The importance of being human

Have you noticed the signs that seem to be everywhere now? At the grocery store checkout counter. The doctor’s office. The airline gate. 

“We kindly ask that you treat our staff with respect.” 

“Verbal abuse and threatening behavior will not be tolerated.” 

Think about what it means that we need those signs.  A grocery store must post a laminated placard reminding us to treat the cashier with basic decency. A doctor’s office must remind us that the person behind the desk deserves not to be screamed at. An airline must announce that flight attendants are not acceptable targets for our frustration. 

We have lost something. Judaism has a name for it: derech eretz. 

Literally, derech eretz means “the way of the land,” but the phrase encompasses something larger: the basic standards of human conduct that make life together possible. Decency. Courtesy. Humility. The way we carry ourselves and treat other people, not because we agree with them, but simply because they are human beings. 

Upping the stakes, Jewish tradition makes a remarkable claim: Derech eretz kadmah laTorah. (Derech eretz comes before Torah). Interestingly, in the creation story, Genesis 3:24 reads that G-d placed a guard “to protect the way to the tree of life.” On the verse, a midrash in Vayikra Rabbah teaches that the way (in Hebrew derech) refers to derech eretz and the Tree of Life refers to Torah.  This means that in order to get to Torah, human decency is a pre-req. 

That teaching feels particularly urgent as we enter the Hebrew month of Cheshvan. We have just emerged from an extraordinary stretch of Jewish time: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Simchat Torah. And then comes Cheshvan. 

There are no Jewish holidays in Cheshvan other than Shabbat. No shofar. No sukkah. No elaborate rituals to tell us what to do next. After the spiritual intensity of the High Holy Day season, Judaism returns us to ordinary life. 

Perhaps that is precisely the point. 

The real test of the High Holy Days is not what happens while we are sitting in synagogue. It is what happens afterward: at the checkout counter, around the dinner table, in the comment section, at the school board meeting, when someone inconveniences us or when we encounter someone whose views we cannot understand. 

Pirkei Avot 5:7 describes a wise person as someone who, among many qualities, does not interrupt, considers before responding, asks thoughtful questions, admits when they do not know and acknowledges the truth even when it contradicts their own position. And then interestingly, the mishnah describes someone who lacks these qualities not as evil, but as a golem. Unfinished. Unformed. 

I find that hopeful. 

What is unfinished can still be formed. We can practice listening. We can become slower to react and quicker to ask questions. We can say, “I don’t know.” We can even say, “I was wrong.” We can remember that the person across from us is a human being before they are an opponent, an inconvenience or an obstacle. 

Cheshvan asks what becomes of all the promises we made during the High Holy Days when there is no holiday left to carry us. 

Maybe this quiet month is where the new year really begins. 

Our tradition understands that holiness is not reserved for those who know the most Torah, but those whose Torah makes them more human. 

That is not soft nor a weakness. It may be the hardest spiritual work there is. 

And Cheshvan, with nothing on the calendar but ordinary life, may be exactly the season for it. 

Rabbi Wendi Geffen is the senior rabbi of North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe.