Trying Something New on Yom Kippur
In my congregation, every Yom Kippur after a two-hour break from services, there are some small-group offerings before the afternoon prayer services begin. In past years I have led something on Israel-Palestine. This year I wanted to try something different. I titled my workshop “Healing from Hopelessness and Discouragement in These Challenging Times.”
One person after another rolled into the room saying something like, “I need this group—I’m feeling so hopeless.” (I find it special to do these Yom Kippur workshops, as folks have been fasting since the night before and are often raw and open.)
I started by talking about how years ago I had led a weekend for Jewish Middle East peace activists and on Saturday night one person after the other had shared how hopeless they felt about Middle East peace efforts. I’d left that weekend feeling awful—like I had set back Middle East peace work by not interrupting a whole evening of non-stop stories of hopelessness. But lo and behold [to my surprise] I began getting letters saying, “Thank you for that healing evening. Now I’m ready to keep working.”
I told the Yom Kippur workshop that this session was about that—creating a space in which to talk openly and from our hearts about how hopeless we sometimes feel. Then I had each person share one thing in the world from the past year that had given them hope. (I explained that we need a foundation of hearing about hopeful things to have the courage to face our hopelessness.) After hearing what had given people hope, everyone went back into pairs and got two minutes each to be listened to about the thing in the world that had left them the most hopeless and discouraged, with little belief that they’d see real change. Many talked about the climate crisis, U.S. or Israeli political issues, or white nationalism.
Then—and this was my big experiment; I wasn’t sure how it would be received—I gave a short lecture about early discouragement and defeats and how, even though huge unsolved difficulties exist in the present, our discouragement is not about the present but rather unhealed baggage from our early defeats. As I spoke, I cautiously looked from face to face and saw many people nodding. Some said, “Wow! I never thought of that before.”
To help clarify what I meant, I decided to offer myself as an example. I shared that with the person I’d been paired with I’d said that I feel hopeless because I’m afraid that racism in Israel is making the possibility of a Palestinian state “dead in the water.” I went on to say that it wasn’t a coincidence I had used the words “dead in the water,” as my hopeless moment when I was little was connected to my brother being killed. Seeing the current situation like a death was linked to that earlier hurt.
Then I sent them back to the same partner to share how the current situation they felt hopeless about was linked to a specific early-life experience of hopelessness. I expected some resistance but got none. When they returned from the pairs, person after person opened up courageously about an early childhood incident of being bullied, not being able to read, being ignored by a parent, and so on. And they were able to make the connection between the current situation they felt hopeless about and the early experience of defeat.
In a closing circle, each person shared a highlight from the workshop and one way they would take action in the upcoming year on the issue that concerned them most. The lightness in the room—in total contrast to how they had come in—was palpable. Many said that the workshop had been so helpful and they’d had no idea that childhood hurts were impacting their ability to stay hopeful in the present.
I ended by saying a few things about RC. (I had done an introduction to RC for the congregation in the previous year, but many who came to this Yom Kippur group were new to me.)
I am still getting e-mails thanking me for the workshop, and I’m pleased that I took the risk to put out a key piece of RC theory.
Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-maildiscussion list for leaders of Jews
(Present Time 198, January 2020)