ROSH HA-SHANAH MORNING AN EPIDEMIC OF BLINDESS

Eighty years ago this year, a Holocaust survivor by the name of Ludwig Guttman

Suddenly, everything changed, these patients were no longer lost

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became the head of the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke

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Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, England.

When he arrived at Mandeville, Dr. Guttman was shocked. The spinal

injury patients on the unit were seen as lost causes. The care on the unit

was palliative — patients were left sedated – stuck in bed all day – often

dying from sepsis or bed sores.

As he began his new position, Ludwig Guttman spent time talking with

these patients, getting to know them, and realizing that everything taking

place on the unit was wrong.

Guttman told his staff to take the patients off the sedatives— he started

getting the patients out of bed, engaging them in physical activities –

throwing balls, archery, arts and crafts – whatever they could do.

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causes—

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When other doctors heard the words spinal injury, they saw these

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patients on the cusp of death.

But Ludwig Guttman, who had escaped from a world of inhumanity

himself, was able see these patients as full human beings—he was

willing to understand them; to see them fully and completely…

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As human beings, we need to be seen. We need to feel as though we are

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recognized and understood by others.

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This begins from the very moment we are born. Babies literally come

out of the womb expecting to be recognized by their parents – they come

into the world searching for a face that knows them. When that face is

absent for extended periods of time, there are lasting developmental

issues.

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As we grow older, we continue to need this recognition, we need to feel

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seen by other people – it is a pre-requisite to being fully human.

We live in age where so many feel unseen, where they feel invisible – it

is what journalist David Brooks calls an epidemic of blindness –in his

new book How to Know Someone, Brooks notes that 54 percent of

Americans feel that no one knows them well and that the number of

people who say they have no close friends has quadrupled.

The worst victims of this epidemic are our children, who have grown up

in an age defined by a technology that promises attention but often

delivers something quite different.

It was in 2010 when Apple released the iPhone 4. You might remember

the commercial–Louis Armstrong is singing When You’re Smiling.

Families are looking at one another on their phones for the most

important of events, a father stuck at work can watch his baby daughter

crawl, grandparents far away are able to see their grandchild graduate

high-school, friends who live apart are able to offer advice on what

outfit to wear on a date.

The iPhone 4 included Facetime – a new app that enabled people to see

one another on their devices and in-order to make FaceTime work, the

iPhone 4 included, yes, for the very first time on a mobile device, a

front-facing camera.

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Facetime promised connection – it promised us the ability to be seen and

to see the people who matter most. And in many ways, FaceTime gave

us new opportunities to connect. This was good.

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But what that 2010 I-Phone 4 commercial did not show us was what that

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front-facing camera would end up being used for by 2012.

2012 was the year in which Facebook bought a small company called

Instagram, an app that allowed social media to be easily accessible

through one’s smartphone. Starting in 2012, those front-facing cameras

began to be used not only for FaceTime but now for those quick

snapshots that we call the selfie.

2012 marked the beginning of a new dive into the digital world– it was

that year when we all started taking photos of ourselves and throwing

them up online to fish for thumbs ups – we wanted so badly to be seen

and here was a technology that promised that to us.

But seeing another person, truly seeing them, does not mean liking their

photo. You see, the selfie fad did not solve our blindness epidemic—

instead, it seems to have intensified it.

In his book The Anxious Generation, author Jonathan Haidt notes that

2012 was the year in which, “…social patterns, role models, emotions,

physical activity and even sleep patterns were fundamentally recast”.

He calls the period from 2012-2015 the Great Rewiring of childhood, a

time in which children became so lost in the digital world, so wrapped

up in their phones that they lost the ability to see one another and thus

felt increasingly invisible.

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2012 was the year in which mental health amongst teens started to

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plummet – the year in which this epidemic of blindness began to take

root.

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As our kids stared at their screens and made their lives ever more

dependent on the virtual world, as they sought out attention and

recognition through their phones, they became ever more blind to people

in reality.

Now, adults too—starting in 2012—were lost in this frenzy, suddenly

focused on tiny little screens instead of one another – losing the

opportunity and in turn, the ability to see and to be seen.

