I was blessed to spend this week at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, during its 150th anniversary season. When I’ve had to explain what Chautauqua is to friends and loved ones, I’ve described it as some combination of Brigadoon, Mackinac Island, and adult summer camp for people who listen to National Public Radio. There are lectures and classes and cultural events galore, families that have been coming for generations, and an aspirationally utopian spirit about the place.
With thanks to IJS board member Bill Klingensmith (a fourth-generation Chautauquan), I was invited to give a talk as part of the summer-long interfaith lecture series, which is held at 2 pm every afternoon in the Hall of Philosophy, an outdoor amphitheater with doric columns (that also gives you some idea of the flavor–picture is of me speaking there). I took the opportunity to talk about some new work we’re developing at IJS around responding mindfully to antisemitism, particularly through an approach grounded in the intergenerational nature of Jewish trauma. I encourage you to watch the lecture and the Q&A and let us know what you think. (There’s a paywall, but I can tell you the $2.99 subscription is more than worth it.)
A particularly special element of this visit was that I was housed in a small B&B with the other Religion Department speakers for the week. And thus, by design, every day I had breakfast and spent time with an amazing group: Rev. Michael Curry, the head of the Episcopal Church (you may remember his famous sermon at the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry); Dr. Sunita Puri, a palliative care physician who draws on her Hindu background to write powerfully about death, dying, and living; Rev. Amy Butler, a pioneering Baptist minister who is leading a revolution in how Christians think about the work of the church. And we spent time with friends of theirs, with the staff at Chautauqua, and with regular folks who would just walk up, introduce themselves, and ask questions–all of which expanded the circle of conversation.
I found these conversations and these new friendships to be truly nourishing, and I think the same was true for the rest of the group. There was a lot of laughter as we identified the many realities and challenges we share across lines of faith and religion. And there was plenty of learning–about those realities and challenges, about the particular contours of each of our work. I had the advantage of speaking midweek, so I had more time to refine my talk–and those conversations caused me to make some adjustments (which were, hopefully, improvements).
Parashat Devarim (Deut. 1:1-3:22) is always read immediately before the Ninth of Av, our day of deepest sadness and shattering. On that day, we read the Book of Lamentations, Eicha in Hebrew, the opening line of which is, “Eicha – Alas, lonely sits the city once great with people!” In a linguistic preview, Moses utters similar words at the beginning of Deuteronomy: “Eicha – How can I bear alone the trouble of you, and the burden, and the bickering” (Deut. 1:12).
While our attention is drawn to the opening word of both verses–Eicha: “alas,” or “how”–the third word of both verses is also shared: Badad (alone) and l’vadi (by myself). I would suggest that parallelism invites us to some reflection. For me, it immediately evokes God’s words upon creating Adam: “It is not good for Adam to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). While solitude, the capacity to be happy in our own company, is essential for our well-being, it is ultimately a precondition for being in relationship with others–as intimate partners, yes, but also as friends, neighbors, and fellow images of the Divine in creation.
What we allow ourselves to experience on Tisha b’Av, then, is a profound loneliness, disconnection, isolation. This is a gift of the Jewish calendar, to concentrate that feeling in one day. We do need to feel it, to experience it. But then we emerge from it as we begin a seven-week journey of repair and renewal, en route to Rosh Hashanah–not alone, but together with friends and community.
One of the stories we justifiably tell ourselves about Jewish suffering is that we are alone. “None came to help her,” cries the prophet (Lamentations 1:7). Yet by making that the primary or only narrative we tell ourselves, we risk creating a self-fulfilling prophecy: no one has ever been our friend and no one ever will, so we have to go it alone. And I would suggest that, ultimately, that is not a healthy narrative to tell ourselves and it is not a healthy way to live. Moses himself shows us as much. Immediately after he wonders how he could possibly lead the people on his own, he and God agree on a plan to recruit more leaders (Deut. 1:13-14). He is no longer on his own; he has partners to share the burden. He is not, in fact, alone.
On reflection, I have found that my time at Chautauqua, and especially my many conversations with friends new and old, have helped me to recalibrate my settings in this zone between solitude and loneliness. It seems to me that’s what Jewish history and Jewish life have long demanded of us. And while I believe we need to remain clear-eyed about the real threats to Jews and Jewish life today–they are very real, and they are very dangerous–I also hope we can nurture our capacity to trust good people from beyond our community, to imagine a shared future together, to sense that we all can be at home. To me, that is a required stop on the road to redemption.
