters. It is I who stands between you and the destruction of the world. David, not being one to listen to reason, pulls out the fragment and floods the earth.

This moment resonates with me, King David’s hand hovering over that tiny piece of pottery. We, like King David, feel as though we are one false move away from the end of the world. We may not be actively looking to remove the shard, but the tiniest wisp of wind could jostle it out of place and send the waves crashing over us. We are living alert to the threat, knowing that the waves are coming no matter what we do. And for some of us, the shard has been pulled and the water is here. The ever expanding wars between Israel and its neighbors, antisemitism, campus protests, the election, are shredding our ability to be resilient in the face of even the smallest problems, let alone the biggest ones. We are overwhelmed by grief, consumed by rage, by sadness, by fear, acting in destructive ways that surprise us and those around us. The waves come too large and too fast, some of our own making and many out of our control. We must develop tools to cope with the onslaught.

There is an understandable instinct to try and stand straight and tall in the face of unrelenting waves, or as a flood sends its destructive waters. We imagine that the taller and more firmly we stand, the less likely we are to be pulled under the water. But, in reality, If you find yourself in a flood, one of the worst things you can do is try to stand and walk through it. Even a small amount of rushing water can take you down, no matter how sturdy you imagine yourself to be. Or, to return to our surfing metaphor, if you stand straight on the board, you will end up under the wave, being pulled uncontrollably towards the reef.

We cannot survive by powering through, and our tradition cautions us against this way of thinking. In the Talmud², the rabbis spend a number of pages extolling the virtue not of the great, strong, and straight cedar tree, but of reeds. Yes, reeds. Reeds have many virtues, according to the rabbis. They have a strong network of roots that replenish even when they are cut, so reeds are able to withstand destruction and sprout again. Because of their underground network, reeds are not easily pulled up, and when the winds come, they can bend and sway, and not break. Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon taught that the Jewish people should be like a reed, gentle, flexible, strongly rooted.

I can hear the arguments against this, and I can make them in my own head. We have spent years being flexible, attaching ourselves to people or coalitions where we might not exactly fit. We have put the needs of others ahead of our own. And now it is time for someone else to bend. The world is too hostile, too complicated, too fragile, for us not to stand strong and protect ourselves.

And I get it. But we know that standing firm can also mean becoming brittle, becoming rigid, becoming easy to topple. It is not possible to seal ourselves so tightly that nothing uncomfortable permeates. Discomfort, physical, emotional, relational, is part of the human experience. We cannot avoid it. Be aware of it and where it resides in your heart and mind. When we stiffen in the face of mounting discomfort, even a small wave can knock us down. We need to figure out how to live with it so we are not destroyed by our rigidity.

So let’s return to Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon’s adage that we should be like a reed. His prescription that we must be strongly rooted, gentle and flexible aligns with the research about building resilience. For many of us, finding ways to be strongly rooted is easier than finding ways to be flexible. But, to be resilient, we need both. We need the balance. And we need to be honest with ourselves about where we have dug in. Without that introspection we might drown in our righteousness, isolated from the world.

In the midst of college protests last spring, a colleague who works at a campus Hillel set up a table and invited members of the community to talk to him about Israel. Did he hear some things that made him uncomfortable? No doubt. But day after day, he sat at the table and opened himself up to having conversations. He found a way to sit in the discomfort, without lashing out or closing off. He was strongly rooted in his love of Israel, he was flexible enough to hear things with which he disagreed, and he was gentle enough to create a space for those conversations to happen.

What are the benefits of approaching our discomfort with resilience instead of trying to fight it? Once we realize that there is another way, we can give ourselves the space to learn and grow. Such moments of connection can relieve us of some of the stress and pressure we are carrying around. And we might just learn something fundamental

I have some very close friends with whom I have strong disagreements about Israel and Gaza, as you must have too. Let me tell you, so much of what they post and say on this issue makes me incredibly uncomfortable. I have two choices. To cut them out of my life, or to continue our friendship, knowing that it will involve discomfort on both sides. I try my best to listen to what they say, to learn from it, to occasionally be changed by it. And I need them to listen to me as well. I can survive the discomfort, and so can they, and our friendship can bend but not break.

