Compassion in a Field of Dreams
Shabbat Va’etchanan/Nachamu 5782
I don’t know how many of you saw the Field of Dreams ballgame yesterday. The idea comes from a classic film of that name from 1989, starring Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster and Ray Liotta, which was in turn based on the 1982 novel Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. It’s a fantasy sports movie in which an Iowa farmer memorably plows up his cornfields because, a bat kol, a mystical divine voice tells him, “If you build it, he will come.” The “he” in this story is not God or the messiah, but Shoeless Joe Jackson, a baseball great banned from the game for gambling and throwing the World Series at the height of his talent and fame. The farmer does build it, against reason and economics, and Shoeless Joe and other long-dead ballplayers emerge and play on that field.
After “Field of Dreams” became a sports film classic, the owners of the Iowa farm where the field was built replanted the corn, while the owners of the farmhouse kept it as a draw for tourists and sold them souvenirs. Niles brought me a t-shirt back from there this summer, knowing our shared love of baseball. And so things remained for about 20 years; farms, with one farmhouse selling Field of Dreams’ souvenirs.
Then, about 10 years ago, the new purchasers of the farm where Hollywood shot much of the movie plowed under some of the corn and built a baseball stadium, framed by real cornfields, in Dyersville, Iowa. Last year Major League baseball, which traffics in nostalgia as much as competition, produced the first Field of Dreams game, a regular season major league contest which naturally ended on a dramatic 9th inning game-winning home run into the surrounding cornfield. Last night they repeated the game, with different teams playing; the game wasn’t quite as amazing as last year’s edition, but it was fun to watch, and captured the same magical feel of the original game, and of course the movie. The Cubs, who are bad this year, beat the Reds, who are worse this year, but that didn’t actually matter at all; it was fun watching them in old-timey uniforms playing with a barn and farmhouse as a backdrop and all those rustling stalks of corn behind them.
Never mind the fact that only 2% of Americans actually work on farms these days. The feeling was that this is how it all began, that this was the pure, original game created on fields in the heartland that links the generations of our nation together. It was captured beautifully in those images.
Like other obsessed baseball fans, in preparation for the Field of Dreams game, I rewatched the Field of Dreams movie earlier this week. The movie has held up well, the magical, mysterious, magisterial voice intoning, “If you build it, he will come”; it still works.
There is in the film version of Field of Dreams a neo-Biblical quality. A divine, magical voice out of nowhere directs a simple human being in an Abrahamic way to do something no one in his right mind should be expected to do. And then, when the guy does it, it all works out in ways no one could have anticipated. Very much like Genesis and Exodus, really.
But watching the film again, I was struck by the second command the voice gives in the movie. It tells the protagonist, Ray, to “Ease his pain.” He doesn’t, at first, know whose pain he is to ease. He doesn’t even know when or where he will find that person. But again, he is led against logic and economics to set out on a mission to do just that, to ease the pain of another human being by helping him fulfill his own lost dream. He is compelled by a superior power, or perhaps merely by a superior suggestion, to go out and do something directly to help a person who is suffering. He is supposed to ease another’s pain.
My friends, this Sabbath is called Shabbat Nachamu, which means the Sabbath of Consolation, and it always follows Tisha B’Av, the commemoration of the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, as well as other days of great national tragedy for Jews. The name for this Sabbath comes from the Haftarah chanted tomorrow morning, taken from the writings of the great prophet Second Isaiah, that begins with the words, Nachamu nachamu, ami—literally, “Be comforted, be comforted My people, says your God.” Second Isaiah will supply all the Haftarot, the prophetic readings, for each Shabbat between now and Rosh HaShanah, over the next seven weeks, and every message is one of support and comfort for a people who has seen too much tragedy.
For historical, literary, and spiritual purposes, it’s worth noting that the reason we call this prophet Second Isaiah is that he taught and prophesied after the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians, which took place in 586 BCE. First Isaiah, author of the first 39 chapters of the book of the Bible called “Isaiah,” did his own preaching some 125 years earlier, when Assyria destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel and then threatened the southern Israelite kingdom of Judah.
In truth, we don’t know the name of this prophet we call Second Isaiah, and the fact that his own poetic prophecy was included by the editors of the Bible with his earlier predecessor’s made it simpler to just call it all “Isaiah.” Both were great writers and created beautiful, evocative poems on important Jewish religious themes. But First Isaiah, or more realistically just “Isaiah,” was much more likely to preach about the coming deserved destruction of the sinful Israelite nation in the hope of bringing about reform and return to God and ethics, teshuvah, by the Jews of his era before punishment would be exacted.
