Big Little Things

Rosh Hashanah Evening Sermon
Temple B’nai Tikvah
5780/2019

Rabbi Mark Glickman

 

I have something to confess to you tonight. It’s a secret, so let’s just keep it between you and me.

When I was a boy, growing up in the Chicago suburbs, I was a bit of a problem child. My school teachers, you see, didn’t like it when I punched them, and by March in the year I was in grade 3, they decided they had had enough. Yes, it’s true. When he was nine years old, your rabbi got expelled from school.

My parents were beside themselves – they didn’t know what to do. They put me into special education classes the following year, and they had me see our family psychiatrist, Dr. Jay Hirsch. My mother blamed herself for my misbehavior, and wondered aloud to Dr. Hirsch whether I’d be OK in the long run. Dr. Hirsch was a gentle and very wise man, and he reassured my mother that this wasn’t her fault, and that he was pretty sure that I was going to turn out just fine. 

I remained in special education classes for all of grades 4 and 5. In grades 6 and 7 – junior high school – I was back in the regular classes, but I was still having problems, and I almost got kicked out again. Then, in grade 8, they put me into what was, at the time, a cutting-edge program, called “Liberal Arts.” It was originally set up for gifted students, but eventually they let in kids like me. We had to go to each class once a day, but we could decide on our schedule each day for ourselves. We made our own assignments; we learned at our own pace. 

That year, for some reason that I still don’t fully understand, I made a 180-degree turnaround. Not only did I start behaving in school, I actually started excelling. If they had given us grades in that newfangled Liberal Arts program, I probably would have gotten A’s. I wasn’t punching the teachers any more, I was learning from them. And to my surprise, I found that I really enjoyed it. 

I liked all my teachers that year, but my favorite by far was Mrs. Becicka. Mrs. Becicka was old – like, fifty or so. She was a short woman, slightly stocky, with her hair neatly done in bleach-blonde curls. She looked, in other words, just like an 8th grade social studies teacher is supposed to look.

At the time, we 8th-graders in the State of Illinois were required by law to pass two state-mandated tests – one on the United States Constitution, and another on the Illinois State Constitution. As our preparations got underway, Mrs. Becicka told us that she’d never had a student get 100% scores on both tests. She’d had students get 100% on one test or the other, but nobody had gotten hundreds on both.

Right then and there, I decided that I’d be the first one. First came the test on the US Constitution. I studied and studied and studied, and I got 100. Then came the state constitution test. I studied and studied and studied, and the day after the test, Mrs. Becicka called me to her desk.

“Mark, come here,” she said. When I walked over to her desk, I saw that she had my test paper in her hand. “Look here,” she told me, “there’s a blank question on your test sheet. You got all the other answers on the test right, but this one’s blank.”

I looked at the sheet, and saw that she was pointing to a multiple-choice question. It looked like I had chosen answer C, but then later erased it. 

“So,” Mrs. Becicka asked, “what’s the right answer?”

“C,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, wait a minute,” I said. “No, it’s B – the correct answer is B.”

“That’s right!” Mrs. Becicka said. “You’re my first student to get one-hundreds on both of the constitution tests!

Suddenly, I was hot stuff in that school – everyone was simply abuzz at my accomplishment. All the pretty girls oohed and ahhed over the achievement (I was still terrified of them), my other teachers told me what a great job I had done. And the principal (whom I had gotten to know really well the year before) made a special trip down to my class just to congratulate me in front of my friends.

Years passed. I grew up, got married, had kids, and always remained proud of that 8th-grade achievement. When my son Jacob was about six years old, I told him with great pride the story of what I had accomplished back then. And as I was telling him the story, I thought to myself, “You know, it’s kind of strange that I left that answer blank. I distinctly remember going over that test, and making sure that I’d answered all of those questions correctly. I wouldn’t have left an answer blank.”

