Spring and Vaccinations and the World Opening Up

I have not updated my blog for a while, for the very lovely reason that, having been fully vaccinated by the end of January, I have started re-engaging in a more normal life for these past few weeks! I have seen both of my children, three of my grandchildren, and my mother during this period and am now looking forward to visiting the rest of my grandchildren in a few more weeks. There is such promise in the warm sunshine, the green grass and leaves, the flowers everywhere! The world has moved forward with its seasons and is now weeks through the glorious rebirth of spring, undeterred by the pandemic – perhaps, in fact, even brighter than in past years because of the cleaner air around us! What a metaphor for the way we too are starting to creep out of our holes where we’ve been sequestered for so long and come back into society, getting together in person with loved ones and friends!

In the Torah, we have reached what I view as its ethical core. We are enjoined,

קְדשִׁ֣ים תִּֽהְי֑וּ כִּ֣י קָד֔וֹשׁ אֲנִ֖י יְהוָֹ֥ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶֽם

(You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.)

We are then told the precise ways to behave so as to achieve this holiness: Treat strangers among you with kindness (not just letting the law apply to them equally, but outright lovingkindness), since we remember what it was like to have been strangers in a foreign land. Don’t cheat anybody in your business dealings. Treat animals with compassion as well as humans. Support the poor while protecting their dignity. Be as humane to your slaves (yes, the world had widespread slavery a few thousand years ago) as you are to your fellow citizens.

How is love legislated? How in particular can we open our hearts to love strangers, people from different origins, different ethnicities, speaking languages we don’t know, not inhabiting our bubble and not necessarily sharing all of our values? Perhaps this means to treat people more than merely correctly, more than just with respect. Perhaps we can find it within ourselves to see the other person as a full, complete human being, with thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, trying to live the best possible life, making plenty of mistakes along the way – that is, a three-dimensional person much like ourselves. Not just a caricature defined only by an opinion that we happen not to share. Perhaps we can have empathy for this person – not “other”, but somebody who is muddling along as best possible, striving to do what seems right, stumbling now and then – as we are. Compassion for this fellow human being who wants to live a good life and make a good life for his or her family, who really would rather get along with others than not – like us. Lovingkindness because we are all trying so hard to live out our values in a very complex and challenging world. Just as we would wish for ourselves.

The hope that’s all around us – the reminder that Nature gives us in such a gentle way (soft breezes, glowing colors, sweet bird song, warm but not yet scorchingly hot sunshine) that the world continues and the seasons change in their time and not everything has been put into suspended animation – can penetrate to our very heart, soul, mind. We are all inhabitants of this land that is reawakening from its winter slumbers and unfurling before us. We can treat our fellow human beings as people who were created in the Divine image, just as we were, and are worthy of our sympathetic respect. After all, we too were once strangers, standing outside uncertainly and looking in, hoping for an outstretched arm, a smile of greeting, a few kind words to make us feel that we too belong.