Good Point (Rosh HaShanah 5786)

Good Point
Rabbi Andrew Kaplan, Rosh HaShanah 5786

A Jewish child brought home a report card with a 97 in science. The parents had one question: what happened to the other three points?

We’re all familiar with being told where we fall short. So I braced myself when a professor covered my first paper of my first semester in green ink. I figured it was for my own good, but I thought: This is not how I wanted to start grad school.

But as I looked more closely, I realized these were dozens of positive comments! “Poetic turn of phrase!” “You’ve now convinced me of your argument.” This treatment was not reserved for me. She did this in some form for everyone.

Maybe you think: that’s coddling. To me, it was revelatory. I felt like this professor had looked into my soul and seen my best intentions. Her comments helped me to notice things I wasn’t even doing consciously but should do more. But what struck me most was how countercultural it felt for someone to be so attentive in a positive direction. And, here is where I’d like to focus: imagine the effect on the professor! What a beautiful way to walk through the world, looking out for opportunities to tell people what she appreciates.

This is part of what we’re celebrating as we mark the birthday of the world today.

G-d takes moments throughout the first week to recognize goodness. On the fifth day, G-d wasn’t like: “koalas, cute; bats, creepy.” G-d simply summarizes the day with: “it was good.”

To be clear, Judaism is not about ignoring what is problematic. We break a glass at a wedding of all places to remind ourselves of the world’s brokenness! But on Rosh Hashanah, we seek to recalibrate the balance between light and darkness.

And this is a year when I think we can agree: Let there be more light.

I’ll ask us all to reflect for a moment: To what extent do we regularly notice, appreciate, and communicate a positive trait about the others in our lives? In the past week, how many specific, positive observations did we each convey to the people around us?

Increasing our intentional articulation of the good is something concrete we can do in response to the societal forces around us today. Our natural negativity bias – that human tendency to zero in on problems, to help us detect and avoid danger – is on overdrive. News media and social media antagonize us to attract our eyeballs and drive clicks. Extremism thrives when we make snap judgments of one another, moving us further apart and increasing the possibility of chaos. So we have to take control of where we place our gaze.

This is not an exclusively modern problem. The Talmud describes when Rabbi Yochanan encountered a man named Reish Lakish—a gladiator, a bandit, a man whose whole life was defined by violence. You can imagine Yochanan sizing him up: the muscles, the scars, the reputation. Rabbi Yochanan could have assumed the worst. Instead, he saw holy possibility: This energy could serve Torah.

The rabbi invited Lakish to leave behind the arena and the thievery and to channel his strength into learning. Against all odds, Reish Lakish said yes. He became Yochanan’s student, and soon, his closest study partner. Together they wrestled with words instead of weapons. Yochanan loved that Reish Lakish had 24 objections for each of his points. Lakish’s ferocity was well suited for the study hall.

But one day, in the heat of a legal debate about swords and spears, Yochanan unleashed an insult about his friend’s past. He said, “Leave it to a robber to know about knives.” A single sentence undid years of trust. Their friendship shattered. Soon after, Lakish died, some say of a broken heart.

There’s no happy ending. The Talmud lets us feel the loss here. And in doing so, it teaches: the words we use with one another can lift someone into a new life, or cut so deep that they destroy the bond between us. I do believe that our collective fabric is so frayed that every stitch of repair matters.

Maybe we can start by applying these lessons at home. Does your family show affection through perfectionism? I get it – we want the best for our relatives and friends, and so we might call out that they do not have great taste in relationships, or they work too hard, or not enough. Loved ones give each other feedback, sure. 

But let’s take stock of the balance of that feedback. Might we also say, for no reason at all: “I love your sense of humor.” “That was a very caring thing you just said.” “You have a way of really calming me down.” Not as the lead-in to a request, or as the soft launch for our critique. But for its own sake. 

When we do, consider what we’re putting into the atmosphere. We are taught that G-d created the world through speech. What we choose to say forms the world we inhabit as well.

As a rabbi this year, I have been to too many funerals where someone’s relatives tell me that they didn’t vocalize the loving thing they wanted to say to the deceased before their passing. You can absolutely say it afterwards, but there’s a different satisfaction that comes from seeing someone’s reaction to your observation. This can be part of this year’s teshuva, of us returning to our best selves. Raise your hand if you can think of someone in your life with whom you could share more of your positive observations. I want to compliment you on your self-awareness. Now nod if you’re promising – with all of us as your witnesses – to tell them. Great.

This is level one, base camp: tell the people you love what you love about them. But I want to take this to an advanced level. There may be someone in your life who bothers you. Maybe multiple people. There’s some quality about them that rubs you the wrong way. They’re rigid. They know it all. They’re loud. Our judgment can be pretty instantaneous. Then, we can fixate on this characteristic so that it soon becomes our whole experience of them.