Then, I realized what had happened: Wait a minute…of course…I wouldn’t have left that answer blank. I didn’t. It was Mrs. Becicka who had erased my incorrect answer and given me another chance. For a quarter of a century, I had thought that I’d actually gotten 100’s on both of those tests, but then I realized that I’d only thought so because Mrs. Becicka had cheated for me!

I wanted to thank Mrs. Becicka. I reached out to the school to see whether they might know how to reach her – no response. I Googled her – nothing. Later, I did another online search, and I found a reference to her – it was in Mrs. Becicka’s obituary.

We often tend to think that the great lessons that one person conveys to another are contained in words. In Mrs. Becicka’s case, however, the greatness came in another way. Yes, she taught me a lot of civics. But now, many years after studying with her, I realize that her greatest teaching came to me in one small act – an act which I only recognized long after she performed it, and which she may never have mentioned to anyone.

There’s an old tale about a Chasid who traveled great distances to pray with a certain rebbe. “Why did you travel so far just to pray with that rebbe?” someone asked him. “Couldn’t you have prayed just as well at your shul at home.” “Why?” the Chasid answered. “Why did I come? It’s because I wanted to see how the rebbe ties his shoes.”

None of you have ever expressed much interest in how I tie my shoes (just sayin’), but if only I could have had more time to learn the little things from this great teacher of mine. She taught social studies really well, but, as my memory of this one act reminds me, she lived her life even better. She will always be my teacher

Somehow, partly with the help of Mrs. Becicka, I finished Junior High School. Some well-timed and helpful appointments with Dr. Hirsch, our family’s psychiatrist, certainly helped. “Don’t worry,” Dr. Hirsch told my mother. “He’ll be fine.”

I went to high school; I went to college; I was accepted into rabbinical school and spent a year in Israel, and then moved to Cincinnati for four more years of study. 

Shortly after I got to Cincinnati, I decided to get away one weekend to visit a friend of mine in Pennsylvania. Along the way, the Pennsylvania Turnpike took me through a mountainous area, and at one point, I rounded a bend only to see a pickup truck on the shoulder of the road leaning on its side almost vertical up against a rock abutment. Passing the pickup, I glanced into my rearview mirror, and found – to my surprise – that there was a person inside that pickup. Immediately, I pulled over, and as I did so, I looked to the other side of the highway and saw that a semi-truck had pulled over as well. The driver and I both started walking toward the upended pickup truck at the same time.

The semi driver was a big guy – maybe 6’5” or so, well over 300 pounds, about three months past due for a beard trim. He wore old jeans, and a threadbare, black, AC/DC T-shirt that was trying in vain to cover up his prodigious belly. “My name’s Jake,” he said. “I just called this in on my CB – help is on the way.” (This was before cell phones.)

Looking into the pickup, we saw that the woman inside seemed to be in her late 40s. She had short hair, big rounds eyeglasses, and in her eyes was a look of fear, but not panic.

“What’s your name?” we shouted.

“Margaret,” she called back.

“Margaret, are you hurt?”

“No,” she said, glancing from side to side. “I think I’m OK.”

My first thought was that I needed to do something to remedy this situation. But what was I supposed to do? We couldn’t move the car – it was sitting firmly on its side, and moving it might injure Margaret. Even if I could get to Margaret, there wasn’t any first aid to administer – she wasn’t hurt. “I know,” I thought to myself. “I’ll clean up; look, there’s broken glass all over the place.” Nope, that wouldn’t work – no broom. Plus, broken glass…it could cut me.  “I know,” I thought, “I’ll direct traffic – someone always directs traffic at the scene of bad accidents.” But then I looked up, and saw that the traffic was flowing just fine. 

Just as I began trying to decide between writing up a report or running off into the nearby woods to find a vine for a tourniquet (just in case), Jake-the-trucker did something that I’ll never forget. Without saying a word, this huge, hairy, mountain of a man kicked aside some of the bigger pieces of glass, hitched up his faded pant legs, laid down on the pavement, snaked his arm through the wreckage of the pickup truck, and simply held Margaret’s hand until the emergency vehicles arrived. 

