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Out of the Darkness: On Pesach, Stigma and the Redemption of Speech

Parshat Tzav - Shabbat Hagadol 5775/ 28 March 2015

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March 28, 2015

לעילוי נשמת אבי מורי שמעון בן בנימין ז’’ל

Today is the tenth yahrzeit of my father, Robert Goldman, of blessed memory. Since he died a week before Passover, my experience of that festival is now entwined with my experience of his death and of his life. This morning I’d like to offer some reflections on the spiritual lessons of Passover and the legacy of my father’s death and life. And I have one request of you: If anything I share this morning is difficult or upsetting to you, please do come talk to me.

I have been thinking about my father and what I have inherited from him more than usual this year. In addition to the ten-year milestone, I became a father myself, and we named our daughter Zohar after my father: Robert, is a Germanic name meaning bright with glory, and Zohar means brightness in Hebrew. My father’s flame certainly burned brightly. He was a brilliant and passionate man.

As I have been preparing for the coming holiday, I’ve been reminiscing about seders from my youth. I remember how my father sat at the head of the table, leading us in lively discussion about the meaning of Passover and liberation. I remember the level of intention he brought to the mitzvah of eating matzah. I picture him reclining, eyes closed, chewing each mouthful of the bread of affliction and liberation slowly, deliberately, tears streaming down his face as he imagined redemption from his own personal Mitzrayim- his own bonds of suffering in Egypt. He used to tear up when he ate the maror too, but that was just because he always took way too much horseradish.

It is a mitzvah to eat the matzah and the maror, those items that symbolize aspects of our people’s servitude and exodus. Yet that is not enough to fulfill our obligations for the night. The goal of the seder is to feel as if we ourselves have come out of Egypt. We have to bring the story of Passover to life to the point that we experience ourselves as a part of it. We do this by telling the story with words and song and food and props. This is why the book for the seder night is called the Haggadah, which, means, simply, the telling.

Pesach night is indeed different from all other nights, all other festivals. It is not enough just to do the rituals alone. We have to give voice to the story. In fact, there is an opinion that one who has a seder alone still has to tell the story of the Exodus.

My father loved discussing the nuances of the Haggadah and exploring the stories of redemption from oppression and suffering, from the Exodus from Egypt to our time. Several times he even invited non-Jewish coworkers and friends to our seder who shared their own liberation stories- people like a Cuban-American colleague who shared the story of his family’s flight from Cuba after the revolution. Hearing those stories told added a depth to the experience of the seders and made a lasting impression.

I was used to seeing my father’s deep compassion, and growing up, I thought nothing of moments like these. Looking back, I see how extraordinary this practice was of inviting people to share their personal stories at our seder table. My father was deeply attuned to the suffering of others. He devoted his life to honoring the dignity of those in our society who are marginalized and oppressed, and to witnessing and working to alleviate their suffering.

Half a century ago my father helped to organize voter registration for African-Americans in Mississippi, and marched across the Edmund Pettis Bridge alongside tens of thousands of other civil rights demonstrators who marched from Selma to Montgomery led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. As a graduate student in Cambridge he helped found the Boston chapter of Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. After a short stint in the world of academia, my father retrained as a social worker and spent the last quarter century of his life working for the New York City Board of Education in middle schools for emotionally disturbed children in Harlem and the South Bronx.

Growing up in Manhattan in the 80’s I watched my father talk regularly with the homeless men in our neighborhood, listening to their stories and offering them support in seeking shelter and jobs.

For my father the story of the Exodus was real, and it was ongoing. He felt called every day to work alongside those stuck in narrow places, to give voice to their stories and offer them hope.

My father suffered, too. From a young age he struggled with chronic depression. That was his personal Mitzrayim.  And while my father was able to help so many people profoundly change their lives and find a way forward, his suffering was a bondage from which he was never redeemed. Mired in despair, after over half a century of struggle with mental illness my father died by suicide.

For years the cause of my father’s death was hard to talk about, hard to name. It still is. The stigma around mental illness and suicide in our society is entrenched.

As a chaplain and a rabbi I have counseled many people with mood and personality disorders- in mental health clinics, hospitals and synagogues – I have seen that mental illness does not discriminate based on race, religion or education level.  I’ve processed my father’s death with friends, therapists, rabbis and pastoral care givers. I know well that depression or any other mental illness does not reflect on the character of a person who suffers from it or on their family. I know that one in four Americans will experience mental illness in a given year and yet, speaking publicly about my family history I feel shame.

That is how deep the stigma around mental illness is in our society. That is how deeply ingrained is the false message that the mentally ill are tainted and dangerous, that talking about mental illness is taboo, that it is shameful and to be avoided.

So widespread is the stigma, so deep the shame.

My father bore the weight of his shame alone.  It was not something spoken about in our home and mental illness was not a safe subject in our community. The stigma of mental illness perpetuated and exacerbated the shame and isolation. That toxic combination was one piece of what led my father to the depths of despair and ultimately to take his own life. There are so many others who suffer alone. In the United States, a person dies by suicide every 13.3 minutes, claiming more than 39,500 lives each year.

