Bible Bullies

Posted at 8:30 PM, Saturday, September 15, 2007

As promised, here is my Rosh Hashanah morning sermon.

In this morning's Torah portion, Abraham is called upon to offer up Isaac as a burnt offering to God. Specifically, Abraham is instructed to take “your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac.” But doesn't Abraham have two sons? Ishmael, his first born, is absent from our tale. Why? Because just in the previous chapter, Abraham has banished Ishmael and his mother Hagar from the household at Sarah's direction. Sarah makes her demand to Abraham after she sees Ishmael “playing with Isaac.” There is something about this play that alarms her enough that she insists that Abraham's elder son leave the house.

The rabbis, of course, have all kinds of theories about what Ishmael does that makes it necessary for him to be exiled from his family. This Rosh Hashanah, I have my own theory that I'd like to share with you. I suspect that Ishmael, fifteen years older than Isaac, is guilty of bullying his baby brother. And why not? Ishmael is older, bigger, more confident, and as the first-born in his family, already has the laws of inheritance overwhelmingly on his side. Isaac by contrast is quiet, passive, and has tremendous difficulty acting on his own. He is, in short, a terrific target for someone who feels most powerful when he makes others more powerless. As passionate interpreters of Torah, we are challenged each year to find something new in these familiar readings. And this year, I am fishing for bullies in the Torah.

The term “Asperger's Syndrome” first entered our active vocabulary as we were preparing to migrate to Australia last August. As many of you will know, Asperger's Syndrome is a mild form of autism. Unlike those with more severe autism, people with Asperger's Syndrome want very much to connect with others. They just don't know how to do it. Those born with it cannot read social cues and as a result have a difficult time fitting into the world around them. Often times, they are the classic nerds--very intelligent, but with no social skills and no idea how to acquire them.

We abruptly found ourselves in the world of Asperger's Syndrome during a very expensive doctor's visit. The doctor in question was the sole practitioner in Pittsburgh who was licensed by the Australian government to look over people wishing to migrate. We had a perfunctory visit with him in which he quickly concluded that we were indeed healthy enough to make the move. Near the end of the exam, he took me to a separate room from the rest of the family to listen to my heart and breathing. While examining me, he asked me if my older son Yonatan had ever received an Asperger's diagnosis. Completely taken aback, I managed to stammer out that no one had made such a suggestion to us before. I went home to think it over and ultimately rang the doctor back to hear more from him. By the time we arrived in Australia, we had concluded that it was time to investigate the possibilities. By the middle of April, we had our diagnosis.

This isn't going to be a sermon about how we love our son despite his disability, and how much we've learned from the challenges of raising him. The pediatrician who supervised the assessment broke the news to me gently as though he was waiting for me to burst into tears. But the son I brought home that day was the exact same child I've loved his entire life. In receiving the diagnosis, Bobby and I strode right past denial, anger, bargaining, and depression and went straight to acceptance of Yonatan's condition. What we really wanted to figure out was how he was going to make his way in the world.

The answer to that question appears to be, “With difficulty.” Yonatan is spectacularly imaginative, awkward in his speech and movements, and very obviously intelligent. In short, he is the kind of kid who's just asking to be picked on. One of the early books I read on Asperger's Syndrome offered two hundred cheerful tips on raising children with the condition. But in the midst of the author's optimism and good humour, she reflected darkly on the school experience. School, she commented, was something that children with Asperger's Syndrome could only suffer through, not enjoy. The closest thing she could offer to a ray of hope was the observation that kids were only in school for a relatively short period of their lives, and then they could get on with the work of enjoying themselves. I was not impressed. I want Yonatan's school years to be something more than a misery that will eventually pass, and I'm sure all parents want the same for their own children.

