Rabbi Cy Stanway
There was a fascinating article I found during the pandemic that has stayed with me. I want to share part of it with you.
If I asked you, ‘when did civilization start?’ you might say something like, ‘when people moved into cities’ or ‘when clay pots were created’ or, maybe, ‘when humans invented tools.’ These are all good answers, of course, but there may be more personal, and I think, more meaningful answer.
A student once asked the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead that question.[1] She said that first real evidence of civilization was a 15,000 year-old fractured femur found in an archaeological site. The femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. It takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. But what was peculiar and unique about this bone is bone is that not only had it been broken it had healed.
Why is this the beginning of civilization? Well, in animal kingdom if you break your leg, you simply won’t survive. You can’t run from danger, you can’t drink, and you can’t hunt for food. And being wounded, you are vulnerable to every predator who crosses your path. No creature survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. You get eaten first.
But a broken and healed femur is evidence that another person has taken time to stay with the injured, bound up the wound, carried the person to safety and has tended them through recovery. A healed femur indicates that someone has helped a fellow human, rather than abandoning them to save their own life.
The upshot? “Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts,” Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; For, indeed, that’s all we have ever have.”
We will never know who that person was or how they broke their leg. We won’t know their gender or how they were known in their family tribe. But we do know one thing that makes all the difference: whoever they were, they we cared for, dare I say ‘loved’ and because of that relationship, they survived. It’s quite remarkable when you think about it.
If this story is any indication, the difference between life and death are the relationships we have with someone else. Living, and living well, may be both about eating right, getting exercise and all the things your doctor tells you to do and, maybe even more importantly, having real friends, partners, and soulmates.
There is real scientific data to back this up. This summer I read a profoundly impactful book called ‘The Good Life’ – which, if you think about it sounds much like our new year greeting – ‘shanna tova.’ The book was based on the Harvard longitudinal study of 238 participants and, later, their families, something up to the third generation since the study began in 1938. It was a study to see, simply, what made people happy. This ongoing study has now expanded to thousands of individuals, men and women. Extensive interviews each year or so with each one tracks every aspect of their lives: physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, and so forth. What they found shocked even the researchers.
Originally, the study was started to see what the clues are to living happy and healthy lives. The researchers found two surprising things.
First, they found that close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. We often think ‘boy, if I had that kind of money, I would be really happy.’ True we might be able to afford the things that make life comfortable, even luxurious. But without anyone to share it with, to share our joy, or sorrow, our challenges, and our successes, we languish physically and mentally and spiritually.
And second, the researchers discovered the counterintuitive truth that absolutely no life is preordained regardless of background. What they found was that what protects people from life’s discontents and what truly makes people happy and what helps to delay mental and physical decline, are the relationships we have. This is true regardless of social class, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants. We might think the Harvard-trained lawyer is happier by dint of wealth and prestige than the guy driving the taxi in the South End of Boston. But, shockingly, that is not the case.
I suppose that this was kept me engrossed in the book. It got me thinking about our usual greeting on the High Holidays. Why do we say, ‘shanna tova’ – often mistranslated as ‘happy new year’? In fact, ‘happy new year’ would be ‘shanna simcha’ or something like that. Why did the expression evolve into ‘shanna tova’ – a blessing for a good year not a happy year. Maybe those who invented the expression know what the Harvard study found out: that happiness is not acquired by wealth or status or even money. Rather, happiness is a function of who we get to share our lives with. Who we are blessed to have as friends. Who is there when we need them. And who, in our sorrow and challenges, we can lean on for support. The relationships we have bring us closer to a a good year and not necessarily a happy year. Put another way, it wasn’t just their middle-age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old. Rather it was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.[i]
Jewish wisdom seemed to know this long before the Harvard study. In Ecclesiastes, said to have been written by King Solomon as a kind of portrait of his life, we meet a man who is physically frail and miserable as he approaches the end of his life. You can sense this right in the opening passage of his biblical book: ‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. What real value is there for a man in all the gains he makes beneath the sun?[2]’ He is the biblical version of Debbie Downer!
He had it all: palaces, gardens, wives, wealth – and he still had no joy, no happiness.
We probably know people like that. The route to shanna tova turns out to be harder than taking the waiting out of wanting.
