One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was: what seems light to you might feel very heavy to others. I was a young teacher in one of the Jewish Day Schools in Rio de Janeiro. At that time, I was in college, I worked at the school, I was involved with Brazilian politics, and I was president of the Jewish University Council. I had a very full schedule and loved every minute of it. In school I was always busy teaching Hebrew and Torah, and many times a week I volunteered to teach Israeli folk dance during recess. A fellow teacher was asked to take a specific role during recess, and said that she would not take anything on, that she was too busy and tired. I was “volunteered” to do the task. I was livid—I did so much in general, and now I would have one more thing added to my busy schedule because this teacher was tired? She was not as busy as I was, and she definitely did not do more than I did. Another teacher saw my distress and shared her wisdom with me: “Lia, what feels light to you might feel very heavy to other people. You may be able to do a lot, but other people do not have the same capabilities.”
In other words, do not judge other people by what you are able to do—have compassion for others, and do not judge anyone harshly. I also understood that it was a good idea to have compassion for myself, accept my limitations and not expect that I could do everything.
I remembered that conversation this week because of the Jewish calendar. We are in the midst of the three weeks of admonition, the three weeks between the 17th day of the Hebrew month Tammuz and the ninth day of the month Av. On the 17th of Tammuz, the Roman soldiers were able to break through the walls of Jerusalem in the year 70 CE, and three weeks later, on the ninth day of Av, the Romans destroyed the Second Temple on the same day that in the year 586 BCE the First Temple was destroyed. According to our tradition we lost the second Temple because of baseless hatred, in Hebrew sin’at hinam. I wonder if when I worked in Rio de Janeiro, had I not been reminded of having compassion, would I develop a profound hatred of my co-worker? Probably, yes. I imagine that I would feel anger at myself for acquiescing to do a job that was not mine, for my inability to say no to others (and therefore say no to myself), and for an irrational (self) expectation of being able to always juggle everything. I would transfer to others the irritation I felt for myself, and I can see how that would balloon into other unhelpful feelings, including hatred. And when we are running on the treadmill of hatred, it is very hard to stop, to get off, to allow for other feelings to balance this potent feeling. According to the Talmud, there was a misunderstanding between two men because of an invitation for a party, and the long and the short of the story is that one of them said something to the Romans about the other, and that cascaded into the war that brought down the Second Temple. The harsh feeling of hatred grew to such a potent place that people could not stop their behavior, even with the threat of such a loss. Maybe if there were someone as smart as my colleague during Second Temple times we would not have experienced that national catastrophe. Maybe we would be telling the story of compassion that ended up saving the Jewish people.
Nowadays there is so much hatred, so much enmity, and very little space for compassion, for love, and for kindness. During these three weeks I urge all of us to reach inside of ourselves and find compassion, love, and kindness for ourselves, allowing for the ripples of these feelings to reach out even those that are very far away from where we stand. I do not mean to say that we must accept and agree with outrageous and hateful points of view. What I advocate is that we find a way to approach the conversation with people who think differently than we do with curiosity and kindness. And maybe we can avoid other catastrophes that can, otherwise, destroy much of the beautiful world in which we live.