Migrant Son of God
Day: July 1, 2019
Where is my skin?
The sun shines in the places that haunt me
Not the cave of darkness and despair
His empty chair ,his love,my memory
What I was and who I soon shall be
How my little time on earth will fare
The sun peers into places that haunt me
The beauty of the dark red maple tree
He wished to have his ashes buried there
Oh, empty chair the kindest memory
Regardless , joyous , flowers will love the bee
I watch them start their silent love affair
The sun shines in the places that haunt me
I weep into my android phone, it beeps
Feeling shocked, I gasp ,I need more air
Oh, startling phone , who fillled your memory
Oh, chance and fate,why blast my heart so bare?
Where is my skin, my boundary, my despair
The sun shines in the places that haunt me
His empty chair, the anguish, the repair.
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Bless the continuous stutter of the Word being made into Flesh
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How guilt can be used to control people
Extract
Couples therapy, guilt, and violence
Upon first examination, it seems that people with a tendency for guilt and self-punishment are not dangerous to those around them. They may be a danger to themselves, but it appears that there is no suspicion that they would hurt someone else. However, an additional aggadah about Baba ben Buta debunks that calming assumption.
This aggadah begins with a Babylonian Jew who comes west to the Land of Israel and marries a local woman. At that time, both Babylonian Jews and Jews in the Land of Israel spoke Aramaic, but they used different dialects. These linguistic differences caused difficulty in communication between the couple: He asked her to prepare a certain dish, and she, in her innocence, prepared a different dish. Thus, in a series of linguistic miscommunications, the couple’s relationship became more and more tense.
At the height of this crisis, the husband asks his wife to bring him a “tray butzini.” In his dialect of Aramaic that means two zucchini. In her dialect of Aramaic it means two lamps (made of clay). Furious with anger, the husband commands his wife, “Go and break these clay lamps ‘al rosh ha’baba.” In his Babylonian Aramaic, rosh ha’baba means “above the gate.” However, in his wife’s Aramaic dialect rosh means “head” and baba, as we have already seen, can be a person’s name. In her distress, and lacking her husband’s understanding of this word, the woman goes to the Sage Baba ben Buta and breaks the clay lamps on his head.
This is how Baba ben Buta, the man who has never been opposed to bearing the burden of guilt, responded to that woman: “He said to her, ‘What are you doing?’ She said to him, ‘Thusly my husband commanded me to do.’ He said, ‘You have done your husband’s bidding, God will bring forth from you two sons like Baba ben Buta’ ” (Babylonian Talmud, N’darim 66b).
He sends her back to the aggressor’s arms
At first glance, this seems like generous couples therapy. The Rabbi sees the woman’s distress, so he puts aside his own honor and lets her fulfill the violent and uncompromising demands of her husband (as at this point, he does not know about the couple’s language confusion). However, the Torah has already taught us: “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Lev.19:18). The phrasing of this commandment reflects the psychological truth that only someone who loves him- or herself can properly love his neighbor.
If Baba ben Buta was not full of so many feelings of guilt he could find room in his heart to get angry and feel injured by the woman who hurt him. If Baba ben Buta would permit himself to get angry at the woman, he could subsequently become angry at her abusive husband. If Baba ben Buta could believe that he isn’t supposed to be beaten by a strange woman, he could understand that she too isn’t supposed to receive degrading commands from her husband. And, if Baba ben Buta could love himself, he could supply this woman with genuine protection.
It is easy to see that the breaking of clay lamps on Baba’s head was not just the result a linguistic mistake; it was a call for desperately needed help. Baba ben Buta should have gone to the aggressive husband and spoken to him harshly and sensitively to save his neighbor from her distress. But Baba ben Buta is in love with guilt, and people experiencing perpetual guilt offer to those around them the same world they experience — a world without love or mercy. From these combined traditions of Baba ben Buta, we can learn that whoever lacks compassion for himself or herself cannot be compassionate toward others.
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We have to remember that guilt feelings are sometimes used as governmental tools, that guilt feelings are very much overrated, and that often they don’t serve the public good but rather serve power positions. We have to be careful with feeling guilty.
(This article was translated with the help of Uzi Bar Pinchas.)
Dr. Ruhama Weiss, Ph.D. is the director of the Blaustein Center for Pastoral Counseling at HUC-JIRin Jerusalem.
How my heart sings 