I had wanted to fix the situation, but fixing wasn’t what Margaret needed from me. She was a scared woman in a scary situation, and simply needed the reassuring presence of someone else until help could arrive – which was just what Jake provided her.

Comforting our people after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the prophet Isaiah reports God saying “I have taken hold of your hand, and kept you, and set you as a covenant people, a light to the nations.” When things fell apart, in other words, God didn’t swoop down and fix everything. Instead, God held our hands until we could get our lives back together. 

God holds our hands during times of need. In fact, can we imagine anything more Godly than the simple act of holding the hand of a struggling or scared person? 

Since then, years have passed, and I often think of the great model that this burly truckdriver set for me back then along a windswept road in the mountains of Pennsylvania.  Like Mrs. Becicka, Jake is, and will always remain, one of my greatest teachers

Finally, in 1990, I was ordained a rabbi. That week, I received many gifts and good wishes, but one of them has stuck with me. It came in the mail – a white, business-sized envelope from, of all people, Dr. Hirsch, our family psychiatrist from when I was a kid. I hadn’t seen him in years; I was surprised he even remembered me. Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper. On it, Dr. Hirsch had drawn a cartoon picture of a little choo-choo train going downhill. There was no cover letter, no note, just a caption. Dr. Hirsch wrote, “I knew you could, I knew you could….” 

Our rabbis taught us that, while there are those who achieve eternity over the course of many years, there are others who achieve it in a single moment. Sadly, Dr. Hirsch died not too long after I received that picture of his, but I can’t help but think that during the few minutes it took him to draw it and send it to me, he achieved an eternity that I can only dream of achieving myself. 

My friends, during these Awesome Days, we along with Jews everywhere take honest account of our world and our lives so that we can transform them for the year ahead. Our task is nothing less that perfecting ourselves and perfecting the world, and it’s up to each of us. And transforming the world? It’s a really big job – so big, in fact, that it can seem daunting.

And yet, what I have learned from these great teachers of mine is something that I imagine you have learned from your own experience, too. Sometimes, transforming the world isn’t so difficult. Because sometimes, transforming the world demands not that we split a sea, or lead a worldwide campaign against tyranny, or that we inspire humanity with words like “I have a dream,” or even stand before the UN to call out the nations of the world for their shortsighted environmental policies. Sometimes, it’s the little acts that can transform things, and when they do, sometimes those little acts end up not being so little at all.

As we sit here in this room tonight, conflict and division and ugliness of all kinds swirl around us. We might not be able to fix all of those things during 5780, but let’s resolve – each of us – to start with the little things. Let’s look for opportunities to show kindness; let’s strive to show compassion; let’s work to mold not necessarily the entire world, but simply our own actions into deeds that are truly good. One deed at a time, moment after moment, day after day. Remind someone how good they are; reach out to a person who is afraid or suffering; maybe perform a little act of subversion if it means helping someone feel good about themselves. All those things are so easy to do if we only remind ourselves, and many of them are completely free.

In his great treatise on repentance, Hilkhot Teshuvah, Moses Maimonides tells us that every day, each of us should see our own lives and indeed the entire world as evenly balanced between innocence and guilt. Do a mitzvah, Maimonides says, and you’ll tilt the world toward virtue; commit a sin, and it will tip toward guilt. 

The world is in the balance, waiting – just waiting – to see what you’re going to do next. What will it be? When you keep your eyes, and ears, and heart open people around you, you can move the world. And when you remind yourself to do that every day, there is little that you cannot do.

It’s so easy, so cheap, so possible. Your life has been touched by the simple, grand goodness of others – I know it has. The world is waiting for you to do the same. And when you do, you can each achieve your own eternity.

 

Shanah Tovah.