Many years ago someone in great depression wrote a rabbi and said, ‘I am sad and apprehensive. I can’t concentrate. I can’t pray and I have generally no spiritual satisfaction. Indeed, I always went to temple but always felt alone. I need help.’ That was his letter to the rabbi. The rabbi responded with some sage advice and an observation. He pointed out gently that every first word of every sentence was ‘I.’
When you look at Ecclesiastes, you see a man who is ferbisseneh – bitter about everything. It seemed to him that too many years of his life were truly a shanna tova. And when you juxtapose his misery with the fact that the word ‘I’ occurs 88 times in the book, we begin to get an idea of why he is so miserable. A shanna tova lives in the realm of Not-I.
There is the well-known story of Moses Montefiore, a Victorian-era Jew and close friend to Queen Victoria. He became the leader of English Jewry for several decades. When he retired from his work life at 40 before dying at 101 one of the first things he did was build housing for the poor and the world-famous windmill in Jerusalem. They still exist today in Yemin Moshe in Jerusalem.
Someone once asked him, ‘Sir Moses, how much are you worth?’ He thought for a while and named a figure but his friend said, ‘That can’t be right. You must be worth 10 times that.’ Montefiore replied, ‘You didn’t ask me how much I own. You asked me how much I was worth. So I calculated the tzedakah and charity I gave this year and that is the figure I gave you. You see, we are worth what we share.’ Montefiore understood what Kohelet did not.
Not all of us have that his ability to share. But everyone of us has a soul and a spirit and each of us can connect in some way with others perhaps not for a happy year but certainly toward a good year.
We are living in a time of global crisis. Connecting with our fellow human beings takes on new urgency. The pandemic put this need for connection into stark relief. As the disease spread and lockdowns began, many people reached out to solidify the most important relationships in their lives, to boost their sense of connection and security. Then, as the lockdowns stretched from weeks to months and beyond, people began feeling the effects of social isolation in strange and sometimes profound ways. Our bodies and minds, inextricably intertwined, reacted to the stress of isolation. People all over the world began experiencing health impacts as schoolkids lost regular contact with their friends and teachers, workers lost the presence of their workmates, weddings were postponed, friendships sidelined, and those of us who had access to the internet had to settle for connecting through computer screens. (As terrific as services on Friday night were online, they weren’t the same without the friendship, the handshake and the community singing together. Sure, we managed, but we didn’t thrive.) Suddenly it became clear that schools, movie theaters, restaurants, and ballparks weren’t just about learning, watching movies, eating food, and playing sports. They were about being together.[3]
We need to be together. As much as we need food and exercise, we need relationships. We need places of love and friendship and cooperation, like this synagogue.
So, learning from Ecclesiastes, learning from our High Holiday liturgy, and learning from the very secular Harvard study, how do we move further along on our own paths toward a good life?
First, learn from Ecclesaistes that the good life – the shanna tova – is not a destination. It is the path itself, and the people who are walking it with you. As you walk, second by second you can decide to whom and to what you give your attention. As the Harvard study suggests and as Ecclesiastes learned and as the machzor you hold in your hand teaches, week by week we can and must prioritize our relationships and choose to be with the people who matter. Year by year we can find purpose and meaning through the lives that we enrich and the relationships that we cultivate. By developing our curiosity and reaching out to others—family, loved ones, coworkers, friends, acquaintances, even strangers—with one thoughtful question at a time, one moment of devoted, authentic attention at a time – a moment what Martin Buber called the ‘I-Thou’ – we strengthen the foundation of a shanna tova – a good year.
Think about someone, just one person, who is important to you. Someone who may not know how much they really mean to you. It could be your spouse, your significant other, a friend, a coworker, a sibling, a parent, a child, or even a coach or a teacher from your younger days. This person could be sitting beside you as you pray in this sanctuary today or maybe in a distant place. Think about where they stand in their lives. What are they struggling with? Think about what they mean to you, what they have done for you in your life. Where would you be without them? Who would you be? Now think about what you would thank them for if you thought you would never see them again. And at this moment—right now—turn to them. Call them. Tell them. For in the telling is the beginning, perhaps not of a happy new year, but in a good year and good year is always within our reach.[4]
Shanna tova!
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2020/03/21/how-a-15000-year-old-human-bone-could-help-you-through-the–coronavirus/?sh=6179026e37e9
[2] Jewish Publication Society, Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), Ec 1:3.
[3] Waldinger, Robert J.; Schulz Ph.D, Marc . The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness (p. 280). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
[4] Paraphrased and expanded on ibid – p 281: Kindle edition
[i] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life/