Reverend Ed Bacon³ talks about the three ways we can tell the story of our lives. We can make ourselves the hero, the victim, or the learner. If we are the hero or the victim, then we become enchanted by the certainty of our actions. We are right and we save the day, or we are right and we are persecuted for it. But we are definitely right. But, if we can see ourselves as the learners, we can build the resilience we need to ask ourselves new questions, and learn new answers.

Rabbi Sharon Brous comments on the value of this approach. She writes⁴, “To learn, we must get curious. When challenged, instead of fighting or fleeing, we can choose to stretch open our hearts. To shift from defensive to intrigued, to look at one another with wonder.

A commitment to learning allows us to see one another not as caricatures of evil, but as images of the Divine: broken and even beautiful. It calls us back to the sacred recognition of each other’s humanity—even or especially when we’ve been hurt. And it helps us make better choices next time.

Vulnerable, openhearted engagement, the learner’s path, is counter-instinctual in this era of so much certainty. But it is also, I believe, the only way we’ll begin to heal.”

Engaging in the extremely Jewish practice of being a lifelong learner is how we allow the challenges of our world to change us for the better instead of for the worse. If we are learners, if we allow ourselves to grow and stretch from discomfort, then we can change the landscape for the better. When the flood that King David unleashed receded, I imagine things looked different than they did at the start of his digging. But he chose to put the Temple there, to root this center of Jewish life on a place changed by a flood.

The waves and the floods are part of our world, and they probably always will be. Whether we manage to float and bend, or if we find ourselves submerged and knocked over, we will come out to find the landscape irrevocably changed. That is something we can count on. It is our reaction to that new landscape that matters. Have we managed to prepare ourselves to handle that change? Can we see possibility in the new landscape? If we only see destruction and desolation when the waters recede, then we are no better off than when we started digging

In a New York Times article⁵ from late August, the author Terry Tempest Williams described her experience in this summer’s flash floods in southeastern Utah. She wrote of the power of the rushing water to change everything in an instant, which we have seen with our own eyes over the last few weeks. And while I’m not sure she meant it as a High Holy Day sermon, here is what she wrote:

“The reformed landscape of newly carved arroyos and redistributed sediments exposed my two minds: One mind saw ruins. The other mind saw renewal.

Earth is speaking loud and clear through the forces of water, wind, and erosion. Are we listening and do we love the world enough to change?

If our answer is no, then we are standing in the ruins of our own making where what is coming is already here: suffering and more suffering.

Our lives and the lives of all we cherish depend on us saying yes.”

The steps we take between this Yom Kippur and the next will determine if we can survive the flood waters or if they will overtake us. Let us not look back on this moment next year and lament the ruins of our own making. Now is the time for self examination. Are we so committed to our own point of view that we are unable to bend? Can we find a way to stretch our mind and heart, even if it makes us uncomfortable? What would we be like, what would our community be like, what would our world be like, if we were more like a reed?

On this night, the holiest night of the year, may we find it in ourselves to move with the waves, to acknowledge change and discomfort, to learn from it with empathy, with compassion, with flexibility, with hope, and with love. And, if we find ourselves on dry land, on a new and renewed landscape, let us remember that it is our reed-like qualities that got us there. May we always be gentle, flexible, strongly rooted.

_{¹ Talmud Yerushalmi, Shanhedrin 10:2
²  Taanit 20b
³ https://spiritualbizmagazine.com/cover-story-reverend-ed-bacon/
⁴ https://www.jewelsofelul.com/elul-3-rabbi-sharon-brous-so-be-a-learner/
⁵ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/opinion/flash-floods-arizona-utah-climate-change.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb}