Empathy - Can You (Truly) Feel It

Empathy ? Can You (Truly) Feel It?

Rosh Hashanah Day I ? 5777 (2016) R. Yonatan Cohen, Congregation Beth Israel

About forty years ago, on a Friday night, a kibbutznik from Rosh Tzurim arrived at Yeshivat Har Etzion, in the neighboring town, after walking over from his kibbutz during a rare cold and snowy winter night. The kibbutznik recounted that the heating was disrupted in the kibutz's chicken coop due to a failure in the electrical system. As a result, thousands of young chicks would die from the cold. He wanted to know if in some way it could be permissible to regenerate the electric system on Shabbat, due to the suffering that might be caused to animal life.

Just as soon as he heard the question, Rav Amital zt"l, the famous Rosh Yeshiva, put on his boots, his heavy coat and winter hat and headed for the door. Holding hands with the kibbutznik, they headed to Rosh Tzurim.

A while later, students at the yeshiva asked Rav Amital why he chose not to remain in the yeshiva on that cold wintery night. After all, were not all the books necessary to answer that question in the Beit Midrash, inside the study hall? Indeed, why did he bother going to the chicken coop at all?!?

Rav Amital's students remember their rebbe's reply till this day: "It is critical to hear the tweeting sounds of the chicks." He told them, and then continued, "One must feel their pain to truly grasp the problem. It is not right to sit here, in the warmth of our study hall, and provide answers to things that happen out there, out of our Beit Midrash, out in the cold." (As told by Yaakov Fisher, "Le'ovdecha Be'emet")

What sort of empathy should we strive to cultivate in the lives that we lead?

In the book, The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison describes her experience as a medical actor.

She explains her role in this way: "I get paid by the hour. Medical students guess my maladies. [...] Medical acting works like this: You get a script and a paper gown...Our scripts are ten to twelve pages long. They outline what's wrong with us ? not just what hurts but how to express it. They tell us how much to give away and when. We are supposed to unfurl the answers according to specific protocol. The scripts dig deep into our fictive lives." (Leslie Jamison, "The Empathy Exams," p. 1)

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Once the encounter with the medical student is completed, the actors are asked to fill out an evaluation of the student's performance.

On the technical level, actors assess whether the medical student was successful in soliciting detailed information and diagnosing the actor's condition correctly. On an emotional level, actors must also assess the student's affect during the encounter. In fact, this part of the test, which Jamison refers to as "the empathy exam," is deemed most crucial.

"Did the student voice empathy?"

Through her experience as a medical actor, Jamison asks essential questions about our basic understanding of others and then offers a number of profound observations.

Jamison writes, "[...] Empathy isn't just measured by [a] checklist [...] but by every item that gauges how thoroughly my experience has been imagined. Empathy isn't just remembering to say that must really be hard ? it's figuring out how to bring difficulty into the light so it can be seen at all. Empathy isn't just listening, it's asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see. [...]"

Empathy invites "you [to] enter another person's pain as you'd enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query: What grows where you are? What are the laws? What animals graze there?" (Ibid., pp. 7-8)

Empathy is a key feature of today's services and the High Holiday season.

In describing the sound of the shofar, our rabbis draw an unexpected comparison. The rabbis explain that the shofar's blast cries out in the same manner that Sisera's mother did as she awaited her son's return from battle (Rosh Hashanah, 33b). Sisera, as some may recall, was Israel's bitter enemy during the time of Devorah the prophetess. By all accounts, he was a cruel and corrupt oppressor. And yet still, like any parent, Sisera's mother cried for her son, longing for his return, though as we know, he never did return from that fateful battle.

R. Saul Berman, our shul's founding rabbi, once explained to me that by connecting the Shofar blast to the cry of our enemy's mother, the rabbis challenged us to stretch the limits of our sense of empathy. In

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forcing ourselves to hear Sisera's mother cry, we are in fact being called to tune in to voices that became completely foreign and perhaps even antagonistic to us. Hearing Sisera's mother cry through the shofar blast invites us, to paraphrase Leslie Jamison, to enter not simply another country, but rather to enter enemy terrain. (On empathy and judgment see my article here - )

This morning's Torah reading offers a very similar lesson as well.

As many might remember, the reading culminates with the disturbing image of Hagar casting Yishmael to the side after she is exiled from the home of Abraham and Sarah. Lost in the desert, Hagar can't withstand the sight of her son dying from the heat, from hunger, and thirst. Hagar breaks down and cries out to God.

The next verse is astounding ? "Va'yishma Elohim et kol ha'naar" ? "And God heard the voice of the lad." It is astounding because the Torah never described the voice or the cry of Yishmael at all, only that of Hagar. In actuality, we are led to believe, the child never even raised his voice. Yishmael never cried. And yet, God hears the voice that does not speak, the cry that does not come out.

