Ugly, Empty, Beautiful, Full
At the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown in Israel in the Spring of 2020, we at the Blaustein Center for Pastoral Counseling at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem wanted to use our tools to offer community support, so we opened (in collaboration with the popular Jerusalem cafe and bookstore Tmol Shilshom) a Zoom Beit Midrash (house of study) named “Meaning In A Time Of Corona.” With the exception of Shabbat, the Beit Midrash operated daily during the days of the full lockdown and focused on studying Jewish sources that raised existential questions. The days of Corona undermined the individual's sense of stability and exacerbated the need to engage with fundamental fears. The Beit Midrash continues to meet once a week.
In order to grapple with some of the key issues emerging in these pandemic times, I share a Talmudic legend that I often use in the framework of bibliotherapy, which we taught in our virtual Beit Midrash.
The legend appears in several sources and versions in ancient Jewish literature. I chose to use the one from the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Ta'anit 20 a-b:
The Sages taught: A person should always be soft like a reed, not stiff like a cedar. It occurred that Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, came from Migdal Gedor, from his rabbi’s house, and he was riding on a donkey and strolling on the bank of the river. He was very happy, and his head was swollen with pride because he had studied much Torah.
He happened upon an exceedingly ugly person, who said to him: Greetings to you, my rabbi, but Rabbi Elazar did not return his greeting. Instead, Rabbi Elazar said to him: Worthless [literally: empty, “reika”] person, what an ugly man! Are all the people of your city as ugly as you? The man said to him: I do not know, but you should go and say to the Artisan Who made me: How ugly is the vessel you made. When Rabbi Elazar realized that he had sinned, he descended from his donkey and prostrated himself before him, and he said to the man: I have sinned against you; forgive me. The man said to him: I will not forgive you until you go to the Artisan Who made me and say: How ugly is the vessel you made.
The rabbi walked behind the man, until they reached his city. The people of his city came out to greet the sage, saying to him: Greetings to you, rabbi, rabbi, master, master. The man said to them: Who are you calling “rabbi, rabbi?” They said to him: To this man, who is walking behind you. He said to them: If this man is a rabbi, may there not be many like him among the Jewish people. They asked him: For what reason do you say this? He said to them: He did such and such to me. They said to him: Even so, forgive him, as he is a great Torah scholar. He said to them: For your sake, I forgive him, provided that he accepts upon himself not to become accustomed to behaving like this. Immediately, Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, entered and taught: A person should always be soft like a reed and he should not be stiff like a cedar. And therefore, due to its gentle qualities, the reed merited that a quill is taken from it to write with it a Torah scroll, and the scrolls in phylacteries, and mezuzot.
I first encountered a topical use of this legend many years ago in a newspaper interview. A young man with Down Syndrome told the reporter that he quoted this legend in response to children mocking him. He would reply to his tormentors: “go and say to the Artisan Who made me: How ugly is the vessel you made.” Excited, I cut out and saved the interview.
In those days I still did not know that I, too, would have a daughter with special needs, and that the time would come when I too would lean on the legend of the “ugly man,” using it as a moral support in difficult times. Let’s consider the story as presented in the Talmud, first in a fairly literal and then in a more metaphorical way.
A sage has completed his period of study and is riding on his donkey by the river. Different versions of the tale give the rabbi different names. We will never, therefore, know who was the arrogant sage, perched on a donkey, who calls another person a stranger, “empty,” and “ugly,” and then insults an entire city.
The name of the sage does not really matter since this sage is me, is us. We all fall into the pit of arrogance and condescension sometimes, riding on a cloud of self-love, turning others into unnecessary objects.
The phrase “and his head was swollen with pride because he had studied much Torah” exists only in few manuscript versions, and yet it is my favorite. Someone over the generations has seen a need to emphasize that Torah study can cause rudeness. There is a danger of alienation and condescension in the scholar’s disengagement from the community. Our rabbi in the tale falls prey to this danger.
The “ugly man” sought to congratulate the rabbi, and in return suffered alienation and insults. The rabbi calls him reika (empty), claims that he is extremely ugly and ponders aloud the question, which today we would call racist[L1] : “Are all the people of your city as ugly as you?”
The first turning point in the legend occurs when the “ugly man” refuses to bear the insult. “No, I didn’t create myself,” he tells the rabbi, “God, who created a wise scholar like you, also created me. So, complain to God.” If there is “ugliness” or “deviation” in humanity, then all of these also exist in God, in Whose image we were created. Thus, insensitivity and rudeness become an opportunity for theological discourse.
