Good yontif.
I once almost got in a fist fight at Fenway Park.
I’m not what you would call “afraid of a scrap,” though perhaps on the holiest day of the year is not the best time to admit it to my congregation. My 20s were a time of shouting at various misogynist internet celebrities through megaphones and narrowly avoiding a brawl to the tune of “Sweet Caroline” on Yawkey Way.
But you see, he was asking for it! For eight and a half innings this dude was spouting the most Sam Adams fueled homophobic and misoginistic screed I’d heard in a minute.
But fisticuffs did not happen, and I’m not here trying to minimize violence! Some choice gestures sure, but we left. I think the Red Sox won? It’s hard to remember, because minutes after emptying out onto Beacon Street, a bomb went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The rest of the day was a little busy, running an ad hoc shelter for stopped marathon runners out of the Reform synagogue where I worked and had just happened to pop into to borrow the phone.
Why do I share this story with you? First to know if you need a Hebrew Hammer to have your back, you know who to call. Secondly, because it sort of flies in the face of what I want to talk with you about this Yom Kippur, and that, my friends, is conflict avoidance. The subtitle to this sermon is “a white middle class first born daughter’s guide to conflict avoidance-avoidance.” Today I want to talk about how we fight.
How lucky are we as a Jewish community to live on a time cycle that calls us to think about harm and repair every year. It is an incredible blessing that the character of of our months refuses to allow us to move ignorantly from one year to the next, each season rolling without note. And also…what an epic obligation! The main event of our Jewish year is to…make apologies! Not let harm we have caused and experienced go by the wayside, but confront it head on!
A sidebar, my annual reminder that just because we have an opportunity to make and receive teshuvah–repair, especially in this season, does not mean it has to happen automatically on Yom Kippur. Like cutting into an underripe avocado and being met instead with tough flesh, sometimes we need more time to be ready to engage in a particular conversation. If you are not equipped just yet to have a reparative or even curious conversation, do not force it. And, some harm we cannot be ever expected to forgive, even if we strive to. Know that.
Back to our matter at hand–I wonder, how many of the people on the list of folks you need to have a teshuva conversation with have you been avoiding?
What does it feel like to avoid conflict? When do you do it? Why do you do it? Just take a minute to answer for yourself.
This afternoon we read the Book of Jonah, a short but incredibly cinematic story. When Gd calls Jonah to go to Ninevah and tell the people to repent or else, what does he do? He immediately runs in the opposite direction! Jonah hops on a ship, tries to get as far away from Ninevah as he possibly can. Now perhaps this is because he feels unworthy of delivering a message on Gd’s behalf. Or perhaps he fears the people will not repent, and he doesn’t want to see them destroyed. Or perhaps as the commentary say, that if the people of Ninevah can be threatened and repent, but the people of Israel cannot, what does that say about his own people? All great excuses, Jonah, really.
This Yom Kippur I want us to see Jonah’s response to Gd’s call for him to go to Ninevah is a terrain of conflict avoidance, and potential places of redemption for this pattern.
When Gd tells Jonah to bring a prophesy to Ninevah, he immediately runs away. He pre-pays his ticket and tries to sail as far away from the Land and Gd as possible, travels in the opposite direction. Jonah upends his life in order to avoid being called into closer relationship with the Holy One.
We avoid conflict because of what we have previously experienced in conflict. Our families of origin and the relationships we are in over our lives create templates for us of how to handle conflict, the positive or negative repercussions when issues are surfaced that demand accountability. If you were listened to, saw people in your family be listened to, and understood fighting and conflict as a constructive way to solve problems, you might understand now that conflict is an uncomfortable but reasonable choice. If you saw conflict result in violence, punishment, distancing, or long term distrust, having a disagreement of any kind might activate the fear responses that you had at that time. Our early examples of what role conflict has in a relationship are incredibly formative, and we can be gentle with the impact it has on how we engage now.
Jonah blatantly ignores reality and what is called from him. He creates a plan to try to escape the Divine, as if Gd was less powerful in the ocean than on land! He boards a boat with other people and they suffer the consequences of his avoidance. He denies the power that he holds to repent, to pray to the Holy One of Blessing. And the storm rages on. The sailors around only find peace when they heave him overboard, he has jeopardized their lives and their safety.
And we also know that conflict avoidance is a key characteristic of white supremacy.
Tema Okun, one of our generation’s teachers on white supremacy culture, explains that white people thinking we have a right to comfort, fear of open conflict, and power hoarding are all characteristics of white supremacy. She writes, “this assumption supports the tendency to blame the person or group causing discomfort or conflict rather than addressing the issues being named.” This results in scapegoating those who surface issues related to racism, rather than addressing the actual racism being named, as well as insistence on being polite, maintaining the status quo, or being threatened when being asked to give up sole power.
Jonah sinks to the bottom of the sea and is swallowed by a dag gadol, a big fish. From the belly of this big fish Jonah sings a poem of regret and repentance. According to the Zohar, daga can also be translated as “anxiety.” He avoids what at his core he knows to be unavoidable, until it consumes him entirely.
