Empathy

            

Excerpt adapted from Rabbi Jeremy Gordon, from blog: Rabbi on a Narrow Bridge

empathy – feeling the pain of others

Our capacity to hold the pain of others is all used up by our own suffering, our own sense of being victims, our own narcissism.

There's no word in Hebrew for empathy, but consider the following mitzvot:

“As for the stranger (ger) in your midst, you shall not wrong or oppress them, for you were strangers (gerim) in the Land of Egypt.”

And again,

“As for the stranger you shall not oppress for you know the soul of a stranger, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt.”

The command not to oppress the ger is repeated 34 times in the Tenach.

And it's clear that ger in this context doesn't mean the convert. It means the outsider to the Jewish community who wants to live in the Israelite camp.

This is the way in which empathy functions in Hebrew.

There may be no word for it, but the idea could not be clearer.

We are commanded to feel the pain of the dispossessed, the alone, the widows, the orphans, all of them, because we know the soul of the ger.

And while the Tenach tells us to do many things zecher yitziat mitzrayim (in remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt) – as a response to our own redemption from pain, the thing we are told most often is to take care of those who find themselves as “strangers”.

While empathy might be seen as merely an emotional response the Rabbis, their eye for concrete action takes the general terms 'wrong' and 'oppress' and renders them even more explicitly as commands not to wrong with words and not to oppress with financial opportunism.

One ancient Aggadah even looks at the placement of this verse, next to a command to avoid idol worship to suggest that one who oppresses a ger by demeaning their belief system is deemed to have committed the great sin of avodah zarah (foreign worship) themselves.

It turns out that to be a true survivor of the experiences of our faith we have to look beyond our own people.

As tired as we may be, as hurt as we may be.

The command is clear – but it is not a command to feel empathy – we can be reminded of what we might have forgotten – ki gerim hiyitem (do not oppress the ger)– but the command is to action.

To hear the voice of those who suffer from lack of identity, a mindset of poverty, and emotional woundedness we once (and possibly still do) suffered from, and to come along side them to elevate their condition, is the highest duty of the Jew succinctly stated in the mitzvah:

“Love thy neighbor as thyself.”