Look at your Facebook photo collection and you see that 2012 is the

year in which this all really begin – the year where we all began to spend

more time in the virtual world instead of seeing people in the real one.

Of course, the appeal of spending so much time in the virtual world was

connected to the demise of the places that used to bring us together–We

spend so much time online trying to be seen because we have lost the

communities and the social bodies that have long brought us together for

that purpose in the first place.

Twenty-five years ago, the sociologist Robert Putnam wrote about this in

a book called Bowling Alone. where he analyzed the breakdown of

community in America. He noted that we have abandoned the parts of

our lives where we are together – and as a result, “more Americans

watch friends than actually have them.” Thus—we go online yearning to

have attention and to be seen, but the digital world is no replacement for

our communities.

These holidays are known as the yamim noraim, often translated as the

days of awe – Now, yamim certainly means days but that word noraim,

which is derived from the Hebrew letters resh, aleph and hey is better

defined as sight or seeing – so actually, Rosh Ha-Shanah, Yom Kippur

and the days in between are the days of seeing –

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This morning, we read the Akeidah – that biblical tale in which Abraham

brings his son Isaac up a mountain to sacrifice him. It’s a chilling story

about a father willing to sacrifice his own son for his faith.

At the pivotal moment in which Abraham is about to go through with

Isaac’s sacrifice, as he is holding the knife in the air, we read that

Abraham lifts up his eyes – he lifts up his eyes and he sees—it is at this

moment of Abraham’s seeing that an angel of God stays Abraham’s

hand, at that moment of sight that a ram appears for Abraham to

sacrifice in place of his son.

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The impetus for Abraham to step back from the horrific act of sacrificing

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his own son was lifting his eyes—it was seeing—

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Is it possible that at that moment, when he lifted his eyes, Abraham saw

his son – not as some mere conduit to express his faith, but as a person,

as a human, is it possible that Abraham saw Isaac and realized that

everything he was doing was wrong?

When we see a person fully and completely, it changes the way that we

relate to them – it changes the way that we interact with them – we no

longer see them as a means to some other end – our relationship with

them is not simply transactional – not simply about what they can do for

us—when he lifts his eyes, Abraham sees his son not just as a way to

demonstrate deference to God but now as a full separate human being –

The great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber called relationships where

we see one another I-Thou relations–one where we no longer view the

other as an object, as a thing, but rather, as a full and complete human

being—Buber argued that when we have this kind of relationship with

another person, God is literally the energy between us.

As a Rabbi, I sit with families in the aftermath of the death of a loved one. When I first started my career, I was nervous about these meetings.

Would I have enough information to write a eulogy, would I get all the names of family members right? I would spend meetings with grieving families asking a million questions and writing furiously – worried that I would somehow miss some critical point.

As time has gone by, I’ve realized that writing a eulogy is not the purpose of sitting down with a family after they have lost a loved one. I do not sit with families and listen to them simply because I need to write a summary of their loved one’s life. I am not there as a courtroom stenographer, simply recording information.

I am with a family after the death of their loved one as a witness to a conversation that they hold with one another about the profound impact their loved one had on their lives. I am there to witness their grief, their gratitude, their love—I am there to see them and to let them know that they are being seen.

I have done this with many of you – many members of this congregation.

To feel seen by another person is incredibly powerful. How many people in this room have stories about that one teacher or mentor who really saw you – who understood you – who made an impact on you because they were willing to see you in your totality?

We need those people in our lives—we need to feel as though we are seen, as though we are understood, as though we matter – This doesn’t happen when we are stuck on our devices—this doesn’t happen when our communities and our synagogues and our churches and our gathering places are empty— we do not see one another when we are isolated from one another.

And you know, when people feel invisible, they tend to lose trust in one another – they tend to feel a growing sense of resentment.

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Last year, journalist Frank Bruni wrote a book called Age of Grievance in which he detailed this—Age of Grievance speaks not only of grievances on the right which have fueled candidates ascent to office, but also grievances on the left which have fueled divisions and yes, fueled the recent antisemitism we’ve seen on college campuses – wherever it might be, this feeling that someone else has wronged me is becoming ever more characteristic of what it means to be an American.