I’ve definitely done this. I volunteer as a GED math tutor for a prison re-entry program. Several months ago, we were reviewing pretty simple problems involving fractions, like adding half and a fourth. And this one student kept blurting out incorrect answers. He wasn’t trying to be disruptive, but he seemed to be randomly guessing, and it irritated me. So I decided that he was impulsive and basically hopeless, and I stopped paying attention to him, choosing to focus on other students. And, by the end of class, he was looking out the window, no doubt feeling ignored.

This is very painful to admit because I think teachers should always believe in their students. Pirkei Avot, the wisdom of our ancestors, says it a different way: “Judge each person with the scale weighted in their favor.” The Hebrew actually suggests something more nuanced here. DAN ET KOL HA-ADAM: judge ALL of a person with the scale weighted in their favor. Meaning, get to know someone completely – the whole person – before deciding who they are. I could have chosen to focus on my student’s enthusiasm, his good-naturedness, his willingness to show up to a high school-level math class in his 40s.

To his credit, he kept showing up, and I eventually noticed that he was great with calculations involving money. Once I asked the class what was half of $11, and he immediately said 5.50. So I ultimately tailored more of my explanations to play to this strength, which changed his performance and his confidence. It was like he was a different person, much less anxious and more self-assured. I bet I was a different person to him, too, patient and encouraging. We both had it in us. It just required seeing things in the right light.

The Hasidic Rabbi Nachman of Breslov described this process as finding the “nikkudah tovah,” the good point, in someone. In his world, Rebbe Nachman was speaking about Jews, and given his history of depression, he was likely speaking to himself. But to me, it applies to everyone.

In this new year, it is our spiritual task to ask: what is one quality I can find in this person that helps shift my perception of them toward the positive, the good, the worthy? Something that I can appreciate, that makes me smile, something that helps me not simply dwell on what irritates or troubles me, or makes me feel inadequate, but something that could add lightness or respect to our dynamic. One nikkudah tovah, one entry point, a seed that might grow?

A friend of mine really struggles with his sister. But the sister has recently become a caring dog owner, revealing a new side of her, a more selfless side. So my friend now starts their conversations by asking about the dog. It’s a point of genuine connection, and it changes the energy in their dynamic. It’s a start. May that point become a pivot.

I know I need to pivot when I find myself in opposition to everything that a person might say or do even before they say or do it. That mindset not only runs counter to the spirit of Rosh Hashanah, a time when we are called to believe in change and new beginnings. But it is also hurtful to me because it takes away my own discernment and agency. If this person does something unexpected, I may not notice because I’ve already written the script, the verdict. I need to stop my own heart from hardening and my own mind from shrinking before I consider myself the ultimate judge. That job is taken.

But what about the people who not only annoy us, but who have a pattern of proving that they cannot be trusted, having caused real harm again and again? You can earnestly find nothing redeemable about them.

Judaism is committed to self-preservation. So if someone is threatening you, you should stay away from them, if not seek to prevent them from hurting other people. In fact, the verse after “Judge people with the scale weighted in their favor” is “keep distance from an evil neighbor.”

Sometimes, the best we can do is to be our best and not let them take our virtues and values from us. We read in the Talmud that Rav Meir cursed hooligans wreaking havoc in his neighborhood, praying that these evildoers would be destroyed. His wise wife Beruriah interjected: destroy “not the evildoers, but the evil acts.”

We need to call out injustices and not sugarcoat them. We need to hold people accountable for their actions. Yet in a world full of harshness and polarization, we also cannot abandon our humanity. I don’t want anyone to die, even if I want their behavior to go away.

Rather than allowing hatred, rage, or bitterness to consume my soul, I can choose to cultivate the nikkudot tovot, the points of goodness that were instilled in me, calling on them to help me build the world I long to see.

Rebbe Nachman taught a bonus meaning for the word nikkudah: a musical note, a a melodic sound, a single tone. We can not only see the good, but we can also sing it.

Sometimes during prayer services, especially when we use wordless melodies, I’ll think of a relationship I want to improve, then think of one positive quality in that person, and let the tune become an ode to that quality. It’s a way to associate that person with song, a way to start re-tuning myself and to be in harmony with others.

So, let’s try it. For now, think of one good relationship you want to strengthen. Think of one positive point in them that you want to lift up. Let’s let that quality take flight. The melody will come back around. Join when you’re ready.

<Niggun is sung, repeated by audience>

May this nikkudah tovah help usher in a Shana Tovah for you and yours.