Written on Stone, Written on Sand

Rabbi Melanie Aron

S'lichot 5763
Saturday, September 20, 2003

Looking for a story to tell the religious school students at tefillah, I came across an old Arab folktale, and it really stuck with me. The story begins with two friends, Nagib and Mussa, who were traveling in the gloomy and dangerous mountains of Persia. One day, one of the friends, Mussa, lost his footing and fell into the whitewater of a dangerous river. His friend Nagib quickly jumped into the water and saved him from certain death.

The friend who was saved from drowning, ordered his most skilled slaves to carve these words on a nearby boulder. "Wanderer, in this place Nagib heroically saved the life of his friend Mussa."

The two friends continued their journey, buying and selling, trading along the distant routes. After many months they came back to the very spot where the one had saved the others life.

They sat for a while reminiscing, looking at the stone, when suddenly for a trifling matter, they quarreled violently. In a fit of anger, Mussa, the one who almost drowned, was struck in the face by his friend Nagib, the man who had saved his life.

Mussa, the one who was struck, got up, picked up a stick and wrote in the white sand near the boulder. "Wanderer, in this place in a trivial argument Nagib broke the heart of his friend Mussa."

When one of Mussa's men inquired why he would record his friend's heroism in stone but his quarrel only in sand, he replied.

"I shall cherish the memory of Nagib's brave assistance forever. But the grave insult he just gave me I hope will fade from my memory even before the words fade from the sand."

Isn't that what we hope for- that our misdeeds will fade away, while our good deeds are recalled. Sometimes, as parents we think it's the other way around. All our good deeds are taken for granted and every misdeed is remembered. Actually Mussa is modeling something very important in terms of how we look at the world, and how we relate to other people.

Yom Kippur comes to spur us on to an examination of our own failures, the ways in which we feel we missed the mark and wish to grow in the year ahead. But our liturgy reminds us that before we can do this internal housekeeping, we need to clean up our unfinished business with everyone else.

One part of that clean up is what we learned from Margaret tonight, apologizing or accepting the apologies of others. "Yom Kippur does not atone until we have made peace with one another." Pride and the conviction that we were right, are only part of what prevents us from apologizing. Fear of the consequences of re-opening old wounds, shame and the desire to repress any memory of our actions which did not live up to our own idealized picture of ourselves, also play a role. I hope that our time together tonight gave each of us the knowledge and impetus to make the apologies that are necessary for us to clean the slate. But where we feel that apologies are due to us, I hope this story of Nagib and Mussa will help us see things in perspective.

Mussa recognized, at the moment of his hurt, that this argument and even the insult of the slap did not compare to the sacrifice his friend made in risking his life to save him. He also had the good sense to understand, even in his time of anger, that the relationship was more important to him than the issue at stake at that moment.

On Yom Kippur afternoon we read the well known holiness code, culminating in the commandment, "You shall Love your Neighbor as Yourself," That commandment is considered of supreme importance- it is the middle verse of the middle chapter of the middle book of the Torah, the heart of the Torah- still it is not so important that it stands alone in the verse.

The verse that includes vaahavtah lerayecha kamochah, you shall love our neighbor as yourself, begins, Lo Tikom Ve Lo Titor- You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge. Only after we have been able to set aside our resentments, can we fulfill the Golden Rule: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Our commentaries explain: Do not say: Just as I have been humiliated let my fellow be humiliated too; just as I have been cursed at, let my fellow be cursed at too. Said Rabbi Tanchuma: If you act thus, know whom you are humiliating: God in whose image both you and your neighbor were created.

Forgiving our neighbor, and healing past wounds, is not only a mitzvah mipnei darchei shalom, in order to increase peace in the world, it is also a religious duty and part of our reverence for God, whose image we seek in every human soul.

With this Selichot service we usher in the days of repentance. May we use them well to bring reconciliation with those whom we have become estranged, seeing in each of them the spark of the Divine presence.