Welcome to Soulful Jewish Living: Mindful Practices for Every Day with me, Josh Feigelson.
I’m grateful you’re here, and I hope you benefit from our time together.
There are certain moments in life that people remember exactly where they were. For older folks that might be the assisination of President Kennedy. For others it might be when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. If you were alive and aware, September 11, 2001 was one of those days.
9/11 came in my second week of rabbinical school, which was in Manhattan. I’ll never forget walking out of our first morning class and hearing that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. In my mind, I pictured a Cessna–a little propeller plane that had an accident. But as we huddled around a computer to get the news, the horror began to unfold.
Among our class, the apartment my wife and I shared was the closest, just seven blocks away. So a group of seven or eight of us walked there and watched the events on TV, while also trying frantically to get in touch with loved ones. At one point we climbed up on the roof to look south and see the smoke billowing from the collapsed towers.
If you lived in New York then, you probably remember some of the feelings of those days. There was, of course, shock, terror, fear, and profound sadness at the enormous loss of life and a lost sense of safety. If you were a Muslim, I imagine there was a feeling of additional fear of being targeted, harassed, or attacked.
But, amazingly, I think for a lot of people there was also a deepened sense of closeness with strangers. In one of his musicals, Leonard Bernstein described New York as a lonely town—especially when you feel like a total stranger amidst millions of people. In those days after 9/11, for a lot of people, there was a feeling of connection. People were kinder, nicer, softer. In the wake of the tragedy, it felt as if some kind of hesed, loving connection, was opened up in millions of hearts. I, for one, felt more at home among all these strangers. How was that possible?
This is the sixth episode in our miniseries on feeling at home, and today I want to explore this theme of being at home with strangers—which sounds like an oxymoron. How can we be at home with strangers? Isn’t home all about… being at home, which is the opposite of estrangement?
Maybe. But maybe not. In many cases, it’s actually in going through a period of being a stranger that we really experience what it means to be at home.
This is a classic trope in literature, of course. You can think of Simba in The Lion King, or Luke Skywalker, or Dorothy, or Moana. In the classic “Hero’s Journey” kind of tale, there’s often a stage when the hero leaves home and enters a period of feeling like a total stranger. They lose the prior sense of self they had, go through some deep personal questioning, and emerge as a new version of themselves who can ultimately return home in a new way. And a key, or maybe the key feature of that experience of homecoming, is being a stranger.
The Torah has a bunch of stories like this. We’ve already referenced Jacob once in this series. Now is another great time to invoke him. He leaves home and becomes a stranger in Mesopotamia. The time and space away from his family of origin allows him to learn some new things about himself and actually become more at home with himself.
A similar story happens with Joseph, who is even more of a stranger. While Jacob lived with his uncle’s family, Joseph was a totally unknown person in Egypt—and that distance from his family, while not without its trauma, also helped him become at home with who he was meant to be.
And of course we have the story of Moses, who, after being cast away from his nuclear family and raised in Pharaoh’s palace ultimately flees into the wilderness.. He literally names one of his sons Gershom because, the Torah says, Ger hayiti b’eretz nochria, “I was a stranger in a strange land.” Yet it’s through being a stranger that Moses ultimately becomes at home with who he is.
Maybe that’s why the Torah is so preoccupied with how we treat the ger, the stranger—not just because being a stranger can make people feel vulnerable, but also because we know how sacred the experience of being a stranger can often be. It’s frequently a vital stop on the existential route home. Odysseus allowing himself to float on a raft in the ocean, Moses shepherding lone in the wilderness, Dorothy discovering her mind, heart, and courage—all of these are stories of people who pass through a period of being a stranger in order to arrive at a deeper sense of home.
So how do we practice this? How do we hold both the vulnerability of feeling like an outsider and the warmth of welcoming one?
Here’s a short practice you can try.
Take a few good deep breaths. If it’s comfortable, close your eyes or turn your gaze inward. Allow your body to arrive, allow your mind to settle.
Now, if it’s comfortable, I want to invite you to take a moment to bring to mind a time in your life when you felt like a total stranger. Maybe it was your first day at a new job, moving to a new city, or standing in a room where you felt like you didn’t belong.
Can you remember how that felt in your body? Maybe some tightness in the chest, some alertness, some wariness.
Now, can you remember something about who you became on the other side of that experience? Did being a stranger ultimately help you arrive at a new sense of at-homeness in yourself? Maybe being an outsider helped you to grow, to discover a strength or empathy inside you that you couldn’t have found if you had stayed comfortable at home.
Now, bring to mind someone in your life right now who might be in their own “strange land.” Maybe it’s a new neighbor, a new coworker, or someone at the gym who looks a little out of place.
Like in those days after 9/11, or any moment of shared crisis, what would happen if you allowed the the invisible wall that separates us from a stranger to soften?
I’d invite you to ask yourself: What would it take to offer that stranger a moment of warmth this week? A smile, an invitation, or simply an attentive nod that says, “I see you. You are welcome here.” What might that feel like to you?
When we welcome the stranger, we aren’t just doing a good deed; we are honoring the very path that allowed us to find our own way home. So try it, and let me know how it goes.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.
ENDING
Thank you for joining us for Soulful Jewish Living: Mindful Practices for Every Day, a production of Unpacked, a brand of OpenDor Media, and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. This episode is sponsored by Jonathan and Kori Kalafer and the Somerset Patriots: The Bridgewater, NJ-based AA Affiliate of the New York Yankees. If you like this show, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, give us five stars on Apple Podcasts. Check out our website, unpacked.media for everything Unpacked-related, and subscribe to our other podcasts, and check out the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Most importantly, be in touch–about what you heard today, what you’d like to hear more about, or to dedicate an episode. Write to me at josh@unpacked.media.
This episode was hosted by me, Rabbi Josh Feigelson. Audio was edited by Rob Pera and we’re produced by Rivky Stern. Thanks for joining us.