No. 25 - Friday, July 14th - 3 Minute Read - Audio Version Here​

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Need a Lawyer? I run a large group of >400 lawyers if you need a referral. I also have my own firm representing buyers or sellers of small businesses (think dental practice, coffee shop, therapy clinic etc.). This is probably attorney advertising.

Excellent at Life Podcast — You can find an audio version of this newsletter here on the pod. I'm currently releasing three weekly episodes, one being the newsletter.

​Living Wisely Kids Pod — I probably shouldn't have brought The Supersoaker to school on the last day of sixth grade... but your kids (and you!) will probably enjoy that story in our second episode.

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Why Are You Not Me?

Why Don’t You Pray in Sha’arei Emunah?

I was taking a walk this past Saturday when I came across thousands of ants milling around a paper towel on the sidewalk. I couldn't make heads or tails of their random motion. While I was bent over looking, a little voice asked me what I was doing.

I looked up to find four young girls had stopped to examine the strange man who was examining the strange ants. I explained to them why I was befuddled and we wondered about the ant behavior together.

We were heading in the same direction and so we walked together chatting, when one of the girls asked me “Why don't you pray in Sha’arei Emunah?” (her synagogue). (Her synagogue is of the Sephardic Jewish tradition, while I’m from Ashkenazi lineage with different rites and rituals and it would be atypical for me to attend hers.)

The simplicity of her question pulled me back 15 years to a very similar question posed to me by a Hasidic boy in Jerusalem.

Why Are You Not a Belzer?

On top of a large hill in Jerusalem, city of hills, stands a huge synagogue. It is the largest one in Jerusalem, so large, that my sister once overheard a visitor commenting “I didn't know they had rebuilt the Temple.” It is definitely not the Temple lol; the synagogue belongs to the Belz Hasidic sect.

I spent two years in Jerusalem studying Torah way back when, and one day I found myself waiting for someone outside this monstrosity. I struck up a conversation with one of the young Hasidic boys in full regalia outside. At one point, the boy asked me in Yiddish, “Why aren't you a Belzer (a hasid of Belz)?”[1] As if there were nothing else to be in the whole world.

15 years and 5,700 miles apart, the girl in New York and the boy in Jerusalem were asking the same question. We all ask this question, all the time.

Why are you not me?

Why Are You Not Me?

My world, is the world. My world makes sense, I cannot seriously fathom another. So how could you not be like me? Act like me? Think like me? Dress like me? Eat like me? Believe like me?

We ask it in our relationships, taking affront when people see the world differently. We ask it between groups, deeming others of a different persuasion as less serious, less real. Asthose other people.

Why are you not me?

I wish this question were just an artifact of childhood, but people spend their whole lives in it. We have a really hard time taking the world of another seriously – I've written previously about the infinite distance between us.

Part of this is natural, we only have one immediate experience, so of course we give it the most attention. But part of it is fear. We are afraid we might not be so special. If you are as serious as me, then what justification do I have for prioritizing myself? Why should I take my beliefs more seriously than yours? In fact, what ground do I stand on at all if I’m not so different than the others out there, each of whom has a different set of perspectives and beliefs?

And so we protect ourselves by throwing up the walls of me. Walls that shut out the existence of others. Prison walls. Rather than embrace how not different we are, we choose false refuge: we choose the prison of subjectivity.

The Prison of Subjectivity

We choose the prison of subjectivity and so our family table devolves into the same arguments again, again, and again. We choose the prison of subjectivity and so we end up regurgitating the same opinions, the same hurts and grievances, ad nauseam for decades on end. (It's actually funny to step back and watch yourself get sucked into the same loops for the 100th time, sometimes with the same person even. Honestly, it’s boring.) We choose the prison of subjectivity and so we remain small and self-absorbed, preoccupied with our little anxieties in the face of cosmic wonder.

The cost of false refuge is too high. If all we know is our own story, we are poor. Separated and lonely and constantly afraid. There are 8 billion stories out there to know, why be satisfied with one?

I don't know why I am not a Belzer. I could have been born that boy and sweating in his black garb in the Jerusalem sun. I could have been born that girl who wanted to know why I don't pray in Sha’arei Emunah.

I am happy and grateful that I am me (finally). But I could have been them and they could have been me. I am not more serious than them, nor they than me.

So let me ask you a question: why are YOU not a Belzer?

You really could have been one you know.

Joseph

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​[1] Yiddish: Farvus bist du nisht kein belzer?

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