Inviting the Uninvited

There was once a meeting in Jerusalem that two men were forbidden to attend.

One was the most powerful man in the country.

The other was the holiest.

Neither had committed a crime. Neither had fallen from grace. In fact, if you had been asked to assemble the most distinguished gathering imaginable, these were probably the first two people you would have invited.

One wore a crown.

The other entered the Holy of Holies.

And yet, when the door closed, both had to remain outside.

I have been thinking about those two empty chairs.

Because history usually remembers the people who made it into the room.

The Rooms Where History Moved

There have been meetings where the world outside seemed to wait for the people inside to decide what came next.

Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin near the end of World War II in 1945. Kennedy and Khrushchev at the height of the nuclear confrontation in 1961. Begin, Sadat, and Carter trying to turn war between Israel and Egypt toward peace in 1978. Reagan and Gorbachev searching for a way out of the Cold War in 1985.

Sometimes history becomes very small: one room, a handful of chairs, and millions of lives waiting outside.

Then there were more ancient meetings too.

Moshe and Pharaoh.

A shepherd walks into the palace of a ruler with armies, chariots, wealth, monuments, and a civilization that considers him nearly divine.

Moshe arrives with a staff.

And a sentence.

Let My people go.

But no meeting, to me, compares with another meeting Moshe attended.

A mountain. Cloud. Fire. One human being climbing toward the Creator of the universe. Infinity and finitude meeting above the camp. A man disappearing into a cloud and returning with words that would outlive empires.

And then there are meetings whose importance is much harder to see.

Which brings me back to Jerusalem—and to those two empty chairs.

No war. No Pharaoh. No negotiations over territory.

This was a meeting of sages deciding something far quieter: how many months the coming Jewish year would have.

Twelve—or thirteen?

The King and the Cold Water

Twelve lunar months do not perfectly match the solar year, so occasionally another month must be added to the Jewish calendar. In the days of the Sanhedrin, the sages would decide whether the coming year needed an additional Adar.

And the Gemara in Sanhedrin 18b says something remarkable: neither the king nor the Kohen Gadol could participate in that decision.

Why?

The king had soldiers to pay.

Their pay was fixed for the year. If the year had twelve months, they served twelve months for that money. If another Adar was added, they served thirteen.

One more month.

Same money.

The king had every reason to prefer thirteen.

The Kohen Gadol had every reason to prefer twelve.

His problem was not money.

It was cold water.

Adding another Adar pushed Yom Kippur a month later toward winter. And on Yom Kippur, the Kohen Gadol had to immerse himself repeatedly as part of the sacred service.

One more month.

Colder water.

The Kohen Gadol had every reason to prefer twelve.

There it was.

The king wanted thirteen.

The Kohen Gadol wanted twelve.

Same question. Opposite interests.

So neither was invited into the room.

Not because they were dishonest. Not because anyone doubted their greatness. One carried the welfare of a nation. The other entered the Holy of Holies.

The Torah simply understood something about human nature:

When we have something to gain from an answer, it becomes harder to trust our own judgment.

A man can enter the Holy of Holies and still prefer warmer water.

A king can carry the fate of a nation and still keep an eye on the royal treasury.

Which made me wonder about myself.

If they could be influenced by something so small, what makes me think I am not?

The Most Convincing Man I Know

I know someone who can make an extraordinarily persuasive argument for almost anything.

He can explain why he was right in an argument with his wife. Why a purchase was necessary. Why what appears to be pride is actually principle. Why what looks suspiciously like anger is really a passionate commitment to truth.

I know this man extremely well.

He is me.

That is the problem with being both attorney and judge in the courtroom of your own life.

The attorney knows exactly which evidence to introduce.

And the judge has already had lunch with him.

The frightening biases are usually much quieter than we imagine.

They sound like logic.

They know our history.

They can quote every hurt.

And because the argument is delivered in our own voice, it rarely introduces itself by saying:

Good afternoon. I am your self-interest.

It says:

Obviously.

Obviously I am right.

Obviously they should understand.

Obviously this is what Hashem wants.

Perhaps the king’s argument would have sounded obvious too.

The sages never waited to find out.

They left two chairs empty.

A Third Person

A husband and wife have a serious disagreement, the kind where both have been hurt long enough to construct excellent closing arguments.

He calls his parents.

She calls hers.

Now everyone is impartial.

Of course.

A mother can be the wisest woman in the world, but when she hears pain in her child’s voice, something ancient wakes up inside her.

Love is beautiful.

Love is also terrible at jury duty.

And this is where I have slowly come to understand something about having a rabbi.

A real rabbi does not merely answer questions.

He provides distance.

He can walk into a room where everyone has become trapped inside his own version of the story and open a window.

Sometimes he tells you that you are right.

Sometimes he tells you that you are wrong.

That is usually when you discover whether you actually wanted a rabbi.

It is easy to have a rabbi when the rabbi agrees with you. The relationship begins somewhere else—when you allow another human being, formed by years of Torah, to challenge the magnificent legal defense you have constructed for yourself.

Over time, if you are fortunate, you begin watching more than listening. How does he respond when insulted? What happens when peace costs him something? What does he do when Torah’s answer is inconvenient?

Slowly, something passes from teacher to student that cannot be written in a notebook.

A way of seeing.

Eventually, his voice begins appearing at inconvenient moments.

Did you hear the other side?

Would you still believe this was right if you had nothing to gain from it?

That is when a rabbi becomes something more than a person you consult.

He becomes a window in a room where your own breath keeps fogging the glass.

Inviting the Uninvited

I return to Jerusalem.

Somewhere nearby is a king accustomed to rooms opening when he approaches.

Somewhere else is the Kohen Gadol, perhaps the most revered Jew alive.

Neither is inside.

Twelve months?

Thirteen?

This time, their absence helps more.

The Torah was not merely protecting the meeting from them.

It was protecting them from themselves.

Maybe one of the great purposes of a rabbi is not to give me more answers.

Maybe it is to save me, occasionally, from the answers I was absolutely certain about before I asked.

It takes very little humility to ask someone what to do when you have no idea.

It takes considerably more to ask when you are certain.

The king had an army.

The Kohen Gadol had the Holy of Holies.

I have neither.

And yet I have something they had too.

A mind capable of convincing itself.

A heart with preferences.

A remarkable ability to mistake what I want for what is right.

So, when I become absolutely certain that I am right, I try to remember Jerusalem.

Sometimes wisdom means knowing who should not be allowed into the room.

And sometimes wisdom means recognizing that I am the room.

My anger is already there. My pride has taken a seat. My fear has arrived early.

My version of the story is speaking first.

Perhaps that is precisely when I need to open the door and invite in the one person who has nothing to gain from proving me right.

Someone who can see what I cannot.

Someone who can tell me what I may not want to hear.

Someone who can help me separate what I believe from what I merely want to believe.

A rabbi.

Two thousand years ago, wisdom sometimes meant keeping the king and the Kohen Gadol outside.

In my life, it may require something harder.

Opening the door.

And inviting the uninvited.