“Care-Being” - World AIDS Day Shabbat Drash - Nov 30, 2018

I am humbled to share the bimah tonight with the memories of those who died from AIDS, and with the voices of those who are now living with HIV and AIDS, and with the many who have loved and supported them over the years with physical, emotional, and spiritual care. You are our mighty builders and our gentle hearts.  

Of course, CBST has a decades-long history of caregiving around HIV/AIDS. The Chevra Bikkur Cholim, established in 1986, was a committee of CBST members who visited Jews with AIDS throughout the city. The NY AIDS Action Committee provided meals on Friday afternoons at the shul. We shared vital information at meetings and hosted onegs. Our members were leaders and volunteers in city-wide programs such as GMHC, the National Jewish AIDS Project, Callen-Lorde, and the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services. 

Caregiving — providing food, money, medicine, shelter, even medical or legal expertise — is transfering something essential to someone who needs that thing. It is holy work and cannot be overvalued. 

If that is caregiving, what is being the care oneself, embodying the care through one’s presence? A loving touch, holding hands, a hug; listening to someone’s story; living with a friend or lover day-after-day whose health is declining. 

This is distinct from giving care to another person. It is being the care. So instead of caregiving, let’s call it a new word I’m making up: care-being.

This concept is beautifully illustrated in a teaching that was shared with me by Rabbi David Schuck of Beth El Synagogue in New Rochelle. A scene from this week’s parsha, Vayeshev, serves as his central metaphor: Joseph in the pit. 

First, some background plot: Joseph is the favored son of all of his elder brothers, the firstborn of Jacob’s beloved and favored wife Rachel. He is a dreamer, literally and figuratively. Perhaps lacking in some humility and self-awareness, he interprets two of his own dreams to mean that his family will one day bow down to him. This only incites further jealousy among the brothers to the point that all of them (except one) plot his murder. The brothers strip Joseph of his famous multi-colored coat, throw him into the pit, and then sit down to a meal. 

Let us focus tonight on his experience in that pit: It must have been terrifying. To be alone, in the dark, likely injured from the fall, surely in emotional and spiritual pain too; abandoned by his brothers (who are enjoying a meal, maybe within earshot); not sure whether anyone will come to save him, or whether his parents will ever know what happened. 

The experience of being in the pit — or being in any place of deep suffering — is not only that you are in the pit, but that you can hear life happening all around you, without you. You hear your brothers having a meal: maybe the clank of their wine jugs, maybe the scraping of their plates, their laughter. You are exposed to and adjacent to this life, but you cannot access it from in the pit.

And when we peer down and see someone else stuck in a pit, our kind and compassionate human instinct is to try to figure out a way to pull that person out. We might reach down, throw a rope, we might encourage — we might beg — the person to jump or climb out. But for whatever reason, they might not be able to. Maybe they can’t grip the rope, or they lack the upper body strength, or they’re too tired, or they’re too sad — maybe temporarily, maybe forever.

And so these are the moments that call for a kind of courageous care. If we can’t pull Joseph out, we might need to jump into the pit. Instead of giving care, we might need to embody care through our presence. Here is where I am trying out that new word: care-being. We might not be able to transfer care onto Joseph, we might not be able to pull him out of the pit, so we might have to be the care ourselves by spending some time in the pit with him. 

Now of course we must protect ourselves, make sure we are prepared, get the right climbing gear in order to make sure we won’t risk too much personal harm by our jumping in — because all of us have pain and sensitive spots that could be triggered by engaging with someone else’s suffering. 

For this, Rabbi Schuck advises “the cultivation of an ability to be in that dark place with other people without trying to run away and without trying to rescue them ... without making them apologize for their pain or their anger or their questions.”

Here at CBST, we strive to be present for each other, knowing that we cannot always pull each other out of the pit, but knowing that we can listen, and we can make space for each other’s pain.

Because usually, negating another’s pain only compounds it. Well-meaning advice like: “Oh, it’s not so bad” or “cheer up” or “remember how lucky you are” — is not what the person in the pit needs to hear. We might try to say instead: “That sounds really hard,” or “I’m here,” or even a good “oy vey”. How to sense when to be in the pit with someone, even just for a short time, might be everything to them. 

This is no easy charge. But know that we have been caregiving and care-being at CBST for 45 years. From the Chevra Bikkur Cholim, to the ongoing “Talk To Me About HIV” program, which today helps Jewish leaders engage with their communities around HIV prevention, treatment, and stigma — and which now includes a regular support group and free confidential HIV testing (which happened downstairs today). Talk To Me About HIV is getting in the pit.

When we sensed that Islamophobia was on the rise in the United States, CBST began the religious practice of standing outside the Islamic Center at NYU every Friday afternoon in solidarity with the Muslim community. Standing beside our Muslim neighbors while they pray is getting in the pit.

As part of the New Sanctuary Coalition, trained CBST members accompany individuals and families facing deportation to their immigration hearings and ICE check-ins. Volunteers provide moral support and fellowship, and also demonstrate to immigration judges and ICE officers that those facing detention and deportation are not alone. Sitting in immigration court is getting in the pit.         

Sometimes we are in the pit as Joseph, if we are the ones in pain, and sometimes we are in the pit as Joseph’s friends, his family, or his community. 

Even if we don’t know what to do, even if we don’t know what to say, our presence with an engaged heart is itself care. 

Our tradition teaches that we were all created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. And just as God cannot always pull us out of the pit, neither can we always pull each other out. But we can make sure that no one is truly alone.

May we find the strength to continue this holy work together — caregiving and care-being in honor of all those we’ve lost.

Shabbat shalom.