We moved from a very small public school system with a vigorous anti-bullying programme in the United States to the South Australia network of public and private schools with an equally ambitious anti-bullying programme. From what I have seen, the anti-bullying resources here are excellent, and schools are dedicated to providing the safest school environment they can. My children's school is working hard to teach them to reconise the signs of bullying and know how to respond. Yonatan and Nadav are still a little fuzzy about what bullying is, but they know it's out there, and they're on the alert for it.

As I read the literature, as well as the handouts the kids bring home, it strikes me that our society has come to look at bullying in the same way as we view domestic violence. Experts assume that both are going to happen. The best we can hope for is that the victims of such attacks will recognise the signs and be brave enough to tell others what is happening. But lately, and especially since Yonatan's diagnosis, I have begun asking a big question: does there have to be bullying at all?

I put this question to Ken Rigby, a professor at the University of South Australia who is a leader in developing anti-bullying strategies. He echoed my suspicion that long ago there was an evolutionary benefit to weeding out those perceived to be smaller, weaker, or simply different. As well, and perhaps even more sinister, is that like-minded people form bonds with each other through the experience of picking on those seen as outside of their group. As we know, it is very difficult to shake off several million years of human behaviour. So we assume that bullying will always be with us, and we try to teach our children ways to cope with its existence.

There are few safer environments that I've seen for vulnerable children than at Yonatan's school Massada College. Because there are so few students, the teachers are able to keep a close watch, even at recess—that most challenging time for children who don't quite fit in. Yonatan has flourished at Massada College and has grown in wonderful ways. But even such a sheltered environment is not immune to the dangers of bullying. During the autumn term, Yonatan joined in an afterschool basketball programme that was directed by a young and inexperienced instructor provided by Active Australia. One week, the teacher led the kids through a throwing game: all the kids had to stand still around the court, and the child with the ball got to throw the ball at another student. If the ball made contact, the child who had been hit received one letter in a five-letter word. Once you got all five letters, you lost the game. One boy thought it would be very fun to throw the ball exclusively at Yonatan. Yonatan quickly racked up his five letters and was out of the game. The following week, the teacher had the kids play the game again, and this time all of the children threw their balls at Yonatan. Yonatan burst into tears each time the ball hit him, which apparently made the game even more entertaining for the other children.

Now, I know each of the children who were involved in the activity, and I have tremendous affection for all of them. As far as I can see, all of them come from caring families who are working hard to raise kids who will be kind to others and excellent citizens of the world. But on this one afternoon, they became a cruel mob. When I learned what had happened, I took the teacher aside and spoke to her in what I hope was a calm and reasonable manner. I pointed out her responsibility to bring the activity to an immediate halt, and particularly to hold up a mirror to the children and show them how they were behaving. For a few minutes, they had left their kind and caring natures behind. Instead, they had given into a primal temptation to connect with each other by tormenting someone outside of their group. Yonatan, thankfully, recovered fairly quickly from the episode. I haven't quite gotten there yet.

There are bullies in the Torah, and in many cases, they come out ahead. Early in the book of Genesis, God mysteriously accepts Abel's offering while rejecting that of his brother Cain. God apparently sees the rage lurking within the rejected brother and warns Cain that he still has the power to suppress his anger. Cain ignores the warning. He lures his brother into a field, murders him, and denies any knowledge of the deed. Cain's punishment is to wander, friendless, through the world for the rest of his life. But that doesn't bring Abel back to life.

Joseph, the favoured son of Jacob, seems to me to be the character in the Torah most likely to suffer from Asperger's Syndrome. This would explain his otherwise baffling decision to describe dreams to his elder brothers that infuriate them. After they have already reacted angrily to his first dream, in which eleven sheaves of wheat bow down to his superior sheaf, how could he possibly be so stupid as to share his next dream with them, in which eleven stars, the sun, and the moon all bow down to him? My guess is that he has absolutely no understanding of the impact that his words have upon them. How does Joseph fare? His brothers gang up on him, strip him of the beloved coat that his father gave him, throw him into a dry well, and then sell him to traveling merchants with the expectation that they'll never see him again and that, with luck, he might even die in slavery.

