A few months ago, I was on an introductory zoom call with a wedding couple and they simply could not figure out how to make the sound work. They kept apologizing and trying to press buttons and grabbing new devices. They went on their phones and their iPads and they opened up web pages to search for answers, trying desperately to figure out what the problem was.
At first, I was patient but as the seconds turned into minutes and the minutes bordered on the tens of minutes, I started to feel an uncomfortable inner sensation of frustration.
I thought to myself, how could anyone, especially a young couple, how could they not know how to get the sound working on zoom — After about 15 minutes of watching this couple fumble around, after having them profusely apologize again and again through mimes, I almost lost it—but then, slowly, I looked closely at my own computer and noticed something strange.
There was a note on the bottom of my screen with a simple question — “Join Audio?”
Yes, that’s right, the entire audio issue with this couple on zoom was my fault — I had not joined the audio.
And yes, I had spent twenty minutes letting them believe that it was their fault —
I tell you this story because I think it has a lot to say about a problem we face in our own time — namely, we have a hard time entertaining the possibility that we may be wrong — we immediately assume that wrongness belongs to someone else, that anything that’s going awry is the fault of another — we spend our days defending our rightness and we put ourselves in places, whether real or so often digital, places that confirm, defend and reinforce our rightness.
This week, we are reading Parashat Vayishlach — it is a portion with Jacob in the starring role. Jacob, that most dynamic of our three biblical patriarchs. Two weeks ago, when we first met Jacob, we learned how he and his mother deceived both brother Esau and father Isaac into selling a birthright and then, into handing over a blessing.
We know that Jacob struggles with this deception because he runs away from home—escaping his brother, who he fears will kill him.
And then last week, we learned how Jacob stops in the middle of his escape and has a dream about a ladder that connects heaven to earth.
In this week’s portion, we learn how Jacob wrestles all night with a man who appears out of nowhere. And we wonder: who could this man be?
Our commentators have a whole host of answers. Some assume that the man is Jacob’s brother Esau, others argue that the man is an angel of God.
Rabbi Harvey Fields offers one of my favorite commentaries on this biblical, and baffling, wrestling match. Rabbi Fields explains that “”…the battle between Jacob and the angel took place inside Jacob’s mind…Jacob had to wrestle “with the guilt that he felt about stealing both his birthright and blessing. He had to struggle with what he had done.”
Of course, this struggle completes Jacob — he is transformed by it—his name is literally changed to Yisrael, he who struggles with God, because Jacob is now willing to face his own wrongness.
Judaism is a tradition that embraces coming to terms with our fallibility, with the very fact – the unmistakable, and unavoidable reality – that we make mistakes. The Talmud itself is a compendium of conversations and debates — many of which center around wrongness. In fact, most of the opinions that we read throughout the Talmud are rejected—the art of reading Talmud is found in our ability to entertain wrongness.
Kathryn Schultz is a graduate of my high school and the daughter of one of my father’s dearest friends. Kathryn wrote a book a few years ago called “Being Wrong” in which she attempts to come to terms with fears over our wrongness. Kathryn writes, ““To err is to wander, and wandering is the way we discover the world; and, lost in thought, it is also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying, but in the end it is static, a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometimes even dangerous, but in the end it is a journey,”
In the portion this week, Jacob is on this journey — a journey in which he is coming to terms with what it means to be the father of a nation, his journey is one in which he comes face to face with his own wrongness and ultimately, a journey through which he grows to become the father of the Jewish people.
We, too, as Jews, are on a journey of our own – one in which we are asked to candidly, and bravely, entertain the possibility of wrongness – one in which we will grow and become by embracing the fact that we err.
This is vital because, of course, we live in divided and polarized times, times in which too few people are willing to engage in this journey of self-reflection. The obsession with being right has led us to this moment in which we confront a nation of ideologues. And so it is incumbent on us to walk with Jacob and bravely face what we have done, and then embrace all that we can do when walk down the path of self-reflection.
