Neil moved into the governor’s mansion more or less around the time I made aliyah to Israel and I didn’t have much contact with him after that. In the late Eighties he retired from politics. The last time I saw him was not far from here while he was on vacation with his grown children by the shores of the Kinneret. I asked him if he thought he’d ever go back into politics. No, he said. He wanted to invest his time with his family and go in to private business.
Then last spring, like Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones, a skeleton in Neil's closet came to life. The local press uncovered an affair he’d had with a neighborhood girl, a year younger than I, back in the days when he was mayor. Overnight he went from being one of the state’s most outstanding leaders of all time to pariah and yesterday's admirers were falling over each other to throw the first stone.
Bill Clinton once said about the Monica Lewinski affair that he did it “because I could.” At first I thought his remark was banal, but on second thought I see how wise it is. That arrogant cliché Americans love so much, "because I can", sums up the number one reason why humans sin. The author and theologian C .S. Lewis once wrote that it’s conceivable that a lowly clerk could be more evil than Hitler, the difference being that the former can’t act on his hatred as did the later. If we’re not caught with our hands in the cookie jar, it’s not for not liking cookies. We like cookies, but the shelf is too high or the lid too tight, and besides – Mom’s got eyes in the back of her head. And lets be honest; most men don't get entangled in lewd sex scandals, but not due to their high moral standards rather because they don’t have the charisma and the status to seduce beautiful young girls in the first place nor the money and connections to get away with it.
The Torah tells about Judah who leaves the family business. With his own two hands he builds himself financially and accumulates political clout – only to stumble into a liaison with his daughter in law Tamar. He uses all the resources and connections at his disposal to cover his tracks, but the truth comes out. Tamar hints not so subtly that she isn’t about to burn and let him avoid taking responsibility. Finally he gives up. “She’s more righteous than I” (צדקה ממני), he says. Seemingly, Judah’s hit bottom at this point – a proud tribal chieftain humiliated. But with those two words (in Hebrew) he regained his humanity. He returned to his family in shame and was again just another one of Jacob's sons. But Judah’s moment was still ahead of him. It was Judah that was willing to sacrifice his freedom and life for the sake of his brothers. Our sages ask why Judah, and not Joseph, was chosen to be the father of kings and the Messiah. Joseph was greater than Judah in all ways except for one – repentance. Joseph, the proud and honored leader, couldn’t be to his brothers what Judah was – one of them.
With the story about to break, Neil called a press conference.
“How can such behavior be erased when the damage to others and to myself
lives on? I have sat in my place of worship each year at Yom Kippur reading in
silence, searching for personal peace. And I have found that the answer to my
question is that it can’t be erased.”
I hope that on Yom Kippur this year my friend will finally find the tranquility he’s yearned for thirty odd years. Perhaps he will never regain the respect that he once had, but when he took upon himself the shame of his deeds, even if unwillingly, he regained something else – his humanity. On Yom Kippur he will simply be a mere human being pleading for his soul before his creator, like all of us.
And that’s what I always liked about him anyway, that he was one of us.
Gmar Hatima Tova
No comments:
Post a Comment