Second Isaiah, whatever his actual name, came along at a very different time. His goal was something else: consoling a defeated nation of exiles whose homeland and temple had been totally destroyed. These ancestors of ours had experienced great tragedy and were on the verge of collective deep depression. That national misery, that absolute discouragement could easily have led to the disappearance of Judaism and the end of the nation of Israel forever. It was Second Isaiah’s calling to help our people find hope at a time of despondency. That he was effective in this work is testified to by the fact that we still chant his verses today, that his messages still bring hope and meaning in times of personal and national darkness.
Second Isaiah provides a powerful lesson in the fact that not all prophets are Cassandras preaching destruction or the end of the world to an unrepentant people. Some—admittedly just a few—bring something quite different. Second Isaiah is the prince among these prophets: in place of condemnation, he brings consolation; in place of censure, solace. In place of harshness, he brings hope.
One of the most beautiful phrases in Hebrew is the one that signifies compassion. It is used throughout the Bible, and it is here at the beginning of our Haftarah of Consolation on this Shabbat of Consolation: Dabru al Lev Yerushalayim, it reads, literally, “speak to the heart of Jerusalem.” Now, remember Jerusalem is destroyed at this point; the city is being used as a representation of the entire remaining peoplehood of Israel, the Jews. That idiom, “speak to the heart,” is meant to convey comfort and understanding. It is employed in a variety of places throughout the Tanakh, in which “speaking to the heart” expresses a connection that creates comfort. And it teaches a beautiful lesson.
At times of loss and destruction, how are we able to bring consolation? The answer comes from that phrase, “speaking to the heart,” vayidaber al lev. It means, essentially, connecting and conveying compassion and care. It means letting someone we care about know that they are not alone, that their hearts are not suffering in isolation.
What is compassion, then? Is it simply empathy, making it clear that none of us is truly alone, helping a sufferer to feel cared about? Or can it be even more?
Five years ago, during a trip to the Himalayas in northern India, I had the privilege of meeting the Dalai Lama. While I heard him speak for a number of hours, his essential message was then, as it has been throughout his long and extraordinary career, about compassion. According to the Dalai Lama, compassion is the highest form of human action, the greatest goal for any sentient being. He has put it this way: "Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive… The whole purpose of religion is to facilitate love and compassion… Love and compassion are the true religions... Compassion and happiness are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength… If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
Compassion, at its heart, is active. It is more than simple empathy: it is taking action to relieve the suffering of others. It is an ethical imperative to try to improve the situation, to try to fix the wrongs that cause the suffering. In the words of that first Isaiah in last week’s Haftarah, compassion should motivate us to “Seek justice; relieve the oppressed; uphold the orphan’s rights; take up the widow’s cause.” It is a powerful message: we can heal another’s pain not only by sitting with him or her or sharing that pain, but by working to change the injustices and inequities that cause that pain.
In Judaism, the concept of compassion is deeply connected with doing mitzvot, actively trying to fix the wrongs that cause sorrow. We offer caring and hope, but our most effective means to console, to bring comfort, is not simply emotional or even personal. It lies in the imperative to work to right the wrongs that caused such damage in the first place. This, of course, can take many forms. One of them might be to ease the pain of others—you know, to “ease his pain.”
It can be something as simple as bringing peanut butter to a food bank so parents can make sandwiches for their hungry children. It can be fixing a broken sink for a neighbor or paying a bill they can’t afford. It might be going to a hospital to visit a friend who is ill and lonely and offering a prayer for healing. It could be seeing someone in hospice, and easing their course out of their terminal illness by assuring them that they can go. It can be cooking a meal for someone who can’t do it for themselves.
It might be counseling a lost soul, holding the hand of a person struggling with fear, helping rebuild another’s weakened will.
It might be something joyful, like celebrating with a couple who have found love and companionship and happiness, ending their separateness in simcha.
Compassion includes passion, which implies, in fact insists upon action: helping, doing, actively easing that pain, bringing not only solace but solutions.
On this Shabbat Nachamu, may our goal be not only to hear other people’s pain, not just to sympathize and show care—but to help others ease their own pain. And then, perhaps, all of our dreams may become more real.