“Mind Your Own F-ing Business” & Sh’mini

I’ve been carrying around a few little embarrassing stories over the past couple of weeks.

Embarrassing, because my best self doesn’t shine through.

I often question how much I should intervene in various situations. Am I to be a bystander, “mind my own business,” or am I being called to be an “upstander”?

The term “upstander” came up a lot when I was in the South looking at the history of the Civil Rights Movement (standing up for others and what’s right).

I was presented with my first “opportunity” at the Atlanta airport waiting on that horrendous, three-hour TSA line I described in my last blog post. In a way, it was a spiritual challenge to stay calm and surrender to the situation. Why get upset? Why worry? I’d make it onto my flight…or not.

I failed the challenge miserably in the end.

Looking around, I wondered at the quiet submission of hundreds of travelers, standing in line like sheep, and it felt a little eerie to me, like we’ve been here before.

I wasn’t the only one “failing.” Some were very crafty, seemingly pitiful, cutting into the line by begging. Or just being chutzpadik and literally weaving their way through, passing people who pretended not to see them.

I’d been watching this happen and reached my limit as I saw this tall, well-dressed, young white man coming towards me from the back as I looked around. (I tell you his race because, if he were Black, I would never confront him. I have been too sensitized to what it means to be a white woman complaining about or criticizing a Black person in America. I will not do it. And after this trip, all the more so.)

This was my first chance to intervene personally, and when he got close, I stood facing him, moving side to side to block him.

“I need to get on this flight,” he said with an arrogant air, his face inches from mine.

“Is someone dying? Giving birth?” I said sarcastically.

“Maybe,” he said nonchalantly.

I continued to challenge him.

“I’m not trying to be an asshole,” he said.

“But you are being an asshole!” I yelled, my heart pounding, furious.

He pushed past me anyway. “I don’t have to tell you about my life!”

“But you do! Make your case!”

I couldn’t believe what was coming out of my mouth. I thought later, what if someone were dying or giving birth? What a total asshole that would make me. But I was betting on his being the entitled schmuck he was acting like.

When I caught sight of some TSA workers, I called out to them, pointing him out, and the police eventually came for him. He was led away quietly, looking a little like a sheep himself by now.

A few days later, as I was getting on the subway with my husband, a rather crowded train came into the station. We “had to” get on that train.

A youngish (again, white) man with earphones in his head got on in front of us. And he simply stopped short just inside at the pole, turning around to face me. I was shocked. He hadn’t tried or even thought about making room for those behind him.

With people flanking the doorway and the doors about to close, I very loudly (okay, it came out like yelling) said, “Excuse me!” He seemed completely taken aback, but moved aside. I snaked my way around, and my husband was able to enter.

For the rest of the ride, this same man was shaking his head at my rudeness. I considered apologizing for having yelled, but reconsidered; I hadn’t been wrong, just maybe a little too loud. And maybe he wasn’t a New Yorker and didn’t know subway etiquette. I didn’t want to get into it with him.

Nonetheless, it wasn’t me at my best.

Then last week I was in the park. It was a beautiful day, the kind you want to just lie on a blanket among the buds of spring and soak in the sunshine. Which was precisely what a woman was doing in the Conservatory Garden in the flower beds, where you’re “clearly” not supposed to walk or lie down because you can stunt the new growth.

It’s the kind of thing that pisses gardeners off. And me. Why aren’t people aware that it’s not just all about them, that there’s a common good here? Consideration like not picking fresh petals off trees, or breaking off entire branches; these are things created and planted to make life in the city just a little more bearable for everyone.

Three different people, including a gardener who worked there—and me—went up to her to tell her she shouldn’t be in the flower beds, explaining how it stunts the growth of the flowers. Maybe the last person had been unkind, so I approached her calmly and kindly this time, making up for the last two times I’d yelled at people. But it didn’t matter.

“Mind your own fucking business! Worry about your own fucking life!” she said to each of us.

I wonder about this often when I see that that I’m one of the only people who seem to care (or embarrass my children).

Are we supposed to all just mind our own fucking business and worry about our own fucking life?

In American culture, where it’s each for themself, apparently yes more than not.

But growing up Jewish, I was taught that we are supposed to intervene for the common good: extend a hand, move a stick or a rock or a piece of glass in the street that could cause an accident or a flat tire, remove a stumbling block for the infirm, the old, the blind. (It says so in our Torah. You can google it—not about flat tires, though.)

We are actually taught not to mind our own fucking business, maybe to a fault, sometimes worrying more about other people’s lives than our own, for better or worse. It’s part of Jewish culture to confront someone if they’re acting in a way that is harmful to the community. (It says so in the Talmud. Again, google it your own self.)

But we’re also supposed to be kind and never embarrass or shame someone publicly. (Also Talmud.)

All of the above had happened in all these situations.

This week in Torah, Moses comes off very inappropriate in a horrible situation. His brother Aaron’s two sons have just died by God’s hand, suddenly and shockingly.

What was their terrible sin deserving of sudden, horrific death? They are accused of bringing “alien fire” to the Temple, not following God’s command.

Faced with the shocking deaths of two newly ordained priests, the charred bodies of two of Aaron’s sons, Moses is completely insensitive. His first words to Aaron are, “This is what GOD meant by saying: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, And gain glory before all the people.”

Instead of recognizing this horrendous thing that has just happened, he theologizes!

And Aaron is silent.

Then Moses tells him he is not to rend his clothes, nor don the clothing of mourners.

Instead, the community will take on that role.

We can make excuses for Moses’ behavior; he was in shock himself, not knowing what to do or say.

It could be because humans tend to speak inappropriately in such situations that, according to Jewish tradition, when entering a house of mourning, we are to be silent until spoken to. Perhaps this wisdom comes from the fact that we are so ready to theologize, like Moses, and offer consolation in the way of reasons that try to make sense of a death, and will cover over the pain in an effort to make everyone feel better, (especially the visitor).

But the truth is, there is nothing to say that can make it better, so we are told to be silent and simply accompany the mourners in their grief.

Rabbi Shai Held points out in The Heart of Torah, that perhaps there are times that our personal needs must be delayed for the sake of community, as in this Torah story.

As I looked around on the line snaking through the airport, I wondered why everyone was so placid, so resigned? I thought, do I need to be more like them?

Yet, I know I would have been angry at myself for not standing up to at least one of those people trying to cut in.

Still, I’m not entirely sure if I took the right actions in these different situations. Like I said, I’m not proud of the way I spoke. But we are living in times when we are being asked to surrender so much.

When does it get to be too much? When do we get to be angry? When do we fight back, stand up for what’s right, defend ourselves and others?

When does the community matter more than the individual?

When do we need to be silent?

There are no easy answers to these questions.

I bless us all to know when to speak up, when to be silent, and to be able to do it all with more equanimity than I did.

Honestly, maybe we should all be minding our own business a little less, but in a nice way that supports the more vulnerable among us.

Because we really don’t want to be like sheep, any of us. Been there, done that.

And say Amen.