Vulnerability as a Path to Freedom
- Kirva
- Mar 20
- 6 min read
Updated: Mar 23
By Rabbi David Jaffe
A rejection followed by a welcome embrace at the start of this past Purim is informing the way I’m thinking about the upcoming Passover holiday. On Ta’anit Esther (Monday, March 1, the day before Purim) I was in New York City to officiate my uncle’s funeral. The shiva was that afternoon on the Upper East Side and I planned to go to a nearby synagogue for the Megila reading that night before traveling back home to Boston. I knew security would be an issue at the synagogue because of the US and Israel war with Iran had just started a couple of days before, but I was not prepared for what I encountered.
The volunteer guards greeted me and asked me if I knew anyone at the shul. I’ve served in this role at my own shul, so I understood that they were trying to feel out if I was a threat or not. I honestly told them no, but that I needed to hear Megila and was in town because I was officiating my uncle’s funeral as a rabbi from Boston. “Where did you do the funeral?” “At Plaza, and the burial was at New Montifiore on Long Island.” I thought that was a good answer. He looked to the professional in charge of security, who shook his head, and I was moved to a different area in front of the shul. I directly asked the security guy if I could enter, and he said, “No, I don’t know you.” I was shocked. They could have asked me any number of questions to see if I posed a threat, but that was it – “I don’t know you, and I’ve never seen you before, leave.”
I felt so angry and also deeply sad that our community is that scared. With only a few minutes left before sundown, I didn’t have time to dwell on it, so I jumped in a cab to the West Side to try the shul where I davened that morning. At least someone there might recognize me, I thought. Thankfully, security was much more relaxed, and the volunteer guards let me in. I went to the Beit Midrash where I had davened that morning and there were still a few minutes before services started. I recognized a friendly-looking guy from the morning, and the need to share this hurtful experience overcame my embarrassment. I went up to him and said, “I just had a really hard experience at X shul on the East Side….” and told him the story. He listened warmly, and after I finished, leaned over and gave me a big hug. We then schmoozed and played Jewish geography, and it felt like such a tikkun/repair on the rejection I had just experienced across town.
A few minutes later, during Megila reading, while still shaken from the earlier experience, I felt a strong sense of Hashem’s presence in this series of events. One key theme of Purim is Hashem’s hidden presence behind the events of the Megila. Maybe Hashem was also hiding in what I just experienced. Maybe the rejection from the East Side shul was Hashem opening my heart to have more compassion for the many Jews who experience this type of exclusion in our community all the time...
I’m someone with a lot of Jewish privilege – two Jewish parents, racialized white/European/Ashkenazi, male, Orthodox rabbinic ordination from Israel - and I feel welcome and centered in most Jewish spaces. So many Jews – converts, Jews of Color, those who express their passion for justice in Palestine Solidarity movements, and more feel so marginalized and not welcomed in many of our Jewish spaces, kept out because “I don’t know you.” Maybe this experience was Hashem saying to me, “Look around, have more compassion, and do more to change Jewish institutions to embrace more Jews.” Making myself vulnerable after this painful experience created the opportunity to get a warm embrace, which, I believe, opened my heart for this strong sense of Hashem’s presence in the minute details of my life, which is exactly a central message of Purim. If I had pushed down the vulnerability and shame I felt after being excluded, I may never have had this experience, nor the great feeling of simcha/joy that came with it.
I share this story here because I think it offers an important message about Pesach, which the Jewish world will celebrate next week. The key theme of Pesach is freedom – freedom to serve Hashem, freedom to imagine a different future, freedom for the Jewish people, and for each of us to live in alignment with our deepest values. A rabbinic commentary teaches that when the Torah writes that the words of the Ten Commandments were engraved (Charut) on the tablets, the word should be read not as Charut, but as Cherut/Freedom. The idea is that true freedom comes from the study of Torah.
