I want to tell you a story, because it just happened and you might forget it. I (you, that is) was standing in the airport in Chicago yesterday and a young woman approached the counter and began to scream. She had been left off the flight. She kept insisting that the crew could help but wouldn’t. They were courteous but at the end, she cursed loudly at them, again and again, and stormed off.
I was standing next to a couple waiting to board, and they were bemoaning her behavior, which left the onlookers frozen. I said yes, she behaved terribly, but she also felt totally powerless and the only power she had was to say something shocking. Cursing gave her a small sense that she wasn’t entirely helpless. A bad choice, I said, but an understandable one.
The husband said to me, “You’re a psychologist, right?” No, I said, I’m a rabbi. Sure enough, they were married by a rabbi I know, and we had all sorts of people in common.
I realized I instinctively understood the woman’s frustration because over the years as a Rabbi I see so many people in pain that they cannot change, through loss or grief or the straightjacket of failure. Judgment, while important, often short-circuits understanding.
So please, David, remember this moment when you remembered. Keep trying to understand — both yourself and others — and read the letters in this book of Jewels to hear the stories of other lives. Because we are screaming, all of us, some very, very softly.
David Wolpe is the Max Webb Senior Rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, California. www.facebook.com/RabbiWolpe
