Choosing Life with a Stranger (Rosh Hashanah Day)
The pandemic has given many of us time to reflect on and reach out to friends and family we’ve lost touch with. A few months ago, I got back in touch with my cousin, Deb. We are both grandchildren of Frank Shurman, a German Holocaust survivor. One day after we reflected on the challenges of our time, she said: “let’s just try to be as good as Mrs. Hamilton.”
Let me back up.
On August 23rd, 1938, after his father’s business was shut down by the Gestapo, my grandfather heard about an American woman on holiday in Germany. Out of desperation, he reached out, through a friend, to ask for her help. In his biography, All Our Hope Are You, he writes: “she was a stranger…and forty-five minutes after meeting her…she promised me that she would sponsor [me and my family] coming to America.”
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Yesterday I spoke about Rosh Hashanah’s invitation to us, b’charta b’chayyim – to renew our commitment to life, even in the face of the world’s brokenness and our own limitations. But how can ordinary people like you and me make a life-giving choice — when it means doing something out of character for us, something we might never have done or imagined doing before?
Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, a 20th century rabbi, and teacher of mussar — a set of practices that enable us to act more ethically in our day to day lives — says, during the High Holy Days, people are not judged for what they have done up to this point in their lives, even if they have acted wickedly; rather they are judged solely based on the choices they make on Rosh Hashanah, itself!
According to Wolbe, if we act righteously, for even a moment, we are judged to be righteous.
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When Deb said, “let’s try to be as good as Mrs. Hamilton” I was aware I’m here because of her, but also afraid I wouldn’t have been brave enough to do what she had done, if I were in her shoes. Somehow, Mrs. Hamilton was moved over the course of 45 minutes with a total stranger to risk her comfort and safety to help my grandfather and his family.
If she could make a choice like this, could I? What resources would I need to give up? What risks might I need to take? Would I overcome my own impulses toward self-preservation that drive me to protect myself from the heartbreak that goes with getting involved in an enterprise that seems bound to fail?
Rabbi Wolbe tells us to put these kinds of worries aside. To start small. To just try to be good at this moment. He writes:
When we stand before our Creator on Rosh HaShanah – let us not let our thoughts get caught up in our past deeds, or the future we desire for ourselves. Rather, let us be who we aspire to be today, in how we relate to ourselves, the Holy One, and one another.
In this way, he suggests, however we act on Rosh Hashanah can plant the seeds for who we will become. If we commit to being good, just for now — speaking and acting with generosity, kindness, and respect towards those we might encouter at this time — it’s likely we’ll able to extend these qualities toward our neighbors, our caregivers, or the total stranger who will ask for our help at some point in the coming year.
And if we do commit to being good: generous, compassionate, patient…just for now, who knows what it will mean to others, and to those they love?
May we all be blessed with the clarity to discern who we want to be this year, and the trust that, if we start now with small acts of care, we will be able to become agents of transformation and healing for a world that so desperately needs it.
Amen.