Like A Bird Out The Window

A Jew very much wanted to become a circus performer. One day, when the circus was in town, the Jew went and looked for the circus manager. “What do you want?” Asked the manager.

“I want to be in the circus,” answered the Jew.

“What is your talent?” The manager asked.

“I can be like a bird,” said the Jew.

“I don’t need anyone who can be like a bird,” said the manger.

“Okay,” said the Jew, and flew out the window.

I first heard that story at the Saban Theater, in Los Angeles. Yehonatan Indursky, the creator and writer of ‘Shtisel,’ sat with the cast of his runaway hit that told the story of an ultra-orthodox family in Jerusalem. After its unparalleled success on Israeli TV, the show was streamed on Netflix in 2019 and became known and loved around the world. The story of the Jew and the bird was Yehonatan Indursky’s explanation as to how he thought the secular actors had managed to capture the ultra-orthodox characters with such authenticity.

Somehow, everyone in attendance that night, including those who cannot fly like a bird, understood exactly what Indursky meant.

The Sunday, March 2, 2025, edition of the  New York Times Magazine featured an article by NYT contributor, David Bergner, about Indursky, describing his escape from, and recent return to, the ultra-orthodox world into which he was born in B’nai Brak, a town near Tel Aviv.

In his youth, Indursky attended the Penevezh Yeshiva, the crown jewel of ultra-orthodox educational institutes in Israel. Indursky rigorously studied the Talmud, seeking God in what could be the most seemingly pedantic and trivial matters in which the Talmud so often likes to engage.

Personal turmoil led Indursky to escape the Yeshiva and run away to Tel Aviv, seeking the help of an organization that took in young ultra-orthodox apostates. It was in Tel Aviv that Indursky first discovered his love for film. He names what he encountered in film “The spirituality inside the frames.” Film and Television were forbidden fruit in Indursky’s childhood world — secular, empty means to corrupt the God-seeking minds and souls of pious Jews. Instead, Indursky found that “…you can see the holiness in life through the camera.” An eye trained to find holiness in the mundane can end up discovering it in the most surprising places.

My teacher, Zen Master Dainin Katagiri Roshi, once said that, “there is a place where dancer and audience meet. Not on stage. Not in the seats of the theater — somewhere else – in another world.  This is not an imaginary place – it is real. If there were no such place there could be no ballet.”

This place, this meeting ground is crucial for any meaningful human interaction. As a performing artist I know this to be true. As a person of faith I know this to be true. I actually believe that all people know this to be true, even if they do not use this particular metaphor, have never met a Zen Master, and are not predisposed to poetry. The knowledge I speak of is implanted in all of us just as surely as our souls were at conception.

Many years ago, my brother-in-law, Gary, was dying a slow death of brain cancer at the Sloan Kettering Institute in New York. Gary was an intelligent, beautiful, adventurous, accomplished young man in the prime of his life and here he was wasting away in a hospital room.

A young woman appeared at the door and asked if she could come in. She was a Lutheran chaplain. Gary smiled and told her he was Jewish.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.

“No, no, please come in,” said Gary, “we don’t discriminate here – we are ecumenical.”

She looked at him and said, “I came here to see if I could offer you some help but I think you have something to offer me, instead.”

Gary beamed and said, “I have had a wonderful life and I’m surrounded with love. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Empathy. Empathy led the chaplain into Gary’s room to offer something comforting. Empathy was what drove Gary to shower kindness upon seeing the expression on the flustered young cleric’s face. Empathy is what allows us to connect with each other, even at seemingly unbridgeable moments. Empathy is what made the Jew fly out the window like a bird.

Empathy, according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, is “…the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is one way of accessing the meeting place my teacher was talking about.

When human beings cease to see the connection with each other’s humanity, the meeting place vanishes. From a secular point of view, humanity vanishes. From a religious point of view, God vanishes.

When the Kotzker Rebbe was still a student of Reb Simcha Bunim of Pshischa in early 19^th century Poland, his master asked him, “Menachem Mendel – where is God?”

“Everywhere,” answered the Kotzker.

“Menachem Mendel – where is God?” Reb Simcha Bunim repeated.

“Everywhere!” answered the Kotzker. “The entire earth is Filled…” (quoting Isaiah).

“Menachem Mendel – where is God?” asked Reb Simcha Bunim for the third time.

“Fine – I don’t know,” said the Kotzker, “tell me.”

“Wherever you let God in,” answered Reb Simcha Bunim.

Wherever I let God in, that’s where God is. Wherever I see the humanity in my fellow human being, that’s where humanity is. It is irrelevant, pointless, to speak of either God or humanity if I have ceased searching for them, if I make no room for them to exist.

Right now we are living through an empathy crisis, here and around the world: political discourse has been deteriorating gradually over the past thirty-odd years; different ethnic and cultural groups see each other as opponents – if not outright enemies. Social media has exacerbated the issue by keeping people at a virtual distance while amplifying the most belligerent opinions. But the root of the problem, I believe, is impatience and a myopic desire for quick fixes for complex issues. When we shut ourselves down; when we stop asking serious questions; when we fail to notice the suffering and misery of others, less fortunate than ourselves, empathy has no room to exist.

In a recent podcast, Elon Musk, President Trump’s current axe man, said, “The fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy.”

I want this to sink in.

Empathy, according to Musk, is our weakness. The trait we are commanded to develop in the Hebrew Bible, the very quality Christ invokes, one of the pillars of Islam, the cornerstone of Buddhism – empathy towards all sentient beings — is seen as a fundamental weakness by a man who, demonstrably, has none.

Empathy is not always easy. Empathy requires open eyes, open ears, open hearts, open minds, especially at inconvenient times. Empathy is not a sedative, nor is it the road to tranquility and comfort, but it is the road to salvation.

Without empathy civilization collapses. Without empathy human beings cannot survive – and not just the human beings we despise or choose to ignore – all human beings, because empathy is not only a moral imperative – it is a survival mechanism.

Empathy obliterates the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ narrative. Empathy reframes the  ‘either-or’ chasm across  which we always seem to find ourselves.  For Americans this means the abandonment of easy answers and the petulant demand for immediate satisfaction that always frames one group as totally right and the other as totally wrong.

And just like that I’m back with Yehonatan Indursky. David Bergner writes of Indursky wrestling with “a no-choice-war, a war compelling pity and warranting guilt but a war that reality forced on Israel.”

Indursky rejects any simple ‘either-or’ answers to the terrible war. “God,” says Indursky, “is in the contradictions.” God exists where empathy cracks the door open.

For Israelis and Palestinians this is about seeing the resolution to the conflict not in the obliteration of the other but in the affirmation of the other, even if reluctantly so. This is not about liking or agreeing with the other – just about seeing the other as human. Not at all easy after the horror both sides have endured at each other’s hand. The same goes for the way Israeli secular Jews and their religious siblings view each other.

Empathy will surely not solve every thorny, painful, complicated conflict we have around the world but without empathy we have no hope of even starting down the road to recovery.