Greeting Every Person With a Smile and With Joy
Within the OU and its departments, we intend to focus meaningful effort on considering and addressing the issue of sinat chinam, providing both food for thought and practical action points that can help us begin to demonstrate care for each other and ameliorate our nation’s divisions by adjusting both our thinking and actions. We invite you into this process in the hope that you may find it meaningful and helpful, add your own energies to this effort, and be in touch to contribute your own thoughts and ideas.
Rosh Chodesh Elul is when we begin to undertake serious reflection on the challenges of the past year and the opportunities and goals of the future. The current discord and rifts within Klal Yisrael pose a huge challenge, undermining our fundamental identification as goy echad ba’aretz and visibly affecting our ability to work together, benefit from each other, influence each other, and stand together as a unified community to confront our many external challenges. Seeing what is happening, some have gone so far as to say we are choosing to self-destruct, Heaven forbid. And those are just the issues that grab the headlines, the dramatic discord bringing protesters to the streets and segmenting our communities.
It does not end there – and it may not start there. We have no boundaries within ourselves; what we do in the public sphere we will also do in our personal relationships. A respected Rav once took an accounting of the time he spent counseling and supporting the members of his community and discovered that most of the issues he was helping them with were not heaven-sent occurrences of illness and death but man-made conflicts between spouses, relatives, neighbors, and colleagues. Moshe Rabbeinu bemoaned the fact that the interminable quarreling that we engaged in necessitated the appointment of a judge for every ten people (see Sforno Devarim 1:12). Too often we hear that it is hard to work with or do business within the community, that we may be insufficiently fair or gracious. We are voluntarily introducing difficulty and suffering into our lives.
The second Beit Mikdash was destroyed even though Jews were engaged in Torah, mitzvot, and acts of kindness, due to the prevalence of sinat chinam, vain hatred. That hatred was manifest in matters both communal and personal, in the sectarianism that corrupted Jewish life, the political divisions between the peacemakers and the war-mongering baryonim, and the petty interpersonal arguments such as the infamous wedding invitation mistakenly sent to Bar Kamtza (Gittin 55b). Once we make the critical decision to embrace conflict, we will find it everywhere.
It is therefore worthwhile to shift gears away from arguing and towards caring, to become students of Aharon who loved peace and pursued it, loved people and brought them closer to Torah (Avot 1:12). We need to grapple with the big and the small, refining how we deal with both the big picture ideological and political rifts as well as our personal relationships and interactions, understanding that improvement in one will enhance the other.
I, for one, plan to start small, by putting away my ear pods when walking in streets and hallways and noticing and acknowledging the people around me. This seems like a good first step, an opportunity to demonstrate and authentically feel some of the love for people that is characteristic of Aharon’s passionate pursuit of peace.
As a communal Rav, I developed a conscious and simple habit. When visiting hospitals and nursing homes, grim and busy places, I tried to smile at everyone I saw in the halls, whether medical staff or orderlies, patients or their family members. While some were too busy to notice or had their own earphones in, it was wonderful to see the impact on others of simply being noticed and acknowledged and it deepened my own care for others.
There are two similar statements in Pirkei Avot, Shammai’s teaching (1:16) that one should be “mekabel kol ha’adam b’sever panim yafot — greet each person with a pleasant face,” and Rabbi Yishmael’s teaching (3:12) that one should be “mekabel kol adam b’simchah — greet every person with joy.” Which is it? With a pleasant countenance or with joy? Rav Leib Nekritz of the Novardok school of Mussar explained beautifully and simply that the pleasant face Shammai directed us to put on is to gladden and uplift the other, while Rabbi Yishmael guided us to feel the happiness of seeing a fellow Jew and to let the greeting bring us authentic joy.
That is my first commitment to action. Rather than resolve the national debate over a hostage deal, I will start small, focusing outside of myself so I can try to notice and care for others a bit more. It cannot end there. There are serious issues that cannot be avoided. But perhaps by beginning to passionately pursue peace and show love for others, the greater peace we all seek will get a bit closer.
And please, do me one favor. If you see me walking around with my ear pods in, I would appreciate if you would smile at me and remind me to take them out.