Frank Bruni notes that our grievances are fueled by one rising reality – there is an increasing distance between our citizens—he writes, “distance nurtures grievance”

It’s true – despite the promises of our technology to bring us closer, our distance from one another is immense—so much so, that we have become like strangers…

These high holy days are here to remind us, there is a better way—the sound of that shofar pierces through our souls to remind us that we still have the capacity to see one another – to truly see one another.

You know, Ludwig Guttman’s work at the Stoke Mandeville hospital led him not only to save the lives of those spinal-injury patients in his unit – four years after he arrived at the hospital, he came up with an idea.

He asked himself, how could I demonstrate to others the humanity and the worth of these patients? How can I broadcast their abilities so the world could see these people as more than just paralyzed invalids?

In 1948, Guttman launched the Stoke Mandeville games which eventually became known as the Paralympics.

Last month, the Paralympics took place in Paris, France. Over 4,000 athletes from around the world came to compete in sporting events –

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athletes who just eighty years ago would have been written off and considered lost causes.

This year, the Israeli Paralympics team won ten medals. (show photo)

All of this because a survivor of history’s greatest inhumanity was willing to see people’s humanity.

The truth is – you don’t need to discover a cure for spinal injuries to see another person – you don’t need to be the founder of the Paralympics – seeing another person begins with presence—

In my second year of rabbinical school, I worked six hours a week at the Jewish Home for the Elderly in the Bronx to earn my CPE or clinical pastoral education credit, which is a requirement for ordination.

On Tuesdays, I would arrive at the home at about 9am and meet with the pastoral care director who would send me to visit different residents.

On one Tuesday morning, the director asked me to visit a woman on the third floor who was dying. She explained that this woman was no longer eating and would probably just be sleeping, that her death was imminent. The family was not able to make it to the home on that day, and I was asked to spend time with the woman in these final moments of life.

I walked up to the third floor and I opened the door of the room where she was lying down in a hospital bed.

Her body must have been only 60 pounds – the hospital gown was folded up all over her. Her eyes were closed, she had no hair and all that I saw as far as life was labored breathing — a chest moving up and down. The body before me did not look human – it was a person, yes, but it was so clearly a person at the very last stages of life.

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I pulled up a chair and I sat down. I sat there for a moment wondering what to say or do – I said her name and I let her know I was sitting there with her. I hummed a few bars of the first song in my head.

And then, as I sat there, I lifted my eyes and I looked around the room.

I noticed photos – photos of this woman with her husband, photos with her grandchildren, cards from those grandchildren telling her how much she was loved and how much she mattered, as I sat there and took in the room before me, as I learned about who this woman was by seeing the love that surrounded her, as I did this, that body transformed – it was no longer just a dying body inching towards death – here was a human being, surrounded by the people who loved her, surrounded by the moments that they shared together – in that moment, I saw her – she didn’t say a word to me, but I saw her —

That moment in that room was the greatest lesson I ever learned about how to see another person.

  • Seeingapersonmeansthatyouarepresentwiththem–thatyou are curious and try to see the world from their eyes.
  • Seeingapersonmeansthatyouspendtimetoimaginetheworld that they inhabit and see their place and their role in that world.
  • Seeingapersonmeanspullingawayfromthatwhichdistractsus– it means taking interest in a person without wondering what that person can do for me.Our world is facing an epidemic of blindness – one caused by an increasing distance between one another – the epidemic has been made worse by an over-reliance on technology as a replacement for human connection, it is an epidemic in which too many feel invisible—an epidemic of blindness in which we are seeking out connections in the digital world because we feel so unrecognized in the real one.

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This is an epidemic that has affected our kids most of all—who are so clearly suffering.

The question that faces us this Rosh Ha-Shanah morning is what we do in the face of this epidemic, how we respond to it –

Friends, let us to spend more time supporting those places that bring us together—like the synagogue or the PTA or the local rotary or the coffee shop and the book store, support the places that bring people together in person, the places that emphasize the importance of seeing one another,

Spend more time in those places and when you are there, when you are in those places, spend more time trying to see others – to really and truly see them.

God, may it be your will, that we this year of 5785 find ways to spend more time together, to be together and to see one another, to truly see one another, thus healing this broken world and bringing forth a day in this epidemic has ended.

Shanah Tovah.

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