on friday night i asked the congregation to think about whether or not they are going to watch the olympics in beijing. i suspected that many of them wouldn't have thought about this before and i wanted to engage in a dialogue. tibet, the environment, human rights abuses, freedom of speech, freedom of press, darfur and this was the list of just off the top of my head. the conversation surprised me a great deal. perhaps the most painful moment, when a male around my age asked, "what difference does one person's actions make?" this was one of the worst things i have ever heard anyone say. it is right out of the book i just read,
generation me. i was terribly distraught by the whole experience and will not begin a dialogue of a similar nature anytime soon.
i have decided that i am not going to watch the olympics. there are too many issues that are represented in the broadcasts and such. this of course will be a fairly easy thing for me to do because i get to spend a week at camp. i am confident there will not be access to television but i will obviously see the print media.
have you thought about what you are going to do? will you watch?
on a lighter note, this sign is now outside of the synagogue. if you're in toronto feel free to stop in!
on a lighter note, this sign is now outside of the synagogue. if you're in toronto feel free to stop in!
2 comments:
i think i will watch. i definitely agree with your point of view, but i want to watch the USA kick some international butt. Take that china!
ebs,
thanks for posting to my blog. now it's my turn. one of the ppl i mentioned, alissa, is probably the one you know, the other one studies at the school in the bronx. anyway, i wanted to comment on this blog post, perhaps a bit late, now that the olympics are over, but i just read it now. it makes me sad to hear you say that you don't feel like having a dialogue of similar nature anytime soon. i think that what the male congregant asked was actually a really great question. i wasn't there and don't know him, but perhaps he was looking to you, as a rav, to give him a less bleak view. when he said "what difference does one person's actions make?" maybe he was hoping, deep down, that you might have some way of helping him think that our actions can make a difference. otherwise, he must be very depressed. it's hard for me to imagine what it must be like for him to live with that belief. I would want to ask him all sorts of questions about it: what makes him come to synagogue? why does he do anything constructive at all? where does he think his actions do matter? i think most people feel that it matters how we treat the person in front of us. At what point of distance (time or space) does that seem irrelevant to him and why?
i think that you took a big risk by challenging your congregation and the people reading this blog and you should feel good about that. i'm guessing that the question/statement made by that young man was more painful for him in the long run than it was for you. you didn't watch the olympics, because you think your actions do matter. if he really believes what he said, watching the olympics isn't going to make him feel any better...
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