Making the scene

The New Haven Mall, a two-story building facing Chapel Street and the town Green, was nearing the end of its run by early 1995 when I stood inside waiting to meet a man who was homeless, to talk with him about his experience. As the clock ticked past our agreed-upon meeting time I became more aware of the cadre of security staff in the building, known to be looking less for shoplifters than for undesirables coming in from the cold. I began to act purposefully as though waiting to meet someone, which I was, and to look at my watch as though that person was late, which he was. 

I was making the scene, successfully, ashamed that I wanted to avoid being mistaken for un undesirable. The grieving are making the scene too, acting out roles that wait for them to set aside their grief, or leave it at home on low.

*****

Sharon Brous, senior rabbi for a Jewish community in Los Angeles, has written about a ritual of grief, exclusion, and return to community from the time of the Second Temple, which began centuries before, and ended seventy years into, the Common Era. Having reached Jerusalem from far and near, pilgrims would continue to the great plaza of the Temple and there, begin to walk as a group counterclockwise. Another group, comprised of those who were grieving or troubled and those who had been ostracized for their actions, would begin to walk as a group to the left, clockwise. 

As individuals from the first group saw troubled looks on the faces of those in the second group, they would approach them and ask, ‘What happened to you?’ After listening to their stories, those from the first group would then bless them, and assure them they were not alone but part of the greater community. 

Rabbi Brous draws wise contemporary lessons from this ritual. Among them, when you’re down and want to hide away, seek out others, and when you’re up and need no help from others, seek out those who do. Thus everyone is a member of both groups and all must reach out to all. 

These are great lessons. I found myself drawn back the description of this astonishing ritual, with questions: 

First, did the ritual bolster and celebrate the highest spiritual values of the people that were already interwoven with their daily lives, or did it remind and call them back to those values? Put another way, is human nature immutable, or have some societies been able, for a time, to operate on higher moral and spiritual levels? 

Second, where did it come from, the wisdom to link the grieving with the ostracized, the grieving who feel ostracized and the ostracized who grieve their exclusion?