The name Yishmael literally means God will hear. God is an active listener. God is empathic. God hears between the lines. God hears even the things that are not being said. (On hearing as an essential part of the process of Teshuvah see my drash here - hear-the-shofar/)

The call of the shofar as a symbol for the cry of Sisera's mother alongside Yishmael's inaudible cry, serve as a powerful appeal for radical empathy. In both cases we are not simply called to show empathy for those we love, but instead, we are challenged to cultivate empathy even for those who we might despise, and who might despise us as well.

Now let me be clear. The idea of expressing empathy or compassion for our enemies is a difficult one.

Frayda's zaide would gladly skip over any section of the Passover Hagaddah, except (except!) for "Shefoch chamatcha" ("Pour Your wrath") on Your enemies. Certainly, those who faced true evil understand that at times there are clear red lines.

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Empathy however should not be confused with agreement. Empathy does not mean approval. Empathy is not a form of consent.

In her book, Leslie Jamison offers a helpful insight in this regard by analyzing the different "kinds of reality" that we normatively consider as "prerequisites for compassion." "Is it wrong to call it empathy when you trust the fact of suffering, but not the source? How do I inhabit someone's pain without

inhabiting their particular understanding of that pain?" she powerfully asks. (Leslie Jamison, "The Empathy Exams," pp. 39-40)

The American Neo-Hasidic theologian, R. Art Green, makes an incredible claim about the moral ramifications of monotheism as a belief system. According to Art Green, empathy for the other is the most basic moral claim that monotheism makes on its adherents.

Following the teachings of great Hasidic masters, Art Green explains that our insistence upon God's unity, fundamentally means that "God" and existence are not separable from one another. Art Green writes, "God is not some Fellow over there who created a separate, distinct entity called "world" over here. There are not two; there is only one." (Art Green, "A Theology of Empathy", p. 4 )

As the Sefat Emet teaches,

"The meaning of "Hashem is one" is not that He is the only God, negating other gods (though that too is true), but the meaning is deeper than that. There is no being other than God...Everything that exists in the world, spiritual and physical, is God Himself...Because of this, every person can attach himself to God wherever he is, through the holiness that exists within every single thing..."

Highlighting the moral dimension of this mystical teaching, Art Green explains that, "The only value of monotheism is to make you realize that all being, including every creature ? and that means the rock and the blade of grass in your garden as well as your pet lizard and your human neighbor next door ? are all one in origin. You come from the same place. [...] [And] Therefore ? and this is the "payoff" line, the only one that really counts: Treat them that way! They are all God's creatures; they exist only because of the divine presence, the same divine presence that makes you exist. This realization calls upon you to get to know them! Get to love them! Discover the unique divine gift within each of them! [...] That's what it means to be a religious human being." (Ibid., p. 3)

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Rav Moshe Tzvi Neria zt"l, the educational founder of the Bnai Akiva youth movement in Israel, offers a similar lesson.

Rav Neria explains that most sins can be traced back to either a failure to perceive God or a failure to see anything but one's own self, ultimately allowing ourselves to believe that there is nothing but ourselves in this world. Now, while it is very difficult ? perhaps even impossible ? to ever perceive God, Rav Neria insists that by fully encountering the face of the other, by learning to see each other, by heeding the voice of another human being, and by taking the needs and feelings of others into consideration, it is in fact within our reach to overcome our tendency to see nothing but ourselves. In this sense, for Rav Neria, empathy is not simply the path towards the pain of the other, it is also the path away from our own self-centeredness, and in this way, empathy becomes our path towards the presence of God.

In the words of Rav Neria, "If a person wants to assess their success in perceiving the Face of God, they must first assess their success in heeding the Torah's call to `love your neighbor as yourself.'" (R. Moshe Tzvi Neria, "Meorot Neria," p. 23)

This Rosh Hashanah, I am certain that our prayers will be filled with great pathos, but I must wonder, will our hearts also fill with empathy?

While I am certain that the Shofar will be blasted with great passion, I wonder whether its sound will move us towards greater compassion.

In truth, I can't help but join the prophet Amos who bemoaned Israel with these words, "A shofar blasts in the city but the people are not alarmed." (Amos 3:6)

Here in America, young African American men and their mothers insist that Black Lives matter. Can we empathize with their cry without the need to immediately step aside because of the movement's unacceptable stance on Israel?

"A shofar blasts in the city but the people are not alarmed." (Amos 3:6)

As we do that, can we also find empathy for cops who risk their lives on a daily basis without the need to speak in one breath of police violence or brutality?

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