May 2006 Like Strangers In A Foreign Country By Rabbi Alvin Kass Have you ever reflected on the fascinating fact that neighbors who live on our street or acquaintances with whom we would hardly exchange a word or two under ordinary circumstances often become our intimate friends if we accidentally run into them in a foreign country? Deprived of the comfort and security of our ordinary surroundings we seek out the familiar with which we can feel a common bond. This is often true of our relationship to God and the Jewish people as well. Sometimes we feel so at home in the world with everything going our way that we totally ignore or at best pay only fleeting attention to the Almighty and the Jewish way of life. The Jews who lived in Russia at the time of the Communist Revolution of 1917 must have felt that way as they participated in the birth of a new social order that was supposed to end class conflict, and establish harmony and equality for all. It didn't take long, however, before the cruelty and deceptiveness of the Socialist dreams became apparent. The freedom, affluence, comfort, and opportunity of the United States of America make us particularly vulnerable to the myth that we reside in Utopia and that all is well with the world. As a result, we tend to forget our birthright as Jews and children of God to be creatures of kindness, culture, and compassion. Then an unsettling event occurs, our complacency is disturbed, and we realize that we are strangers, after all, in this world who desperately need God and His teachings to lean upon. When illness or bereavement strike, when prejudice rears its ugly head, when our economic, physical, or mental well-being is threatened, when friendship is betrayed, we realize how essential and indispensable God is in our lives. It is only then that we fully comprehend the depth of the Psalmist's plea: "Hear my prayer, O Lord, for I am a stranger with Thee"(39:13). Such emotions must have surged through Moses who, despite his upbringing in the Egyptian court where he enjoyed all the luxuries and advantages of royal status, "went out to his brothers and saw their sufferings" (Exodus 2:11). His unquenchable zeal for justice was crystallized at the vision of the Burning Bush. Endowed by God with a heart that felt his people's suffering, Moses knew that he must spend the rest of his life trying to do something that would help them. At the age of 40 Akiba the shepherd was also aroused from a state of complacency. Although up to that point in his life he had never studied a thing, he stood one day at the mouth of a well and asked: "Who hollowed out this stone?" He was told: "It is the water which falls upon it every day, continually." Rabbi Akiba then drew an inference: "what is soft wears down the hard, all the more shall the words of the Torah, which are as hard as stone, hollow out my heart, which is flesh and blood!" Akiba immediately turned to the study of Torah and within thirteen years became an incomparable teacher. Shaken out of the bliss and lethargy of ignorance, Rabbi Akiba emerged as one of the greatest scholars of all times. It is a mistake and delusion to think that we can ever be fully at home in the world. There is so much wrong with the universe that a sensitive and pious soul could never feel completely at ease and satisfied here. God too must often feel alienated from this world where His principles and ideals have so frequently been rejected, violated, or debased. Our Sages often spoke of galut haschechinah, the notion that the Divine Presence is in exile as long as suffering, oppression, hatred, and strife exist. The mystics teach that there is a split within the essence of God's being that requires repair. Our responsibility is to unite the letters of God's name, the yud heh with the vav heh by perfecting the society in which we live. Like two strangers in a foreign country, we need each other - God needs us and we need God - if life is to have any meaning and purpose at all.