RAPPING with RIM

December, 2007

by Leslie Brody

When I agreed to write this column a few months ago, I imagined that when the deadline approached, my time would be freer to reflect thoughtfully on what I wanted to discuss with Rim. This was, of course, a pure fantasy, but it also represented a wish — that there might be a moment of calm, a time for self-care in the day to day juggling of work and childcare responsibilities. In a recent e-mail to Rim I wrote, “unfortunately life feels more like a race than a dance right now: work pressures, graduation festivities combined with spring sports, music recitals… feels pretty relentless, even though they’re all wonderful events.” I was referring to a metaphor about the consequences of viewing life as a dance versus a race that Rim had spoken about in one of his sermons years ago. He replied, “It sounds like you are dancing as fast as you can.” His response helped, making me feel that I was attempting to experience all of life’s wonders in the face of life’s brevity (the days are long and the years short!) but the problem is that fast-dancing has its own challenges: it can be exhausting and the background can get blurred.

I know that this role overload is not unique to me; perhaps it’s always been a part of midlife, perhaps it’s the particular age of technology/materialism/terrorism/shifting gender roles we’re living in. (The large numbers of Japanese men dying from working overlong hours, “karoshi,” was identified in the 1980s). I began to think that what I really needed to talk to Rim about was Jewish wisdom on self-care.

We began our correspondence with a discussion of tikkun olam, a term that developed in Safed among the mystics in the 1600s. Rim’s understanding is that the term refers to the idea that our world was created after God created a first world that shattered, presumably because it was fragile. With this event, the holy sparks of God descended, each spark entering the objects and lives in this world. Each spark was encased by and clouded with the shell of these lives that surrounded it. People can redeem these sparks and repair the world by “thinning the shell,” so that the sparks can be freed and shine through. The primary message usually associated with tikkun olam is that through social justice, through helping others, we will help to repair our broken world to a holy state. But in addition to a social justice message, tikkun olam has a self-care message. We all have inner sparks and need to work on thinning our own shells, so that our sparks can shine through the shells of our ego and lusts and fears. This message, that we all have holiness in our bodies and in our souls, is also captured in the prayer book, in which three of the first brachot are about the soul, body, and Torah. The three are seen as interlinked. We care for our body and thank God for it, so that we can stand before the Holy Throne. The soul is pure and never soiled. 

This message of self-care is also evident in the advice Moses’s father-in-law, Jethro, gives to Moses about how to cut back on his work (Exodus 18). After Moses has led the Jewish people out of Egypt, Jethro inquires of him, “Why are you sitting by yourself and letting all the people stand around you from morning until evening?” Moses replies that he is taking care of the people, that he is their representative to God. And Jethro tells him, “What you are doing is not good. You are going to wear yourself out, along with this nation that is with you. Your responsibility is too great. You cannot do it all alone.” He goes on to advise Moses to get help in appointing others as leaders. “They will then share the burden, making things easier for you. If you agree to this, and God concurs, you will be able to survive. This entire nation will then also be able to attain its goal of peace.” So, Jethro links Moses’s need to care for others as a motivation for self-care. He also emphasizes the power of community in lessening burdens and in aiding individual health and survival. The conversation between Moses and Jethro comes immediately before the revelation of the Ten Commandments when Moses talks directly to God.

The message here: you can’t reach the ultimate “revelation” or “spiritual moment” if you are burnt out. Psychological research confirms this: physical, mental, or spiritual activities, such as reading a good book, eating a chocolate sundae, taking a walk in a peaceful place — improve immune functioning, health, attitudes, and even influence our behavior toward others. People who were unexpectedly given cookies by strangers were more apt to help others at a later point in time than those who weren’t.

For Rim, enacting these ideas takes the form of a personal goal that includes working with gracefulness. Perhaps, taking our cues from Jethro, this can be best accomplished by drawing on the power of community to help with our burdens. Rim is also fantasizing about someday sitting in the sun at an old age home, remembering, and being happy. I like his image, but wonder about the possibility of occasionally sitting in the sun before old age sets in. Perhaps our next conversation needs to be on what makes self-care so difficult to attain. Slow dancing, of course, has its own pleasures and rewards.

—Leslie Brody