Alas, there is no truly happy ending to this tale. Joseph rises to a position of tremendous power in Egypt, and then makes use of his high station to torture his brothers. Having been bullied by them, he now seizes his opportunity to play the part of the bully and subjects them to two years of emotional torment. At long last, he reveals his identity to his brothers and appears somewhat perplexed that they are not absolutely delighted to discover it is him. The uncomfortable dynamics amongst the brothers remain to the end of their lives. When the patriarch Jacob dies a number of years later, Joseph's elder brothers are terrified that he will at long last exact vengeance on them for how they treated him as a boy. In this story, at least, a sense of healing and reconciliation appears difficult to find.

I return to the question I asked earlier in this talk: why do we accept that bullying is here to stay? Could there possibly be parents out there who encourage their children to be bullies? Ken Rigby believes this is occasionally true, since a few parents might believe there to be advantages that domineering personalities enjoy in our society. But at the same time, we are well aware of those who are so aggressive and abrasive that they are never able to fit in at all. These are the bullies who will grow into a life of spouse abuse and even child abuse, who will never find a way to conquer their anger and will wreak havoc on the lives of others. I propose that in this new year of 5768, bullies have outworn whatever usefulness they ever had. It is entirely possible for us to connect with one another without needing to victimise others as a way to accomplish that goal.

One story in the Torah where I do find inspiration is that of Jacob and Esau. In many ways, each is born to bully the other. Esau has overwhelming physical strength and ability that he can potentially use against his much weaker twin. But Jacob is intelligent and manipulative, and it is he who ends up coming out ahead again and again. Ultimately, Jacob and his mother conspire to make sure Jacob receives the powerful blessing his father Isaac had intended for Esau. Esau, the mighty hunter, swears vengeance, and Jacob flees for his life, never again to see his mother. Twenty years later, now a rich and powerful man, Jacob comes home and steels himself for a reunion with the brother who had once vowed to kill him. He is told that Esau is coming to meet him accompanied by 400 armed men, and he spends much of the night anticipating a battle to the death.

What happens next appears to me to be a very carefully-choreographed dance of reconciliation and forgiveness. Jacob approaches Esau and bows to the ground seven times. Esau then draws near, embraces his brother, and weeps. Jacob gazes at his brother for the first time in twenty years. In wonder, he exclaims, “Seeing your face is like seeing the face of God!” In that moment, he remembers what he had forgotten: the classic Jewish concept that we are all created in the image of God. In those rare moments when we are able to mirror this knowledge to others, transformation is possible. Here, the battle is averted, the brothers re-connected, and the physical and emotional violence of their childhood is left behind.

Professor Ken Rigby has done research in countries across the globe and made the discouraging discovery that bullying is ubiquitous in third world countries, in the developing world, and in the western world. He admits that he is pessimistic that human behaviour can be changed to the extent that bullying will ever cease to be a threat to childhood safety. But I believe change is possible. I wonder at what answers I might get were I to interview the children who ganged up on Yonatan that day at basketball. What did they learn about themselves? Can they now recognise the warning signs should they find themselves in a position to bully again? Would they act differently now were they to see another child being picked on?

These High Holy Days are a powerful affirmation that change is possible. We stand exposed before God and believe that with God's help, we can become better than we are. The struggle is not easy, but we believe it is well worth it. So perhaps, a little at a time, we may chip away at the bullying tendencies that lie hidden within each of us.

It is not long after the episode of the binding of Isaac that we read of the death of Abraham. It is an idyllic death, in which we are told that Abraham is gathered to his people at a good ripe age, old and satisfied. Perhaps the crowning moment to his death comes at his burial. We read that his sons Ishmael and Isaac bury him together. We can only hope that, as adults, they have looked back on the episodes of their childhood, laughed, forgiven, and are now prepared to live out the rest of their lives as loving brothers. So too may this new year be a time of transformation and reconciliation for all of us. Amen.