Let’s Talk

by Jill Maidhof

Three good friends are on a hike, walking each day and enjoying hot dogs and beer each night. One evening, an oversized globe glides in their direction and floats just feet away from them. Not only that, but it speaks, saying “Pick up the stones on your path tomorrow and at the end of the day you will be both happy and sad.” And then it glides away and no one says anything. One camper thinks that the vision is the result of fatigue; another, attributes it to too many beers, and the third figures his imagination is working overtime. Silently, they retire for the night.

The next day, though, and only when he doesn’t think that anyone is watching, each hiker stoops to pick up stones and stuffs them into his pockets. Just a few; not so much that anyone will notice. 

It’s only around the campfire that one sheepishly reveals that he picked up a few stones — just a few, mind you — and he tosses them in a pile on the ground. The second and third campers do the same and they all chuckle until they notice something about the stones – behold! They have turned to rubies! And are they happy – oh yes! That is, until they remember all the rocks they ignored or didn’t notice. And just as the globe predicted, they were happy and now they’re sad. Why did they dismiss what was right in front them?

That’s important, but the story begs an even more significant issue. My question is this: why were they silent after such a strange visitation?  What stopped them from talking about how they experienced what had just taken place, their surprise, their uncertainty, their awe, their fear, their belief that the experience was real, or not? 

What stopped them from talking about
how they experienced what had just taken place… ?

Were they embarrassed, afraid of what the other two might think? Or were they just unprepared because they’d never wrestled with anything they couldn’t explain or even find words to define? 

This tale casts a light on a very uncomfortable Jewish issue. We’re an intellectual folk and we take pride in our collective knowledge. Add to that the fact that we have no dogma and so we spend very little time wrestling with faith and belief. We don’t talk about God, or as Rabbi Aryeh ben David says, we talk about God the way we visit museums. Classes will talk about God when unpacking a story in the Torah. Rabbis may talk about God when teaching Jewish philosophy. What we don’t do, he says, is share the personal, in-the-kishkes, affecting-my-daily-life, playing-a-vital-role-in-who-I-am-becoming God. How ironic is this, when we’re the people who brought monotheism to the world!

It’s very ironic, and sad, I think. Faith-based reflection helps me to stay balanced, joyful even, regardless of what’s going on in the world around me. It keeps loneliness at a distance and magnifies my perception of the world. I’m grateful for any safe and loving occasion to share my thoughts, formed or (more likely) completely inchoate. 

Chai Mitzvah’s Critical Conversation’s curriculum provides just such an opportunity. For those of us who don’t even know how to start it provides five discussion guides that inspire soulful (yes, soulful!) discussions about God,  prayer, good and evil and the validity of the Bible. And there’s the “Chai Mitzvah Space” itself – a no-judgement zone in which a small group of seekers learn together, sustained by the understanding that not even the facilitator has all the answers and that in any event questions are more important than educated replies. 

Now more than ever, I invite you and your friends to take what might be (it was for me) a bit of leap … Start a Critical Conversations group with just a handful of friends and  talk about what matters most. Not Jewish, or just want to include friends who aren’t Jewish? We’ve created a curriculum for you, too, called Community Conversations with the same themes and including texts from Christianity and Islam. We’re here to help you get started, so why wait?