Seeing the Good by Rabbi Sandra Kviat
In May, bouquets of flowers appeared on benches in a Welsh town. They were tied with a ribbon saying ‘I’m a Lonely bouquet, please take me home for yourself or someone you care about’. The Florist Fay Trowbridge had been leaving the "lonely bouquets" in Merthyr Tydfil to help shine a spotlight on Mental Health Awareness Month. “They were exactly what I needed last week as a little pick me up,” said one woman who found the flowers”.
This is from the BBC’s Uplifting Stories webpage, a part of their news website dedicated to good news.
Did you read a good news story this week? What was it? Did you hear about something that went well for someone? A piece of news that was uplifting whether it was personal or in the news? Something positive?
You’ll have noticed that nearly all news stories are negative, reinforcing that ‘things’ are rather ghastly. On any given day the headlines focus on news that makes us sit up and take notice. And sadly, as most news taps into our emotions through what is wrong in the world, we end up confronted with a barrage of stories that engender fear and worry. Immigration laws that are terrifying in their lack of humanity, Partygate scandals that undermine trust in democracy and political leaders, water companies releasing raw sewage into the oceans threatening human health, marine life and fishing.
Between environmental disasters wherever we turn, the cost of living crisis pushing people to lose their homes, war crimes and armed conflict in Ukraine; there’s plenty to worry about. And if we are not careful, we end up doom scrolling, bingeing on tragedy, crisis or disaster.
The levels of bad news have an emotional toll, they set our minds racing, and can make us feel uncertain, anxious or distressed, which eventually leads to burnout, if we’re not careful. Therapists now recommend that we limit our exposure to the news cycle, to make sure it is not all that we see or experience. For the distance between the real world around us; our home lives, our work lives, our relationship with real people around us and the online cycle of news can get too short, and the enormous global world and its challenges can seem as important as the one we see and touch daily. The world as it is, in the news, is overwhelming, negative and out of control. As for the world as it should or could be, that is not the main focus of the newspapers.
And yet, that is exactly the message of Micah and Bilam (in the Torah parasha on 1st July), that you need both parts, to see the world as it is (Bilam) and how it could be in the future (Micah). Unlike our newspapers, Bilam’s words begin in the positive. He utters the blessing ‘mah tovu’, how good and beautiful, rather than the curse he has been asked to perform.
Of course we don’t know what he really saw. What made him proclaim in such uplifting terms? But the classic explanation by Rabbi Yochanan in the Talmud is that the tribes lived in harmony because they respected each other's privacy and boundaries. (Bava Batra 60a). Others argue that he praised the military formation and discipline of the Israelites, or that it was the people’s unity.
More recently, Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell suggested:
“He sees the tents that are the homes and gathering places of the women, children, and men, who live as a community marked by care and mutual respect…. For a moment, Balaam sees a community as it can be: a society of mutual dependence and trust, a community where each person is treated with dignity.”
(“The Torah: A Women’s Commentary”).
Whatever Bilam saw, it was positive, it was nourishing, it was inspiring. And that, I think, is the message that the ancient rabbis wanted us to find, in the juxtaposition of the two very different texts. We begin not by seeing what is broken (that is all too easy), but rather what is good, what is tov, what we value and that inspires us. And only then do we look at what can and should be improved as Micah reminds us.
It's easy to find the bad/tragic/sad/unjust things that are happening. But what about the people, stories, events or actions that lift us up and inspire us? Bilam asks us what in your life is good? What can you see and be grateful for, what do you value?
Pride month, which culminates in celebrations around the country, and especially in central London is an example of something we can look at and say ‘mah tovu’, how good. From a time when homosexuality was forbidden, shunned, stigmatised and feared, today LGBTQI+ communities and people are living safer, more equal and more just lives both within the Jewish community and in society at large. From queer rabbis leading major communities to the Equal Marriages Act, which Liberal Judaism was instrumental in helping to develop; there is much ‘tov’, many good things to see. However, as Micah says, ‘we’re not there yet’, for homophobia and violence against the queer community and its members has risen, both here, in Israel, and across the world.
Taking a leaf from the Hans Rosling school of thought, one piece of good news I heard this week that I want to share with you is the impact that the all female ‘disease detectives’ in Bangladesh have had over the past 50 years in helping lower the mortality rate of under 5s and new mothers by 75% and 71% respectively. “The number of rural children who receive the critical DTP3 vaccine (diphtheria, tetanus toxoid and pertussis) has risen from close to zero to more than 90 per cent today”.
These 50,000 frontline health workers provide the door-to-door last mile services across rural areas and slums that are difficult to serve through conventional health infrastructure:
“Some 80 percent of the population is now within a 30-minute walk of a clinic providing first aid, immunisation, and birth facilities… [Bangladesh] has done a remarkable job by engaging with communities and responding to community-led, rather than top-down, demands.”
I have shared this positive and uplifting story because it shines a light on the good too; despite plenty of issues and challenges for Bangladesh and its population, there are sources of hope too, and we too must learn to seek out the ‘tov’ as well, each and every day. Learning about a community-led initiative that saves so many lives, makes it easier to say to ourselves, “and now what else can we do? We might not be there yet, but what is the next step we can take, or how can we begin?”.
Micah’s ‘Not there yet’ does not mean either striving for a sense of utopia or a Promised Land. But neither should the ‘not there yet’ stance make us feel powerless, depressed or lead us into apathy, giving up before we have even begun.
It is worth noting that a really important lesson from our Torah tradition, is that they never reach the Promised Land, the scroll ends before they get there. As we’re always on the way, still moving towards something.
So back to Bilam and Micah, well with the help of a talking donkey, they remind us that we should begin with what is good, rather than what isn't good. It is why we begin our service with Bilam’s words ‘mah tovu’. Though it may seem repetitive that we say or sing these words all the time, it is in their repetition where lies the power. For it does not matter whether you’ve had a great week or an awful one, whether you’re barely keeping it together or feel on top of the world, no matter where you are at, begin with ‘mah tovu’ and seek out the good in your life to first awaken your sense of gratefulness.
On a personal level, I find that it can be as little as finding one thing each day to appreciate, however insignificant it may seem. Perhaps just getting out of bed, or a smile from someone, or valuing something small achieved at school, work or home. Imagine if we begin our mornings not with outrage or crisis but with news about a 91 year old former teacher helping young school children learn to read, an ambulance driver finding and returning a beloved dog that has been stolen, neighbours ‘adopting’ their widowed neighbour next door as a grandfather etc. Fortify yourselves by finding and naming that one thing each day.
Towards the end of the service, just before the kaddish we sing the Aleinu, the prayer that looks to a hopeful future, even if we are not quite there yet. The prayer begins with the words “Aleinu”, meaning ‘it is upon us (or up to us)’, and it ends with “ein od” meaning ‘there is no one else’. The world as it should be is up to us, even if it is not here yet, but to begin the work, we have to start with a sense of gratitude for what we do have and what we see.
Maybe it would help us if we all had a talking donkey to stop us in our tracks, and to make us see what is really there, maybe, but I’m going to begin with reminding myself of that which is good, and then step forth from there.
Mah tovu, how good it is to be together, to see the life of this, our community, to welcome in both new and well known faces, to celebrate the transition of a child into a young person. And though we are ‘not there yet’, we know that the future, the world as it should be, can be reached, step by step by step, one good thing at a time.