I found another topical translation of the legend at the Pride Parade in Jerusalem in 2016, a year after a religious fanatic murdered Shira Banki, a high school girl who had participated in the parade. Along with expressions of shock and condemnation, some rabbis continued to curse and demonize LGBTQ people. Such voices are heard in 2020 as well, concerning the debate around “conversion therapy.” Back in 2016, a charismatic rabbi named Yigal Levinstein said about the LGBTQ community: “there is a crazy movement here. People have lost touch with the normality of life. And this group is driving the entire country crazy.” [L2] Following the expression of such opinions and in response to the dreadful murder, a large pride parade was held in Jerusalem in 2016 in which Orthodox rabbis and community members participated.
I was privileged to receive from a group of Orthodox LGBTQ activists a placard bearing a picture of the rabbi who cursed them accompanied by a quote from our Talmudic legend: “go and say to the Artisan Who made me.” My Orthodox LGBTQ friends chose to reply to Rabbi Levinstein by using ancient Jewish vocabulary.
In our tale, the “ugly man” repeatedly demands from the rabbi to direct his hurtful words toward heaven. For him, the difficult event is an invitation to theological and spiritual engagement, and he will not grant forgiveness without it. Eventually, he accepts the rabbi’s apology, if only because of the pleading of his fellow citizens – who, according to the bigoted rabbi, are also “ugly.” In his consent to forgive he attaches an interesting condition: “provided that he accepts upon himself not to become accustomed to behave like this.” Every time I study this legend I ask myself, why did he not demand more, why did he not say, “provided that he accepts upon himself never again to behave like this?”
The “ugly man” is a wonderful and compassionate person. He knows that the rabbi and his friends, as well as many others, will again fall into the trap of crass stereotyping, and that there will be more insults and insensitive comments in the future. Knowing human nature, he is willing to forgive even those who succeed only at times, even those who fall here and there, as long as they make an effort.
Who, then, is truly ugly in this legend?
In light of our current social and political predicament in this time of plague, this tale can be read as a call to look critically at all in positions of authority and influence, even those who are revered and respected. I read this legend as suggesting that we must understand that there is no leader who will do good and not sin, and we have the responsibility to confront our leadership with its shortcomings.
In addition, the legend teaches us that the sin of arrogance is common among people in positions of authority and respect. Racism is a consequence of arrogance. “Are all the people of your city as ugly as you?” asks the rabbi. Such a question in another context might have been construed as an expression of intellectual curiosity. Here, though, it betrays impatience, bigotry, and fear of difference. It is the question of a person convinced of his own superiority, born of intellectual prowess, moral purity, and high social status. All his frustration is turned to the Other, decried as ugly, blamed for the shortcomings the rabbi cannot see in himself.
This tale is about the lack of solidarity and the need of leaders to turn from cedar into reed, from proud toughness to flexible modesty. These days it would be more comforting to bring an optimistic legend teaching us that we can trust our leadership, that we have someone in whom we can place our blind faith. The truth is, however, is that closing our eyes is not a moral option.
I want to offer a further reading of this tale, one which emphasizes the personal, the emotional and the spiritual. Internalizing the characters, as is often done in dream interpretation, I would like to see in all of them a projection of one central character.
The rabbi seems to be in a particularly good situation in life. He is learned and accomplished, enjoying a trip in the wild on his donkey. In Hebrew, the words “donkey” and “materiality” stem from the same root, and the sage seems to feel that he has conquered the material world. He is above crass material things. Suddenly, the smart successful man experiences a strong and unexplained fall that undermines his mood of self-satisfaction. The ugly man is not a stranger, but rather an expression of the soul of the sage. It is he who feels ugly, a deep inner ugliness that he cannot bear. As his fear grows, he extends this ugliness to all his experiences and capacities, and he externalizes it, ascribing it to “all the townspeople.”
We do not know specifically what kind of ugliness he is experiencing. But we know the situation—from feeling that we are on the top of the world, it is easy to fall into depression and self-hatred. The wise man becomes ugly in his own eyes. This is what a mental crisis may look like. Euphoria and after it, despair, is taking place, expanding and taking over our ability to love ourselves and our lives.
The turning point, the ability to see the light at the end of the crisis, arrives by understanding that we must integrate all parts of one’s personality and all life experiences. Ugliness, like beauty, is in the eyes of the observer. The Talmudic tale may be read as saying: we have to learn how to deal with crises in a less destructive way, although we know that self-harm cannot be completely avoided.
