Listening Like It’s Shivah

Judaism for the Thinking Person

In this ten minute teaching I used to begin the 10 Days of Awe, I connect several teachings. The first is the Rabbinic teaching that following a calamity upon a village, one should try to give the luxury rations to those who are used to luxury because being unaccostomed to hardship, their anguish might be even greater than others' though we are tempted to believe the opposite. The second is that during Yom Kippur, we approach ourselves and our relationships in a state of aninut, of affliction -- the same word used when one has suffered calamity, and the same word used when one is burying a loved one and then heading into the week of shivah grieving. The third is that it is forbidden to say, "How are you?" to someone who has just experienced aninut, and instead one must practice a special form of active listening. Following two years of calamitous pandemic, where many of us put on brave faces because we are scared to share our emotions due to our perceived privilege or we may not have suffered as much as others, we must acknowledge that our pain is nonetheless real, very real, and that the directives of actively telling our stories and actively listening are the imperative way forward.