Saying the wrong thing - Behar/Be-hukkotai

The best thing about having work colleagues is that it can force you to have conversations with people with whom you profoundly disagree.

Emily sat next to me at work. She was kind, easy to get along with and worked hard. Occasionally we chatted though, about non-work things as you do, on a long day. 

Somehow we got into the subject of why the Holocaust happened. Her opinion and mine couldn't have been more different.  I believed Emil Fackenheim who noted in a footnote in a book he wrote about Holocaust theology, about a conversation he had with a fellow academic who said that it happened because Hitler wanted it to happen.  

My colleague Emily believed it had happened because the Jews of Europe had not kept Shabbat.

I was profoundly upset by her opinion; that bad things happen to people as a punishment for their sins. I thought of my lecturer who had said whatever claims you make about the Holocaust, you have to say them in front of the pyres of burning children. 
I wanted to say this to my colleague, but I couldn't get the words out. Did she really believe a good god would burn millions of innocent children because their parents hadn't kept Shabbat? I was too upset and offended to reply. 

And a literal reading of the Parasha this week supports her position. Keep the mitzvot and God will reward you, transgress and you will suffer dreadful punishments.  We read that part of the Torah quietly and fast because we don't like it. The sages from Rav in the Talmud to Rashi and Rambam do heavy lifting to generously interpret beyond the literal meaning.    Here are some examples:

Firstly my beloved Rambam who says 'Ra' (bad or evil) results from three things.

Firstly from nature – a flood that washes you away for example.
Secondly from mankind - the wars we wage or crime for example –

and thirdly from the bad we do ourselves like overeating and over drinking.

He says We suffer when we want a different reality than the one we have. And he suggests we seek a true understanding of the world we live in as a remedy for our suffering. 

From the macro to micro:

There is much made  of the repeated use of lo Tanu ish et amito ( Leviticus 25.17) 
Don't wrong/offend/harm/deceive the person who is with you. 

The Talmud interprets it to mean don't cause verbal offense and goes on and on about how bad it is to do ona'at devarim or verbal offense. Don't use nasty nicknames or cause verbal offense for example, is when a person is suffering an illness or burying a child, one shouldn't be like the friends in the book of Job saying 'whoever perished being innocent' 

Rabbi Norman Lamm has something lovely to say.  He quotes a Hasidic master, Rabbi Yitzchak of Vorke who says there are two ways to carry out the mitzvah of lo tonu ish et amitecha- the shurat ha din way is not to harm/offend others.  The higher way of doing this mitzvah or the Lifnim shurat hadin way is not to harm/offend or deceive yourself. 
In other words, be honest with yourself. 

I think that's a good place to start. I've been having interesting conversations with a new work colleague. She is grieving her mother's death from cancer.  She says she's learned a lot from the experience.  Mostly, that people will surprise you. Some will be empathic and some will not. She says you want them to acknowledge the loss rather than not speak about it, even if they get the words wrong. 

It always comes back to empathy- the showing up for another person with awareness of yourself and your own limitations. But it's very difficult to do in real life, isn't it? We've all been there. Someone tells you of their pain, and you can't bear the pain it causes you so you try to fix it for the other person. You hear a friend has cancer and you don't know what to say so you don't call. You hear a child is lonely and you give 12 suggestions before breakfast on how to make friends. Suffering is not accepting your own reality or the person you're speaking to's reality. It's not helpful or comforting.

It’s only with honesty to yourself and with the modesty of not seeing yourself as the centre of the universe, that you can be helpful to another person. 

The liberating truth is that you don’t have to have the perfect words, solutions or answers.

Paradoxically, it’s only with honesty to your own experience that you can offer true solidarity to anyone else.