In the 12th chapter of Exodus, during the final plague- the death of the firstborn of Egypt- the Torah describes the wailing that was heard, for every household was struck; none was spared. “Ki ein bayit asher ein sham meit.” Each and every household in our BZBI community has been touched by suicide or mental illness. You, your self may be affected or an immediate family member is. Or maybe it is a cousin, or a friend, a classmate, a neighbor or a colleague. This is a shared struggle. And yet, rarely do we talk about these topics in public in our communities.

Research over the past decade has shown that people are more likely to die by suicide when they feel like they don’t belong to an important social group. It is up to us to talk about mental illness and suicide publicly in our Jewish community, to ensure that our synagogues and organizations are safe spaces in which people can share hopes and fears, where we can discuss the value of life and an individual can feel that he has permission to voice doubts about the purpose for continuing. It is up to us to break down the barriers of stigma to truly be present for one another in community.

We live in a broken world, in need of so much healing and redemption, it only hurts us to bear it alone. If you are a survivor of suicide, talk about it. If you experience mental illness or have ever had thoughts of suicide, talk about it. If someone you know is suffering or says something that leaves even a slight doubt that they may be considering suicide- talk about it. It is a myth that talking about suicide or asking someone if he is having thoughts of suicide can make him suicidal. It is a myth; the truth is the opposite. Opening up the conversation and talking about suicide without judgment can restore hope and save lives. Talk to your friends. Talk to your family. Come talk to me, to Rabbi Stone or Cantor Grainer. You are welcome here. We are here to witness and to help you find the resources to recover hope. One of those resources is community.

During my year of mourning for my father I felt very much alone in my experience as a survivor of suicide. Then one day I saw a poster on the subway promoting an event run by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention- the Out of the Darkness Overnight walk- an 18-mile walk around New York City from dusk to dawn to raise awareness and funding for suicide prevention. I registered for the walk on my own. When I arrived at the starting point of the walk, at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge volunteers and fellow participants greeted me with such warmth. I wrote a sign that I later wore saying that I was walking for my father. All around me people carried names and photographs of loved ones. They wore plastic Mardi Gras beads- or honor beads, as they were called- denoting who they were walking for: white for a child; red for a lost spouse or partner; gold for a lost parent; orange for a lost sibling; purple for a lost relative or friend; silver for a lost first responder or member of the military; teal for friends and family of someone who struggles; blue if you were simply there as to support the cause; green for anyone who had struggled personally with depression or thoughts of suicide.

Many people were laughing, others crying, some did both. I immediately felt at home, that there, among strangers, I belonged. A few miles into the walk I bumped into friends- Amy, who was walking for her father and David, who walked for the mother of a childhood friend. I had had no idea that they were personally affected by suicide. We walked together through the night until the first rays of day appeared in the eastern sky. Along the way we shared our stories. We came out of the darkness two thousand-strong knowing that we were not alone. As we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River, I thought of our ancestors leaving behind the darkness of Egypt as they crossed a sea.

The Zohar teaches that while the Israelites were in Egypt speech was in exile. Through the process of liberation speech was redeemed.  We see this transformation in Moshe. Here is a man who at first has great trouble expressing himself verbally, yet he learns to be the voice of his people, to tell the story of their suffering in the face of their oppressor. And we see it in the people of Israel. This nation who at first is so despairing that it has repressed any urge for freedom learns to cry out to God in their anguish and dares to dream of liberation.

Rav Kook teaches that there are two types of speech. There is the worldly, mundane, everyday speech. And then there is a higher speech, a holy speech. Through this speech God created the world and God instilled in us the potential to access this holy speech. In an essay entitled ‘The Redemption of Speech,’ Rav Kook writes that, “Sometimes we can sense the connection between our speech and the universe… As our soul is elevated, we become acutely aware of the tremendous power that lies in our faculty of speech. We recognize clearly the tremendous significance of each utterance.”

Pesach is the festival of finding our voices, of redemption through speech, of haggadah, of envisioning ourselves as redeemed and using holy speech to tell our stories. The ARI, Rabbi Isaac Luria- the 16th century Galilean mystic- highlights this with a clever wordplay, teaching that the word “Pesach” can be read as two words: “Peh sach” meaning the mouth that speaks. Pesach is the festival of redemption through speech, when we celebrate learning to tell our own stories in ways that are hopeful, healing and redemptive for our communities, our society and ourselves.

When our daughter Zohar was born Annie and I wrote her a letter about the origins of her name and her namesakes, which we read at her Simchat Bat naming ceremony at the Germantown Jewish Centre. In it we began to tell Zoe about her grandfather’s rich, complex, beautiful and painful life. How I wish she could meet him and learn from him herself. I know my father would have been in love with her. So now, we will do what we can. We will bring blessing to my father’s memory by telling his stories.

The stories we tell possess great power. The stories we tell about ourselves become the form through which we view our lives and our identities.

They constitute our memories and determine the meaning we find in our lives. We can choose to reclaim our own stories, to look beyond the lenses of shame and of stigma to tell stories that are life-affirming and healing, to tell stories that are truly redemptive and shift our collective narratives.

When you tell your story, you never know who will be touched by your words. You never know when telling your story might save someone’s life.

As we approach the festival of redemption and prepare for this year’s seders, at some point between the shopping and the scrubbing, I invite you take time to reflect: What are the stories that need to be told this year? What are the stories of suffering and liberation in our lives and in our community that are waiting to be voiced? This Pesach, may our holy power of speech be a vehicle for redemption.

Sources and Recommended Reading

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