Divrei Azriel: On the Shabbos Project
Divrei Azriel: On the Shabbos Project
Imagine yourself walking in to the dim lighting of a small cafe. Seated at a table on the far end is your long estranged brother. Seeing the back of his head as you enter, you suddenly recall everything that had torn you apart. Though in youth you had been very close, your brother had become a madman. In his political views, his religious beliefs, his mannerisms, clothing, and social affiliations. He had become a person you barely recognized. One that you didn't understand, whose language you didn't speak, who made you feel uneasy, even spiteful and angry.

At some point along the way the changes were just too much to bear, and the relationship had simply snapped. You had moved along different paths in silence and perhaps even indifference. Now summoned to meet him again after all these years on some trivial family business, you wonder what words there can possibly be left to relate to him with. As you approach the table and sit down across from him, a cold and telling look in his eyes informs you that he feels exactly the same way about you.

With difficulty you begin the discussions of tedious family affairs; taxes on your father's estate, cemetery fees. It is clear that you each feel burdened by the other's presence, uncomfortable and embarrassed to be seen with such a person.

Discussing who will be tasked with disposing of an old canoe, your brother remarks wistfully, "I haven't seen that thing since the camping trip we took when we were twelve?" "What trip?," you reply quickly without really thinking about the words. Even before he answers it comes back to you in a rush of powerful memories. Pine trees, days spent hiking and fishing, nights building fires, telling stories. You remember the endless laughter watching your father try in vain to pitch a tent only to have it collapse with him inside. You remember dreaming together, talking about the future as you skipped stones along a still lake at dawn.

Looking up from the figures scrawled on the cafe's napkins you see your brother, before ideology and lifestyle had come between you, back in a time when you could innocently and simply be together. You know that the ideologies and the life he has chosen may never change, but you sense something drawing you to him from a deeper place. Calling you to set aside ideologies, if just for a while, and be family again. Catching your eye from across the table you know he feels the same.

In his book Tomer Devora, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero explains the meanings of Hashem's Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, and the corresponding ways in which we should behave to emulate Him. The beauty of his language in describing the thirteenth attribute called "from former days" speaks for itself:
 
"There is an attribute which Hashem exercises with the Jewish people: When the merit of our forefathers and similar merits have been depleted, what should He do? On their own terms the Jewish people are not worthy at all [of forgiveness], but it is written 'I remembered to you the kindness  of your youth, the love of your wedding canopy.' Hashem literally recalls former days, a love that existed before, and has mercy on the Jewish people..."
 
Rabbi Cordovero explains the parallel we must exhibit in our own behavior:
 
"So must a person accustom himself in his actions with others, such that even if the other doesn't possess any of the merits mentioned (in the previous attributes) he should say, 'there was already a time before they sinned and at that time, or at a time before then, they were upright people.' He should recall for them the good things they did in their childhood...and in this way there will be no person who is unworthy of kindness, and prayers for their wellbeing, and for mercy."
         
Klal Yisrael, the Jewish people,  is a people of diverse and strongly held ideological views, and one that has become splintered by these views. We have groups that are so different that they can scarcely understand or communicate with one another. During days as trying as these, both for those in Israel and around the world, one's thoughts are recalled to the perennial questions of unity and love for the fellow Jew.

Perhaps the formulation of Rabbi Cordovero can show us where to start. We all feel committed to our ideological perspectives, and we all perceive, often rightly so, the faults and sins of the other. But if we seek to follow the ways of Hashem we must find a plane of relationship, which exists before ideology casts judgment. We must uncover a substratum of connection and affinity robust enough to bridge distances of culture, language, and variant life experience. In a word we need to rediscover, deeply, what it means to be a family. As Rabbi Cordovero indicates this feeling is not a superficial one. It emerges from the recognition of the value and goodness of the other. In spite of everything we perceive we can find inside the other a brother or sister who still maintains the innocence and purity of a child.

The Shabbos Project, among its many wonderful qualities, creates the space for this kind of encounter. For a moment in which we can simply rediscover the joy of being together, around the Shabbos table, as family. It is a tremendous opportunity to join together with Jews the world over coming together in a way we seldom do these days, but b'ezrat Hashem will continue to do more and more in the future, now that we have experienced it.. 


Divrei Azriel is edited by Gidon Schneider