“UGH, What are you honking at!?”
“Why,” I would ask myself, over and over again, “why are Mass drivers SO RUDE?!”
While it diminished a bit as traffic decreased this past pandemic year,
you know how it goes:
you’re driving, minding your own business,
listening to some Debbie Friedman or Simon & Garfunkel on Spotify,
perhaps even following the speed limit,
and the second a light turns green or you’re not moving fast enough,
someone lays on their horn and:
Honk, Honk, Honk, get out of the way! They say!
It doesn’t matter if it's the Rotary off the JamaicaWay in Boston,
the Circle of Doom in Newton Corner, the Mass Pike passing over Natick
Route 9, or State Road 20!
Honk, Honk, Honk!
And as they speed by us,
this Indiana bred rabbi is cursing
(but politely because I’m from the midwest)
all with whom I share the road!
In Jewish time, we are situated in Parashat Balak.
This portion is one for the ages
in the longest running soap opera of our time, the Torah.
It's a story meant for kids and grown ups alike.
And in case you’re just tuning in,
Balak, King of Moab, tries to hire the prophet Balaam to curse Israel.
Perhaps the most entertaining part of the story is Balaam’s donkey
who can talk and whose voice is clearly played by Eddie Murphy.
As the story goes, Balaam goes from mountaintop to mountaintop
to gaze upon the Israelite’s encampment in order to fulfill his cursing-for-hire gig.
However, the only semi-curse we hear throughout
is that most Torah translations call his donkey…
an ass.
Instead, as is oft true in Torah, the Israelite God is most powerful
and Balaam is taken hold by the command from God,
not to curse, but to bless the Israelites,
from which we get the most famous of words
with which we start most morning prayer liturgy:
Mah Tovu O’halecha Ya’akov/Mishekenotecha Yisrael…
How Goodly, How lovely are your tents, O Jacob,
Your Dwelling places, O Israel!
“How peculiar,” writes Dr. Ellen Frankel in her book,
Five Books of Miriam: A Woman's Commentary on the Torah,
“how peculiar that...Jews begin... morning prayers by reciting the blessing
forced from the mouth of the pagan prophet Balaam...”
It is peculiar, the whole Torah portion, really,
but it is a compelling message with which to start each day
with blessings from a stranger who could have offered a curse.
Balaam could have Honked, Honked, Honked at the Israelites
in the traffic of desert living, but he blessed us instead.
It’s a consideration to take with us in other parts of our lives,
not just when the light turns green or someone cuts you off,
but so many moments when we long to curse others,
whether with judgement, with anger, maybe even with the truth.
But what if we slowed down our reaction rate?
What if we did what the character study of Mussar describes as
distancing the space between the match and the fuse?
Inserting a breath, an acknowledgement that they -
they might even deserve the curse -
but that ultimately they are also holy human beings.
How might Balaam be a model for us
such that when a curse would be far more satisfying,
we find it in ourselves to bless instead?
Easier said than done, right?
Because....Honk, Honk, Honk!
UGH, What are you honking at!?
Why, I would ask myself, over and over again, why are Mass drivers SO RUDE!”
As they sped by us, I was cursing in my raised in the midwest and a dash of the South,
but have lived on the East coast most of my adult life kind of way...
which went something like this:
”Please stop being such a jerk, dear sir! Thank you!”
Now it’s fair if you just think I’m a bad driver. I might be.
Because folks have been honking at me since I moved to Boston in 2012.
but this past year, something was actually a bit different,
And I don’t think its that people became more compassionate
because we’ve been living, you know, in a global pandemic.
Rather, you see, I got married almost a year ago.
A day after our pandemic delayed micro-wedding,
my sister wrote on the back of each our cars the quintessential:
Just Married (minus the dangling cans…)
And as it turns out, most of the time -
and not always because let’s be real, this is Boston -
but most of the time after I would throw them a confused glance
Of “WHAT DID WE DO? WHY ARE YOU HONKING?”
We realized why people were honking at us.
It was in order to tell us “Mazel tov!” Congratulations! Just married!”
They would cheer for us through the rearview mirror,
hoot and holler out the driver’s side window,
an Arsenio fist bump of joy!
We even got pulled over for having tail lights out on the backroads of Maine,
but were quickly sent on our merry newlywed way.
So many people merited generosity towards us this past year
because our windshield communicated to them exactly what was going on in our life.
What if people wrote on their windshields…
“On the way to treatment…
We have a new grandchild!
En route to shiva…
We got a dog!
My kid is carsick!
I just got a promotion!
The divorce is final.
Or maybe something as simple as:
My phone is about to die and I don’t know how to get there without the GPS.
What if instead of cursing others when they frustrate us
or when we simply do not know their story, their reason for being,
the cause for their behavior, or distraction or distress,
or the reason they cut you off in traffic,
what if instead of cursing them, we offered them blessing!
As we find ourselves once again speeding along the road of life,
let us remember to slow down our mileage and our reactivity,
and as if the prophet Balaam,
so may we share the journey with blessings of kindness and peace.