Humility of the Heart

Dear friends, 

One of the infuriating aspects of this war has been the decline of humility. So many people keep telling so many others their unshakeable opinions, often with a moral judgement of anyone who doesn’t hold their opinion. Even people essentially on the same side of the argument are expressing themselves toward one another in confrontational ways, which reveal a self-assuredness that leans dangerously close to arrogance. When Hamas officials were asked why they attacked in the first place, one of the first words they used was arrogance. Whether we believe them or not, humiliation and arrogance are two of the instigators and driving forces of this war. They create conflict, tension and weak thinking, and part of our work should be to tame those feelings, and instead work toward one of the great values of all religions, humility.

In the 13th century in Egypt lived the only rabbi I know of who earned himself the nickname “The Sufi.” Clearly, Rabbi Avraham Ben HaRambam had strong relationships with the Muslim thinkers around him. Being Maimonides’ son, he had tremendous knowledge of Judaism as well. In his masterpiece Hamaspik Le’ovdey Hashem, The Guide to Serving God, Rabbi Avraham devotes a long chapter to the Hebrew word Anavah, humility. Alongside countless examples of the humility of the ancestors and the prophets in the form of verses from scripture, we find one verse that is quoted seven times in the chapter, and which Rabbi Avraham uses to illustrate the single greatest expression of humility in scripture.

Attributed to King David, a man whose life was jam-packed with enemies, betrayals, fearful flight and humiliating defeats, alongside moments of great triumph, the verse comes from one of David’s highest expressions of being hated, Psalm 109. This bitter poem, in which he indulges in imagining all the horrible things people are saying about him, portrays David in a position that feels familiar nowadays. Despite his never-ending attempts to stand for love, not hate, for goodness in the face of evil, for peace and camaraderie in a time of division, he feels perceived as exactly the opposite:

I pour out love

But they see destruction

They’ve turned me into the devil

Treat me like a demon,

Repay good with evil

My kindness with hate

In these moments, David teaches, we have a choice between despair and hope.

What’s left to do, he asks. Comes the answer:

I am a prayer.

How can we retain that prayerful position? How might we maintain the goodness we feel is driving us, and not add more violence into the world?

Rabbi Avraham talks of two types of humility. External humility is easier. You could even fake it, or train yourself simply to think before you act by pausing, imagining the recipient of your communication, or remaining silent (often the best cure). But the real prize is the far more difficult and remote Anavah Pnimit, internal humility. This is the perfect honesty of a person who knows their faults, gets complexity, and does not demand that reality conform to their wishes, but bows down in the face of a painful impossibility.

לבי חלל בקרבי, says the poet, my heart is hollow within me.

This is the verse that I’ve been walking around with this past week as I watch the scenes of destruction and death from Gaza, the images of beautiful young men who have fallen in battle, pictures of people taking cover during a funeral as the entire world fills with sharp, nasty noise.

The second word in the phrase, חלל, can be understood in a variety of ways. In certain contexts it means a soldier killed in battle, in others a desecration or an injury, and often it means an emptying out, or simply a vast open space.

This verse fragment is, to Rabbi Avraham, the greatest example of internal humility. When my heart is a dead soldier I slow down. I may not even speak. I can't see myself as greater, stronger or smarter than others. When my heart is an empty space within me, it is connected to the vastness of space beyond, where opinions become mute. Our hearts, David tells us, are specific to us. They speak to us out of the integrity in our core. When they carry that non-judgmental space of loss, and the connection to the never-ending, they keep us from lashing out violently against other hearts, but instead, perhaps, they might bring one heart closer to another.

Let us be humble this week, and hope that our humility shields us from participating in the spiraling hatred.

For Adonai stands with him who has been drained of hope,

Protecting him

From the self-appointed

Judges of the earth.

Here is the full Psalm in a translation I made back in the (good old?) twenty-teens:

Psalm 109 / What’s Left to Do?

(For the Conductor

A song by David)

God of my psalm,

It’s time for you to speak up.

Stop answering my songs with whispers

No one hears.

Their mouths have opened over me.

Their wicked thoughts

Their deceitful words

Their tongues twisting lies toward me

Hatred surrounds me

A war that need not be.

I pour out love

But they see destruction

They’ve turned me into the devil

Treat me like a demon,

Repay good with evil

My kindness with hate

What’s left to do?

I am a prayer.

“Place some villain over him

Let Satan stand to his right.

Judge him to be wicked

See his prayer as sin.

Shorten his days

Make his business fail.

Orphan his children

Widow his wife.

May his sons and daughters be forever in motion,

Begging for food, searching for meaning among the ruins of their lives.

He always loved the curse, so give him what he likes.

Now let him wear his curse like a well-tailored suit

Let it constantly hold his waist tight like a belt

Let him be Infested with it

Let it sink into his belly with the water he drinks

Let it settle into his bones with the oil he consumes.”

That is what those who call me their adversary ask of God

Them, who advocate against my very soul.

What’s left to do?

I am a prayer.

And you, Adonai, my Master

Use me as your agent

Let me do your work here

in this little corner

Where goodness and kindness

Shade over me,

All comes from you.

I am poor

I am alone

My heart is hollow within me.

I walk around like a lengthening shadow

Thrown by the winds like a locust

My knees fail

I have no appetite

I am skin and bones,

A disgrace

People see me and shake their heads in woe.

What’s left to do?

I am a prayer.

Help me, Adonai

Love me.

Be kind, my God.

That will bring me back.

Their little curses are nothing

Your blessing is everything

Show them your hand

So that they understand.

Then they will stand corrected,

Acknowledge their wrongs,

Wipe their lips dry with shame,

Cover their faces in embarrassment,

Hide behind a coat of regret.

And your servant will be at peace.

Speak thanks, my mouth,

Speak thanks again

In private and among multitudes sing praise.

For Adonai stands with she who has been drained of hope,

Protecting her

From the self-appointed

Judges of the earth.

What’s left to do?

I am a prayer.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha