Robin Williams & the Darkness of Depression - Ekev 5774

I don’t know about you. But I hate watching the news. It’s something I know I have to do, but it’s really become a chore, hasn’t it. There’s the ongoing situations in Israel, Iraq, the aftermath of Malaysian Air attack. There was another shooting of another unarmed black teenager, this time in the St. Louis suburbs, this time an 18-year-old named Michael Brown, and the horrible situation that has resulted, with riots and teargas and police brutality and even a military presence. The imprints of the damage we’ve done to our world continues to emerge, as extreme weather wreaks havoc, here in the Northeast with historic flooding, all while there’s seemingly no water to be found on the West Coast, and what water there is has been forcefully shut off for tens of thousands in Detroit.  

Then came the news of Robin Williams taking his own life this past Monday. And a world already steeled and hardened by an onslaught of miserable news and images and sentiments from all over the world, including our own American backyard, when many of us thought and wondered how it could get much worse than this: unfortunately this was our answer.

I am heartbroken. I am devastated. I am crushed. For his family, who couldn’t have loved him any more than they did, who knew all he struggled with, did everything humanly possible to keep him here with them and in the end, all of it wasn’t enough to prevent him from doing this. For us: we who loved him in our own way, got to know him as best we could through his talents and diversity, in roles covering the entirety of the acting spectrum; making us laugh, making us cry, sometimes interchangeably, sometimes even in the same moment; in the iconic moments of mania and hysteria in James Lipton interviews on the Actors’ Studio; in his tireless charitable efforts to combat poverty and homelessness and cancer, just to name a few.

I remember someone at camp when we were 12 years old having a Robin Williams stand-up comedy cassette tape and how hilarious it was to us, though we knew our parents probably wouldn’t want us to be hearing that kind of stuff.

I remember how hard I laughed when I saw Aladdin in the movie theater, thinking Disney could never top that and, in my opinion, they still haven’t; I still remember so many of the fantastic lines he uttered as Genie, and the words to the songs; I even had that entire soundtrack on tape as well, not something too many 12-year-old boys would publicly admit. “10,000 years will give you such a crick in the neck!”

I remember cracking up with my brother when we went to see Mrs. Doubtfire, all the while marveling at his acting ability; that the role is incredibly complicated and deep and challenging and there was no one else who could have done it like he did.

I remember when I was finally old enough to see Good Morning Vietnam, and to this day, my brother and I will still say, “And if you doooo…and if you doooo…!”

I remember crying my eyes out when I first saw Dead Poets Society, at the beauty of life he taught them, to carpe diem, seize the day and answer his channeling of Whitman, “What will your verse be?”

And I remember knowing, even as I watched it, that his role as therapist Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting was one that would change my life and stay with me forever.

Mostly I am heartbroken for him; how all of the love and support and treatment and medical attention in the world couldn’t overcome the demon, the disease that is depression. And make no mistake, that’s what it is: a disease, a sickness. It is not a flaw of character, a shortcoming, a funk someone can just “snap out of.” It is a disease, an illness that overwhelms the body and mind, sometimes ravaging both, whittling them down until there is nothing left.

And I was struck by a verse near the beginning of this week’s portion, Parashat Eikev, where God reiterates the promises that will be fulfilled upon adhering to the mitzvot, including these words:

“The Eternal will ward off from you all sickness; God will not bring upon you any of the dreadful diseases of Egypt.”

Well we know that one of the most dreadful, the most physically and mentally paralyzing of those diseases was the plague of darkness upon the Egyptians. Depression is both that palpable darkness, and the ongoing struggle and battle to not let it consume you totally.

While there can be little consolation, if any, upon the loss of Robin Williams, it is that, God willing, we can lift the taboo and erase the stigma associated with depression. His passing already has created conversation around the topic, already brought people out of hiding, out of suffering in silence, to share their struggles and know that they don’t have to go it alone any longer.

The World Health Organization estimates that some 350 million people worldwide suffer from some form of depression. If you are one of them, if you know someone who is, what you need to hear is this:

You are not alone. You don’t need to suffer in silence. There is no shame or embarrassment, no shortcomings or flaws. There are ways to treat it, ways to combat it, and you don’t have to go it alone. You are not alone. Don’t bear the burden yourself. Reach out to your family, your friends, your rabbis and cantors. Allow us to share it with you. Please. You are not alone.

Perhaps then we may lighten the load, even just a little bit, and shine a ray of light into the terrifying darkness.

Then perhaps, in this way, as in so many others, will his memory be a blessing to us all.        

AMEN.  

Fighting the Darkness - T'tzaveh 5773

“Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'alls neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse's shell
The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller.”

Darkness. It is paralyzing, fearful, terrifying. We can’t see, we can’t be seen. We are at our most vulnerable, unprotected. It’s the basis of our horror movies, our campfire ghost stories, our haunted houses.