Isolation, financial difficulties, lack of leadership, abuse within the family, fear of illness and death—all these can lead us to an acute encounter with ourselves—our achievements and failures, both the healthy and the toxic aspects of our personality.
We do not have a panacea for spiritual and emotional pains, but we do have the ability to talk about them in the language and the culture of our community. With honesty and courage, we can share fears and pains and gain understanding and support.
In our Beit Midrash, this text served as a basis for a conversation about resilience and self-awareness. There are times when we feel an extreme inability to love ourselves, times when our traits and life experiences seem “empty” and “ugly.” At such times, the ancient rabbis have something important to say to us, if we will only get off our donkeys and listen.
“This Talmudic tale is about truth and self-deception, pride and prejudice, ascribed status and real virtue. It questions who is the teacher and who the student.”
This Talmudic tale is about truth and self-deception, pride and prejudice, ascribed status and real virtue. It questions who is the teacher and who the student. Another resonant theme is the sometimes surprising relation between perception and reality. It is tempting in our period to settle for clichés. Being as attentive to the contemporary situation as we are asked to be with regard to our foundational texts can help us go beyond platitudes. It is said, for example, that COVID-19 endangers all of us equally, and yet this is not the case. Those who have a large home, not to mention a vacation home, those who can afford not to go to work in an office, those who are in good health, those who have social and economic access to medical care and those who are young, are more likely to be protected from the virus compared to elderly and sick people living in poverty.
According to data from the Ministry of Health of the State of Israel in early May 2020, 73% of patients in critical condition were aged 60 and over, even though their proportion among all diagnosed patients is 18% and their share in the entire Israeli population is about 15%.
Here is another example. Israeli officials have confirmed that they are aware that some asylum seekers do not have health insurance, and others are afraid to be examined because their status is illegal. There is no way to know how many of the refugees are sick with COVID-19 and therefore there is certainly no way to provide them with adequate medical care or proper isolation.
Here is a third example which challenges the platitude that all of us are affected equally. While precise data has not been officially presented to the public, the closure imposed on individual neighborhoods in Jerusalem as well as on individual cities around Israel suggest that the percentage of people infected from within the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sector is greater than their share in the population. Common explanations for this high rate include crowded communities, large families who often live in small apartments, limited exposure to secular media, intense communal life and some authoritative rabbis who at the outset of the virus were unaware of relevant information. In addition, many within Ultra-Orthodox communities tend to oppose secular authority.
Having mentioned three less than equal members of Israeli society—older people, asylum seekers and Ultra-Orthodox Jews—it behooves us to mention Israel’s Arab population. At the beginning of the first wave of the virus, the Prime Minister placed the National Security Council in charge of crisis coordination. The Council mainly comprises men with military backgrounds. The committee it set up to devise a strategy to deal with the crisis comprised 31 members, two of them women.
There is no Arab on the committee. Therefore, it is easy to understand the criticism and difficulty of that part of our community, created by the same great Artisan, to trust the authority and impartiality of the team.
It is easy to see that Covid-19 does not affect us all equally. There is perhaps nothing equal in this world, including the risk offered by this pandemic. The Artisan created us all. We all bear God’s image. But the societies in which we live do not always reflect this fundamental truth. Frightened by our inadequacies, we pronounce others ugly.
The worldview I see reflected in this and many other rabbinic tales is one that encourages us to look beyond simple slogans. The statement that it is safest to stay home, to cite another of them, is not true if you are a person suffering domestic abuse, or a person without a home.
“The coronavirus has heightened awareness of human inequality and has brought to the front of the stage issues of ageism, racism, tensions between economic classes and the plight of refugees. It highlights the risk of trusting the words of religious and political leaders.”
The coronavirus has heightened awareness of human inequality and has brought to the front of the stage issues of ageism, racism, tensions between economic classes and the plight of refugees. It highlights the risk of trusting the words of religious and political leaders.
The feeling that there is no one out there to trust increases the anxiety about the unknown. Add to this the fact that many families are experiencing physical or emotional violence, economic and health anxieties and loneliness, and it will not be difficult to understand that these days are characterized by a flood of existential questions. Engaging together in a quest for meaning is crucial for some people. It can help them seem less ugly and less empty to themselves. It can help them see the beauty and the fullness within fellow humans. It can help offer a glimpse of the Artisan’s design.