While there is a lot to say about freedom and Torah study, I think that looking a little further in the narrative in Exodus provides an even more interesting lesson. Shortly after these engraved stone tablets are given to Moses, he smashes them upon seeing the Israelites dancing around the Golden Calf, and the midrash teaches that letters flew off the stones into the air just before they were smashed. It is these shattered tablets that are put alongside the human-inscribed second set in the ark of the covenant, above which God speaks to Moses during the journey in the desert. Moses easily could have buried or hidden away the broken tablets, to hide this shameful part of the Israelite experience and pretend, for later generations, that the people were whole and perfect. But he doesn’t do that. It is only with the acceptance of brokenness that the Divine Presence becomes available for encounter. As Rabbi Eliyahu de Vidas writes in the 16th-century mystical-ethical book Reisheet Chochma:
Corresponding to the tablets [Moses] broke at [Sinai], one needs a broken heart… that it will be a place for the Shechina (felt presence of Hashem).....[while] one who has an arrogant heart pushes away the Shechina… (Gate of Holiness 7:16)
The Rabbis associated freedom with the Tablets. Perhaps after the tablets were smashed, freedom only comes with embracing our existential vulnerability and brokenness, acknowledging that we humans get hurt and hurt others and that, with enough courage, repair is possible. Avoidance of our existential vulnerability leads to constricted imagination and all kinds of anti-social behavior that are the opposite of freedom.
Rabbi Zach Truboff points to the dangers of ignoring or hiding from past traumas and vulnerability in his new book, Zionism in Crisis. Writing about the Freudian idea of Repetition Compulsion- the drive to reenact trauma despite the desire to be freed from it, and the propensity of many Jews to cling to a victim status after the Holocaust, he warns:
If we remain locked within the repetition compulsion of the Holocaust, we will read even our own tradition only through its shadow, mistaking fear for faith and chauvinism for chosenness. Our challenge is to liberate ourselves from this constricted imagination, to live beyond the trauma that constantly pulls us backwards. (p. 29)
The Mishkan/Tabernacle is the spiritual technology offered to move beyond the repetition compulsion and achieve real spiritual freedom by creating an ongoing dynamic of wholeness and brokenness. The Mishkan is a paradigm of wholeness with its exact measurements and precise structure described by God to Moses. And yet, at its center are the shattered tablets, placed in a container/aron that measures one and a half cubits wide, long, and tall. Among all the vessels in the tabernacle, this container is the only one that is made of half rather than whole cubits, which are an ancient form of measurement. These half-cubit dimensions hint to the central role that brokenness plays in communion with the Divine, for it is from this spot that the Divine Presence communicates with Moses. At the center, there is an acknowledgement that we are all vulnerable and in a constant dynamic of brokenness and repair.
As we enter this Zman Heruteinu/Season of our Freedom, I’m reflecting on the role of vulnerability and the Lev Nishbar/Broken heart needed for real freedom from the way hard or traumatic personal and collective experiences can keep us constricted. It is so tempting to want total security in such an insecure world, but attempts to create total security will always fail and will harm many people in the effort. The Hagada speaks to this need to embrace vulnerability in many places – Yachatz/the breaking of the matzah at the beginning of the Seder; the removing of drops of wine at the mention of the destructive plagues; the mitzvah of tasting the bitterness of the maror. At the same time, we sing full Hallel and eat a festive meal with friends and family. The Korech Sandwich is the perfect symbol - maror symbolizing the pain of traumatic events, dipped in the sweet charoset and embraced on top and bottom by pieces from the whole matzo. Brokenness and repair, like my experience on Purim of fear-based exclusion and warm embrace by a friendly stranger. Both are true, both are necessary in our unredeemed world, and both are what allow the Divine Presence to enter our hearts, which frees us from constriction and is the only source of real freedom.
May this Pesach be a time we know that brokenheartedness and vulnerability are not the opposite of joy, freedom, and safety, but their necessary counterpart on the path towards liberation for all.
Chag Pesach Sameach,
David
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