It is no wonder, then, that darkness is a plague upon Egypt. And if we see the Ten Plagues as a progression in intensity and terror, the fact that it’s the ninth of ten speaks volumes about us and our fears. The text says that this plague didn’t include the Jews, that though “people could not see on another, and for three days no one could move about, all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings.”

But many of our sages and commentators beg to differ. They say the darkness did include the Jews. But the difference between them was how they handled it. For the Egyptians, we read in the text, lo kamu ish mitachtav, literally nobody even got off their tushes to help each other. They were paralyzed and just sat still, defeated, waiting for the light to return. The Israelites, on the other hand, probably just as scared as the Egyptians, struggled through the darkness to check on each other, to see if their families and friends and neighbors were okay. And so the light they enjoyed, say the commentators, was more existential, that, though the darkness was just the same, they did the best they could to get through it.

Darkness. It is scary stuff, in every sense of the word—metaphorically, figuratively, literally. And as we sit here, in the thick of a cold, bitter winter, we know that this is the darkest time of year. 
So too is it a dark time for the Israelites at this point in our Torah. But theirs is a spiritual darkness, the hangover of doubt following the triumphant leaving of Egypt, the victory over their oppressors at the Sea of Reeds. So now, in their spiritual wilderness, our ancestors are getting the very detailed instructions for building the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary, so that God may dwell with them wherever they may go.

Along comes Parashat T’tzaveh, and the very first verse of the portion is this: “Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives lama’or, l’ha’alot ner tamid.”

This is a special moment for us as the Jewish people, because this is where the concept of the ner tamid comes from. This is why virtually every sanctuary ever no matter where it sits, no matter which direction it faces, they all have an Eternal Light.

But while we all love and appreciate the custom of ner tamid, the single light representing constant hope and, for some of us, the unwavering Presence of God, it is most probably a mistranslation. It is not an Eternal Flame (sorry, Bangles fans), but really a light to be kindled regularly.

I point that out not to burst your ner tamid bubble or to be the wet blanket to your eternal flame. But I think there’s a pretty big distinction there, and it’s important that we take note of it. Because, see, kindled regularly” rather than “eternal light” acknowledges what we all know to be true. Lights are going to go out—in our hearts, our souls, our spirits. Over the course of our lives, no matter how cheerful, optimistic, happy-go-lucky we may be in general, there is no way to avoid it, there will be darkness. So when the darkness comes, there are two questions to ask ourselves:

The first one is: what do we do in the darkness? Do we feel sorry for ourselves, do we mope? Do we endlessly lament what could’ve been, what should’ve been? Do we spend our time being angry at the darkness, blaming ourselves or pointing the finger all around at anyone but ourselves as the cause? Do we sit on our butts like the Egyptians and wait for someone, something else to dig us out?  Or do we turn inward to find light, to work on ourselves, to better ourselves, to reach for the light within and beyond ourselves to make our world brighter?

The second question is: how? How do we rekindle the flame? How do we get out of this darkness? Where does the spark come from? To whom, to what do we turn to get the lights back on, to get back on our feet and start moving forward again?

Perhaps a clue to answers to both is B'tzal'el. B’tzal’el is, simply put, the man. He is singled out by God to be chief architect, designer, jeweler, mason, you name it, for the Mishkan. He is essentially the Bob Vila of the Tabernacle.

And the verse that introduces us to him says the following: Va’amale oto ruach Elohim b’chochmah, uvit’vunah, uv’da’at, uv’chol m’lachah, usually translated in a context of being the skilled specialist he apparently is, that God “has endowed him with a divine spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge in every kind of craft.” A more literal translation, which I prefer here, says this: God “has filled him with the spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, as well as physical labor.”

God has filled him with this, whatever it is, so that this divine spirit, this gift of God he possesses does not ever desert him, even in the most difficult moments. And what is it? What is that wisdom, that understanding, that knowledge?

Maybe the secret is in his very name: B’tzalel. If we look closely at his name, and we break up into parts, his name says the following: B’tzal, “in the shadows,” El, “God is there.”

And God is that light we seek; the light that will carry us through the hardest moments, the ones we think and fear will never end. It’s in the arms of a needed embrace from a loved one. It’s in the warm eyes, the listening ears of a friend. It’s in the voice that says “I’m sorry you’re going through this. But I know you. I love you.  And I know you’re going to be okay.”

It’s there, in the shadows. But only if we make ourselves open to it. Only if we allow ourselves to be scared, to be vulnerable, and to share it, call it out and name it. And only then can we move forward into the light. After all, as the great poet Leonard Cohen once wrote, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. That’s how the light gets in.”

My friends, on this Shabbat I pray that the moments of darkness in our lives are few and far between, that our days be filled with light and joy. But when those moments come, as inevitably they will, when darkness encircles us and our hope begins to drain away, may we find strength in ourselves to face our fears and our vulnerabilities head-on; strength in each other, in the love and sympathy and support that we simply cannot live without. And may we know, through that strength, even in the darkest depths of sadness and despair, b’tzal-el, even in the shadows, there is God.

AMEN.