Life is Complicated

Delivered Erev Shabbat, August 4, 2023, 17 Av 5783; Parashat Eikev

I’ve always kept two small plaques visually present in my office. The first reads: “A Fit Mom is a Powerful Mom,” The second: “Without Chocolate, Life would be Darkness and Chaos.”

These two memes reflect seemingly opposing values, yet both, at least for me, are true. I love physical fitness. The gym is my happy place, as is any bike route. And I love chocolate; It provides me the perfect anecdote to chaos. I surely eat more than is appropriate for staying fit. Life and the human condition are full of contradictions, and I’m certainly no exception.

Just over a week ago, Jews throughout the world marked Tisha b’Av, the 9^th of Av, a day set aside for the commemoration of tragedy and destruction. It’s a day of lamentation, literally. We read the book of Eicha, Lamentations on Tisha b’Av. Just 6 days later, we mark Tu b’Av, the 15 of Av, a minor holiday celebrating love that the Talmud claims is one of the two best days of the entire Jewish calendar (B. Ta’anit 30b). The other of the two days? Yom Kippur. Yup. You heard that right. Tu b’Av, a holiday now celebrated as a day not unlike our American Valentine’s day was lifted up in late Antiquity, at least by R. Shimon ben Gamliel, as significant as Yom Kippur. Now the reasoning was surely tied to the desire to promote Jewish survival and perpetuate of lineage, but still, the connection is remarkable. Tu b’Av a holiday historically associated with matchmaking and love connections and Yom Kippur, the culmination of our season of repentance held together in one place in Talmudic textual tradition.

Also remarkable is how in the span of just six days we are asked to experience and move through such a broad spectrum of emotions. From the lows of sorrow and mourning to the highs of romantic love. In less than a week, we go from lamenting death and destruction to the equally potent, albeit far more joyful, celebration of love and connection. It seems a dramatic pivot, one that at least for me this summer, demands attention.

For the last 9 weeks, I’ve been working at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia fulfilling an internship experience in Spiritual Care, aka chaplaincy. This is not my first foray into hospital based, trauma informed spiritual care. This is my fourth internship. And, I’ve sat in the presence of trauma, disease, tragedy, and death in my roles as Cantor and Rabbi during my decades of experience in congregational life. This, however, is my first experience in a hospital devoted to the care of children. What is unique about CHOP isn’t the trauma or level of illness. I’ve kept company too many times than I’d like to count with those experiencing the depths of pain and trauma.

What has been enlightening and extraordinary is the opportunity to bear witness to the bittersweet and frequent coupling of joy and loss. Watching the playful nature of the nursing and child life specialist staff as they care for children enduring complicated and enduring medical issues. Witnessing how protective the care team is over “their” children and families even as they create and endure discomforts during their shifts. Sitting with new parents experiencing their immense joy over the birth of a child simultaneously with their unimaginable pain of having to accompany that child through illness and potentially make heart wrenching decisions.

Life is incredibly nuanced and complicated. What is clear, however, is that conflicting emotions can be shared in one space. Joy and pain, sorrow and love, can all be fully felt simultaneously.

In just a couple of weeks, we will begin the month of Elul and our formal preparations for the yamim nora-im, our High Holiday season. If we accept the midrashic notion that the world was created on Rosh Hashanah, then by extension, these last weeks of Av along with the month of Elul comprise the days when God is preparing to give birth to the world.

Modern mystics view this period as a pregnancy of sorts, marked by deep and possibly conflicted feelings: what’s in store? Am I ready? Is the love I give and receive enough? Will I be able to withstand challenges in the year ahead? What about the world in which we live? Can it withstand forces of destruction?

The coupling of Tisha b’Av and Tu b’Av, just six days a part can remind us that we can hold diametrically opposed feelings along with uncertainty in our heart, and we can celebrate joy even in that complicated uncertainty. We can acknowledge the love we experience and share even while there is tragedy around us. One emotion doesn’t have to cancel the other out. We can hold seemingly opposing emotions in our hearts — in harmony.

This week’s Torah portion, Eikev, contains within a binary way of thinking. It opens with a pure distillation of the Deuteronomonistic theology. If you do XYZ, I will love you and make you great, God says. However, if you don’t do XYZ, you will be cursed. This notion that love can only be felt under certain ideal conditions doesn’t resonate for me, and I don’t believe it holds up against reality. I can understand it as an attempt to consolidate community (its most apparent intent), but I cannot understand it as a viable approach to existence.

In just six weeks, we will welcome a new Jewish year and our High Holiday season of teshuvah. I’m not big on resolutions but allow me to challenge all of us to lean into the lesson of our two Av holidays as we look ahead to Elul as opposed to the lesson of Eikev.

Can we carry some of the love and connectivity we celebrate on Tu b’Av with us throughout our season of introspection and judgment? Can we hold compassion for and judgement of ourselves together in the same space? Can we find contentment, joy even, as we approach the potentially painful process of deconstructing and taking a cheshbon ha-nefesh, an accounting of our souls? I hope we reach can, for that ability to hold opposing emotions in one heart is at the core of our very humanity. It is also what makes us holy.

Ken y’hi ratzon.