(RNS) — The incident that made me fear for my life did not happen on a dark street or in a crime-ridden neighborhood, but one evening in an ordinary Italian restaurant in my town.
I was eating dinner in Montclair, New Jersey, earlier this month. Another customer was yelling into his phone, speaker up at full volume. As the nuisance hijacked the atmosphere of the restaurant, and the enjoyment of a quiet meal, I asked him, firmly, to turn it down.
He refused. Then, he came over to me and stuck his face into mine, his well-dressed body inching ever-closer. “I’m gonna f— you up,” he spat.
“Sir, I will have to ask you to step away from me,” I responded.
He kept coming at me. I told him again to back away. He didn’t. I thought I could be killed.
But finally, he sat down at his table. At that moment, something happened inside of me. I am still not sure what it was, but I walked over to him.
I said, “Sir, you shouldn’t have gotten aggressive with me. You were more than a little loud there. But, maybe I could have handled this differently. Can I buy you a drink?”
He said to me “Hey, what business was it of yours? I was talking on the phone. I got my wife here. You can’t talk to me like that! Besides, this restaurant doesn’t have a liquor license. I brought my own,” pointing to his own half-filled glass of red wine.
I said, “You were too loud, and you really got aggressive with me. That wasn’t cool. But, I had a rough day, so maybe I could have handled it better.”
He looked at me. “Maybe I should give you a drink,” he said, pointing to his bottle of wine. “Take a seat.” He introduced himself, and I politely turned down his offer. We shook hands, and that was that.
In that heated moment, what saved me was not cleverness, physical strength or even luck. It was hesed — loving-kindness, loyal compassion and mercy with staying power. It might be the closest thing Jews have to the Christian notion of grace.
Psalm 89:3 reads, “Olam hesed yibaneh,” which translates to, “the world is built on hesed.” Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch called hesed “love which fulfills itself in deeds.” It is not a feeling, but an action; not a sentiment, but a posture toward the world.
In that nano-second, something moved within me. I had to see the world through the other man’s eyes. I had challenged him in the presence of his wife. That seemed to violate some kind of macho code that was never part of my curriculum.
But, we toned it down. Hesed disarms. Hesed de-escalates. Hesed turns enemies into fellow diners and strangers into tentative companions.
It brings me to this sacred season, the Days of Awe. Our prayer cries out, “Avinu Malkeinu — almighty and merciful — answer us with grace, for our deeds are wanting. Save us through acts of justice and love.” It means to deal with us according to what we deserve, and also, to deal with us better than we deserve — hesed.
I have often taught that there are two thrones in heaven: one of strict justice, the other of mercy. Our entire mission during the Days of Awe is to motivate God to move from the throne of justice to that of mercy — to temper wrath with compassion, and judgment with forgiveness.
If we want God to show us hesed, then we need to begin by showing it to others.
I did not convert my adversary into a saint. All I could do was imagine his narrative. I had to understand that man as if I were trying to interpret a text. In so doing, I converted myself into something a little more decent, a little more godly.
Teshuvah, or repentance, is not about fixing the other guy. It’s about fixing ourselves — tikkun atzmi, which prayer can accomplish. It is the work of musar, the tradition of ethical introspection.
Which brings me to today’s world. As I walked away from that encounter, I was thinking not only about how I had potentially narrowly escaped being a story in The New York Times, but other stories in the news and the wars in our world. Rebbe Nachman of Breslov taught, “All the wars in the world are really only reflections of the wars within each person.”
That night, I saw it clearly. The five-minute war between me and the other man was a microcosm of the wars in the world, which people fight because of insults to dignity — both ancient and modern — and the violation of boundaries. Writ larger, the war between me and him mirrored the war within myself: the struggle between my anger and my restraint, my ego and my humility, my desire to lash out and my yearning to reach across.
Many Jewish holidays commemorate wars. Hanukkah is about the war against the Hellenists. Passover features a kind of war with the Egyptians. Purim is about a miniature war against Haman and Persian despotism. Tisha B’Av, the fast day that commemorates the destructions of Jerusalem, is all about war.
The High Holy Days are also about a war, but an internal war within ourselves — the battle between the good inclination (yetzer ha-tov) and the evil inclination (yetzer ha-ra). Or, if you will, the battle between the part of us that reaches for the highest, and the part of us that reaches for the lowest.
I do not know if I will ever see that man again. If I do, perhaps we will smile and shake hands. But I do know that hesed, or grace, if you will, is not only about sanctuaries and prayer. It is about what happens at work, in restaurants, in traffic jams, in family arguments and even in synagogue board meetings. Hesed demands we extend moral generosity even to those who barely deserve it — and sometimes, to those who don’t deserve it at all.
But in a world that teeters on the brink of conflict — between nations, between neighbors and within ourselves — hesed might just save us. As the Psalmist knew and as I discovered on that precarious night: Olam hesed yibaneh — the world is built on loving-kindness.
In this coming year, may that be the way your world is constructed.