When I was growing up in Philadelphia, a local progressive FM radio station (remember those?) used to have a promotion called Desert Island Discs. The DJ would ask people to phone in and name an LP record (remember those?) that the caller would bring along if he or she were shipwrecked on a remote, desert island (apparently, a remote desert island that just happened to feature a record player). If you were lucky enough to be the correct number caller to the radio station, the DJ would put you on the air to talk about your Desert Island Disc, and would then play the entire album that you had named. You got your Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame right there.

As a music lover and audiophile who still collects vinyl records (!) I treasure any number of my own Desert Island Discs.

As a rabbi, I also have a collection of Desert Island Texts. These are the favorite Torah verses, poems and prayers, proverbs and rabbinic commentaries that have come into my life during these 31 years in the rabbinate.

If forced to pick a favorite Desert Island Text from among my mental storehouse, it would probably be the following, beautiful commentary on a verse from this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim. The verse in question begins:

YOU SHALL NOT MISTREAT ANY WIDOW OR ORPHAN. IF YOU DO MISTREAT [aneh t’aneh] THEM, I WILL HEED [shamo’a eshma] THEIR OUTCRY AS SOON AS THEY CRY OUT [tza’ok yitz’ak] TO ME…”

Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Kotzk (The Kotzker Rebbe) notices that three of the Hebrew verbs in this verse - “mistreat,” “heed” and “cry out” - use an emphatic grammatical form in which the Hebrew verb is doubled to express the idea that “this [action] shall certainly happen.” Our teacher explains the verse like so:

Three verbs occur in this verse and all of them are “doubles” – something almost unheard of in Scripture. But the Torah wishes to emphasize that the mistreatment of an orphan or widow is not like the mistreatment of just any person. For when you do an injustice to [an ordinary] person, or when you cause him bodily pain or financial loss, he only feels the suffering of that particular injustice, or of that pain or that loss which you have caused him. But if it is an orphan or widow, then it is only natural that the injustice or pain or loss also raises in their heart their orphaned state or their widowhood. The heart of the orphan weeps within him and says, “If only my father were alive, this person would never have harmed me.” And so it is for the widow. Thus, the Torah said: “If you do mistreat (using the doubled aneh t’aneh) – that is, when you mistreat an orphan, you double his mistreatment. That is why his outcry (tza’ok yitz’ak) is doubled. And thus God says: I will also listen to him doubly (shamo’a eshma).

I love this text! It really is the one I would bring to a desert island, and here’s why.

This text speaks a great truth about the human mind and the human heart. We often experience what’s going on right now through the filter of what we have been through in the past. True, in mindfulness practice we strive to be in touch with present reality, to be aligned with the truth of our present experience and not (as our scholar in residence this weekend, Rabbi Jonathan Slater, has written), “telling ourselves a story” about our experience.

But this is hard work that unfolds over the course of a lifetime. And the fact is that – yes – the mistreatment of any member of the Torah’s “triumvirate of vulnerability,” The Stranger, the Widow and The Orphan, is intensified as it reminds the victim of the chain of losses that created their vulnerability. The stranger longs for the familiarity of her homeland. The orphan weeps over the loss of his parents. The widow grieves for the absence of her husband (particularly in a patriarchal sociey).

But, think about it: at one time or another, we are all strangers, all widows and widowers, all orphans. We all suffer disappointment, loss, estrangement and bereavement. The pain of the moment does, indeed, have a tendency to dredge up other emotional bruises and, as our teacher tells us, “double” our pain.

I experienced a “version” of this not that long ago.

I had an appointment to meet with someone at a large, healthcare facility. The lobby was pleasant, decorated in “faux cowboy” Texas decor. The woman behind the reception desk was friendly and the facility was clean, bright and well cared for. All in all, it was a lovely environment and one of the nicer waiting rooms I’ve seen.

Then, I saw a number of employees, in uniform, walking quickly past the front desk. They were wearing uniforms from the facility. Some held binders under their arms. Others held clipboards in their hands. They moved with the kind of brisk efficiency of doctors and nurses making rounds.

Suddenly, a huge knot of sadness rose out of my chest and into my throat. Just like that, the sight of those healthcare employees rushing back and forth brought back the final days of my mother’s life, last July, as she, debilitated by nearly a decade of Alzheimer’s disease, needed constant care. It all came flooding back.

Knowing the truth of our vulnerability, knowing how one difficult encounter can be “doubled” through the feelings and memories that it stirs up inside us, you would think we would be kinder to each other. You would think we would be more measured in our criticism of others, more attentive to their feelings, more gentle in our words, our touch and our look.

The Torah is obsessed with the stranger, the widow and the orphan not only because those actual human beings need “double” our usual concern. Our teacher reminds us that The Stranger, the Widow and the Orphan inhabit the heart of every person.

To put it another way, our sages taught that the Ark of the Covenant that the Israelites carried with them in the wilderness contained not only the second set of shiny, new Tablets that Moses carved, but also the broken pieces of the first set that Moses had smashed when he saw the Israelites dancing around The Golden Calf. Our hearts are a mixture of wholeness and sharp, broken pieces.

Mindful of this, let us treat each other with greater love and compassion in the week to come.

Shabbat shalom.

Rabbi Steve Folberg

Tags: mishpatim