And conflict avoidance is out of fear of rejection. If we articulate where harm has happened, we fear that we will no longer receive attention, care, or respect. If we speak up for ourselves, or admit where we are wrong, we fear that a relationship is so fragile it cannot withstand it.
Jonah is one of our forefathers of conflict avoidance. He literally would rather be swallowed by a Big Fish than have a hard conversation. Does this resonate with anyone? But the story of Jonah offers us a holy map for it to be different. After he repents from inside the belly of the fish, he is spat out on dry land. And he makes his way to Ninevah, and he tells the people what Gd threatened. And they immediately mourn and repent, the King dresses in sackcloth, demanding the city fast.
Let that bring release to the tension in your whole body–Jonah resists and resists and resists, causes a storm on the ocean and has to be swallowed whole by a scary fish in order to just make it to Ninevah, to see the people were ready to transform. Carry that alternate reality with you into the next hard conversation you’re bracing to have. [Reference that meme of the kid drowning but not really.]
It wasn’t the huge melee that he feared, he wasn’t run out of town, he wasn’t ignored or mocked, the people listen. And they receive his prophetic message, and choose to change their ways.
Now, Jonah grieves this repentance. Huh? Abarbanel, 15th century Portuguese rabbi, explains that he was grieving because the people didn’t actually change their evil actions, but did not become followers of Hashem. Rashi suggests his grief is because they have repented and are not destroyed, so they’ll think he was lying. Like Arlo Guthrie on the Group W bench, “I wanna see blood and guts!” And Gd is shocked.
Jonah camps out and Gd sends a pumpkin vine to grow over his head. Ah, shade. But then Gd sends a worm to eat the vine, and the vine withers. “I would rather die than live” without this vine. Gd is shocked. Gd says to Jonah, ““You cared about the plant, which you did not work for and which you did not grow, which appeared overnight and perished overnight. And should not I care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not yet know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well!” (4:11)
That’s how the book of Jonah ends, a Divine mic drop. You;d rather the city of Ninevah not repent and instead be destroyed? You want to stay in a state of grief and dysregulation, avoidance and anxiety, because its more comfortable? Gd in the end of the book of Jonah is showing us that when we put the work in to show up for hard conversations even with an entire city, there is a chance something might shift and open up. Transform. And if it doesn’t, at least we will. Jonah does not complete a personal transformation by the end of his book, and we carry that uneaseful ending with us. What can we do, to write our own conclusion of the book of Jonah?
My friends, if you feel like something isn’t working between you and another person, the chances are they feel that something isn’t working either. Of course, that isn’t always the case, but in my experiences, when I name that something is off, it is met with a sense of relief. Even if the source cause or responsibility isn’t agreed upon.
So this year, I want to invite you to practice building skills in engaging conflict. Some of those skills include learning about self regulation, before, during, and after conflict. Therapeutic work to “own your own stuff,” get clear on your motivations and subconscious narratives that cloud clear communication with others. The fundamental work of assessing if and where you are complicit in enacting or overlooking white supremacist patterns of conflict avoidance. The spiritual work of self love, that honors your right to exist on this planet, be treated with respect, and have the space to be imperfect and repair.
And since I’m up here, I have to say it–I am not a very good telephone. Sort of by training, the things that are shared with me stay with me. If you have an issue with a comrade in our community, try this year on thinking about what you need in order to communicate it with them directly! What kind of coaching, support, community culture transformation would make it feel possible for you to directly communicate with someone? I have your back–the Hebrew Hammer is here, but I nor anyone else can fight your fights for you. So lets figure out how you can have a conversation with as much comfort and needed conflict as possible.
As a shul, I am excited this year to talk more about conflict, how we treat one another, and how we get to call one another in when we misstep. Going into our fifth year as a community, some of us have accrued years of small or large hurts–it is only natural. However, it is up to us to shift our congregation’s culture, so that when harm happens we do not require the person who has been wronged to take it on the chin, so that we can avoid having hard conversations and consequences we fear. I hope that if you feel called to this work of culture shifting, of building more liberated ways to engage with each other, that you will help us study those methods and model them.
If you are hearing this for the first time, or just found yourself in Hinenu land, I’ll tell you–we’re no different than any other community when it comes to this. I am hopeful we will get to heal and grow together and create new stories and patterns.
I offer that in any group forming process, the storm that rocks Jonah’s boat is expected–truly, Bruce Tucker taught in 1965 that the stages are forming–storming–norming–performing, all for a group to grow. But Jonah, and any group, can weather the storm as we create new norms that honor the causes of conflict and make repairs. There is a year’s worth that can be said on this topic, a lifetime’s worth. I am eager to hear your perspectives, the nuance and texture we can add to our understanding of the role of conflict in community, and when it has not been constructive! A sermon for a Shabbat to come, I’m sure.
May we be blessed in the year ahead with opportunities to transform. May we approach our own selves and others with compassion. May what flourishes from the space between us and another be for a shelter. Amen.