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.
I’m sure you didn’t do anything stupid when you were in your late teens. You were probably a totally well-adjusted, wise and discerning person by the time you aged into the right to vote. Not I. While I was generally a rule-follower, I had did my share of stupid stuff as a kid. And maybe the worst happened on an icy Saturday night in my sophomore year of college.
That year I lived in an apartment that was five floors up without an elevator. I had left my dorm room to take a shower and when I came back I realized I had locked myself out. This was in the days before cell phones, and no one else was in their room on the floor. So, standing there in a towel, I considered my options. The smart play would have been to climb down the five flights of stairs and use the emergency call box to reach campus police who would come unlock my room. But, I figured, it was Saturday night and it would take them an hour to get there, and I was in a rush.
So I opted for plan B. The room next to me was unoccupied, and unlocked. I had also left my window open because my room regularly overheated. So, plan B: I went into the empty room, opened the window, climbed out onto the icy ledge five stories above the sidewalk while wearing only a towel, and climbed back into my own room. Easy peasy—and stupid as… well, this is a family show. But just thank God nothing horrible happened.
Aside from serving as a perfect example of the poor risk evaluation skills of teenagers, this story is also a textbook case of another malady: the idea that we can, and should, do it all on our own. I had gotten myself into this mess, I figured, and so I should get myself out of it—alone. Sort of pulling myself up by my bootstraps—or my towel in this case.
This is the fourth episode in our miniseries leading up to American independence day, and today I want to explore the myth of the rugged individual—which is so central to some myths of what it means to be an American.
In his book On Mindful Democracy, Jeremy Engels writes about the damage that this view can do. When we tell ourselves that we have to be self-made, it can lead us to see any failure as entirely our own fault. The bootstrap myth tells us that if we’re not succeeding economically or socially or even medically that we have only ourselves to blame. And, conversely, it sends the message that, if we’ve been fortunate to succeed in those ways, we don’t owe anything to anyone else.
I’ll talk in a second about what’s so wrong with that idea from a Jewish perspective. But before I get there, let’s just also observe that the idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is, itself, meshugge. If you’re wearing shoes right now, just try to do it. Grab your shoes and try to pull yourself up. It doesn’t work! And, in fact, the phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” originated to illustrate just that—that it’s impossible to do. Yet somewhere along the way, people lost the irony and it became this idea of rugged individualism. Like I said, meshugge.
And, like I said, profoundly not Jewish. In our first episode, I mentioned that the Talmud teaches that the first mitzvot that a prospective convert was supposed to learn about in ancient society were the commandments to provide for the poor. Specifically, the Torah tells us that a farmer is supposed to leave a corner of their field for hungry people to come and take food. Likewise, if grain and fruit fall to the ground during the harvest, you’re not allowed to pick it up–it has to stay there for poorer folks to come and get it. And if you forgot a bundle of wheat in the field? That belongs to the poor too.
Why? Because, as the Holy One says in Leviticus, none of this actually belongs to us. We are blessed to be caretakers of the earth for a little while, but ki li haaretz, the Earth belongs to God. And so, if you think you can just cut yourself off and claim all of this as yours and no one else’s, you’re missing a basic fact of human life. None of us can do this alone. As we’ve been saying throughout this podcast, we’re not so much independent as interdependent.
In his book, Jeremy Engels argues that mindful democracy involves noticing how we view those who need help. The bootstrap myth trains us to assume that someone who is physically, mentally, economically, or socially vulnerable is lazy or has a bad character.
But the law of the field forces us to practice a generous perspective. It reminds us that poverty is often a structural reality, not a moral failure. When we leave the corners of our fields—when we construct our society to care for the vulnerable and acknowledge everyone’s status as created in the Divine image—we aren’t being nice. We’re recognizing that our success was never a solo act.
To close, I want to offer this short practice.
Wherever you are, slow down for a beat. Take a deep, slow breath. Take another. Allow your body to arrive. Allow your mind to settle.
Notice if there is a part of you that feels tightly wound—the part of you that feels like you have to carry the weight of your entire life, your career, your family completely on your own back. If you’re sensing this, you might call it a bootstrap posture. And you might notice how it feels: constricted, tense, tired.
As you inhale, I want to invite you to bring to mind three things in your life that you rely on today but that you did not create. It could be the clean water coming out of your tap. It could be the paved road that allowed you to drive to work. It could be the language you are using to think your thoughts, passed down through centuries.
Recognize that you are currently resting on a massive, invisible infrastructure of collective effort. And now, with that awareness, notice if any sense of gratitude might arise.
As you exhale, you can let your shoulders drop. You can let the earth hold your weight. You do not have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. You never did. You are standing on ground cultivated by thousands of generations before you, surrounded and supported by a community right now.
And you might repeat silently to yourself: I am not self-made. I am carried by the whole. My field has room for everyone.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.
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.