November 6, 2014

I was carrying my daughter into the house when a gecko that was hanging on the door jumped into the house. He dashed behind the garbage, then behind the fridge, then down the hall. I chased him, and was amazed at its speed and ability to camouflage itself.

It turns out geckos are quite unique in their ability to run at a speed up to 20 body lengths per second, managing to unstick their feet as effectively as they manage to stick them. It has been suggested that their trick is to “play the angles.” Lizards adjust the angles of their hairs by a few degrees to turn their stickiness on then they merely shift them back. It takes almost no energy and happens instantaneously.

Another animal, the ubiquitous gray squirrel, also has an odd ability. Its hind legs can literally reverse direction (by 180 degrees), which gives squirrels a nearly unique ability to climb down a tree head first (unlike cats and dogs, for example). This ability has served the squirrel well for survival in arboreal areas.

There is a significant leadership learning opportunity here. How can we develop this type of adaptability where we are sticky (rooted) and yet un-sticky (versatile) as well, or have our feet reverse to go up and down with equal ease? How can we “play the angels” where we can bend ourselves backwards, scaling walls, and adapting ourselves to change, grow, and journey as we must?

The Jewish people have been forced throughout history to become like geckos. We have engaged locally with the culture we have lived in yet we have been ready to leave when we have had to (generally under unpleasant circumstances). We not only travelled throughout the desert for 40 years, we have journeyed from country to country throughout history.

There is a depressingly long list of areas (and even nations) from which Jews have been expelled. These include England (1290), central France (1306), Spain (1492), and Portugal (1497), and in 1348 many Jews fled modern Germany after they were absurdly accused of having caused the bubonic plague by poisoning wells. Even in areas where Jews were allowed to live, restrictions were placed. Even the modern word “ghetto,” often denoting an area in which a minority are forced to live due to political or economic reasons, has its origins in Jewish history. In 1516, the city-state of Venice forced its Jews to move to an area by an old iron foundry (“geto” in the local dialect), and were locked in every night.

In response, Jews often moved to modern-day Poland, the Ottoman Empire, and other areas in northern Africa, but even here Jews were frequently the target of attacks, most notoriously the pogroms (the word has been translated as “attack”) in what was then Russia (modern-day Poland) in 1881, when Jews were blamed for the assassination of the tsar. In three waves (1881, 1903-1906, and 1917-1921), these organized riots subjected hundreds of Jewish communities to murder, rape, and destruction of property in an unlimited frenzy of violence that often went on for days. Still later in the 20^th century, the Holocaust threatened the annihilation of all Jews, and even today there are existential threats to Jews worldwide.

As difficult as these persecutions have been, hardship can compel us to search for new opportunities, a theme expressed very well by the mythologist and writer Joseph Campbell (in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living):

We must be willing to get rid of
the life we’ve planned, so as to have
the life that is waiting for us.

The old skin has to be shed
before the new one can come.

If we fix on the old, we get stuck.
When we hang onto any form,
we are in danger of putrefaction.

Hell is life drying up.

Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885) epitomized this spirit (New Yorkers may be familiar with Montefiore Hospital, named after him). He was born in Italy, and shortly after his family moved to England (Jews had drifted back in small numbers over the centuries). After amassing a fortune in business, he devoted the last half-century of his life to philanthropy in the international Jewish community. He traveled to what is now Israel seven times, and tried to buy land and promote industry for the small Jewish population. He also traveled to Russia, Morocco, Romania, and other nations in an effort to stop persecution against Jews. For example, in 1840 he was instrumental in getting the Sultan to defuse a “blood libel” (the bigoted lie that Jews use the blood of Christians to make matzo for Passover) campaign against Jews by issuing a decree denouncing this falsehood and prohibiting its dissemination. For his activities, he was knighted by Queen Victoria.

While the list of Jewish scientists and intellectuals (and their impact on scientific developments and academia) who came to America from Europe, often fleeing from persecution, are well known, the contribution of Jewish immigrants from Europe and their descendants on American popular culture should be noted. American popular music (e.g., “Tin Pan Alley” and Broadway musicals) was dominated by people such as Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Sigmund Romberg, and Richard Rodgers. Others who fled from Germany after 1933 included Kurt Weill and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who wrote the music for many famous Hollywood films of the 1930s (including an Oscar for The Adventures of Robin Hood) after an illustrious operatic career in Europe. Even a lesser known composer such as Werner R. Heymann, who had written successful songs and movie scores in Germany, managed to write the music for the film Ninotchka. That so many Yiddish, Russian, and German-speaking Jews could make the transition to America is a tribute to their astonishing perseverance. Sadly, so many others never had the opportunity to escape.

This resilient value is embedded within Jewish law as well. We must be rooted in tradition and yet evolving to meet new challenges. We must be “sticky” to our past and yet “un-stuck” to journey. Sinai was a moment in history and yet the rabbis also teach that “Each and every day the Divine Voice issues from Sinai.”

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner wrote:

There are many ways to confront history. Some people are Luftmenschen (sky people), living beyond history in hermit retreats or in the theological clouds of other worlds waiting for God. Others try to be Ubermenschen (super people), grabbing history by the throat and drinking its life blood for their own power and vainglory. But not Jews. They get neither peace not power; instead, they must be “Grundmenschen” (grounded people), ones stuck with barely enough power to survive on this earth. Their survival is not ensured seeking it but rather in accord with one principle. Remember, once you were a slave. You know deep inside what it is like to be a stranger, other, powerless, (God was in this place, 112).

In the end I caught the gecko (to the great relief of my wife and kids) but that’s only due to luck. Or maybe I’m learning a little bit about how to play the angles.

In a spiritual sense, we might recognize our greater interdependence:

God is the ocean and we are the waves. In some sense each wave has its moment in which it is distinguishable as a somewhat separate entity. Nevertheless, no wave is entirely distinct from the ocean which is its substantial ground. The waves are surface manifestations of the ocean. Our knowledge of the ocean is largely dependent on the way it manifests itself in the waves. (Richard L. Rubenstein, Morality and Eros, 133).

Humanity and Divinity are interconnected like an ocean and waves. We are to cling to the big picture (the ocean) while also tending to the small facets (our waves). It is in this back-and-forth relationship that we oscillate between acceptance and rejection, stagnancy and mobility, calmness and urgency. Our endurance as a people has depended on this.

 

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Executive Director of the Valley Beit Midrash, the Founder & President of Uri L’Tzedek, the Founder and CEO of The Shamayim V’Aretz Institute and the author of six books on Jewish ethics.  Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America.”