“Come” is one of the seven basic commands in dog training. The command can be delivered by any word or gesture, but the message is unmistakable: Get your butt back here!
In Judaism, we have a similar call to attention, a kind of “come” command. It’s called Teshuva. Translated from the Hebrew Teshuva means “return.” During the just-completed High Holidays, the return “command” is heralded by the blast of a shofar (ram’s horn). Performed in chorus, it sounds roughly like a herd of moose calling distant kin in the Alaskan wilderness.
What we’re being called to return to is ourselves. Over the past year, we’ve strayed at times from our values. At certain crossroads, the needles to our moral compasses became demagnetized, fickle. In short, we’ve sinned.
Near the crescendo of my holiday observance — and ostensibly deep in repentance — my soul sprang a dark leak. I was walking my Boston terrier, Lilly, when a man and his scruffy terrier approached. As trained, Lilly sat on the sidewalk and shot me an expectant gaze. I doled out the usual shred of chicken she gets for behaving well with another dog.
As they drew closer, the man’s dog yapped hysterically. Lilly snarled. I steered her out of harm’s way. The man and his furiously yapping dog veered toward us.
“The best way to train your dog is to give her social opportunities,” the man huffed professorially. Uh-huh, inflated the thought bubble over my head. I can see how well that’s worked for you.
About face! Pick Lilly up! Get out of there! These would’ve been effective reactions to one of the unwanted encounters dog training manuals warn you about. But I stood firm as the man and his dog hurtled toward us like a pair of asteroids.
I stiff-armed the pair and yelled, “Stop!” They do.
“I’m only trying to help you,” the man scoffed. His dog spun in its tracks, yapping in earnest.
“Yeah? Clearly your dog is a paragon of politeness,” I spat. Lilly trembled. “And if he gets one step closer, my dog will nip yours and you’re gonna sue my ass!” With that, the man smirked and led his dog away.
There. It only took a small tantrum to beg his retreat. Wholly unnecessary — and injurious to each of us.
Today, it’s nearly impossible to avert our gaze from the literal and figurative storms battering our world. Hurricanes spawned by global warming cut vast swaths of destruction. Potential subverters of American democracy run for high office. A Russian autocrat illegally annexes territories seized from a sovereign nation and threatens to use nuclear weapons in a zero sum game.
Our world churns and boils. People everywhere gird their loins or pop Xanax just to walk outside. I don’t need to add to the torrent with indignant retorts. Bellicose gusts have a knack for gathering traction and speed as they whorl from one person to the next, binding us in chains of despair.
These’s an alternative Butterfly Effect — one in which the shofar splits the silence, calling my “return” to the stillness (and wisdom) that follows.
Should my professorial friend and his yapping pup breach our boundaries again, I’ll smile, whisk Lilly into an about face and trot spritely round the next corner.
Yes, Lilly, you did s-o-o-o-o good!
And daddy did better, too.
Teshuva!