The Awkward Slider

“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” was the mantra I was taught in elementary school as a defense against verbal bullying.  Turns out, though, that name calling can actually hurt.  A lot.  And it can lead to much worse.

In a wonderful piece on Shedeur Sanders’s experience at the NFL draft pick last week, Wall Street Journal reporter Jason Gay explains how Sanders, who had begun the process “hyped as… maybe even the No. 1 pick,” became what Gay calls the “Awkward Slider.” As each team for one reason or another passed him by, Sanders was then repeatedly passed over by all the teams. Such a player “watches as his talent is reappraised and nibbled down to the point that nobody knows anything anymore about the Awkward Slider, except that he’s sliding down, down, down, down, and the vibe is lonely.”  This is how bullying and lashon hara, evil speech work.  (Lashon hara is the purported crime of the metzora, according to Rambam and others, in this week’s double-header Torah reading of Tazria-Metzora.)

Our language can deeply and actually hurt people — and can also quickly even devolve into actions.  This past week I was horrified to watch name-calling turn to physical violence in Crown Heights, as a number of religious Jews decided that a woman on the street was worthy of their criticism.  Even with police protection, the verbal derision became shoving, and even a traffic cone hurled at her head.  This is what name-calling leads to: sticks and stones.  It was terrible.  Is this who we are?  

Evil speech can snowball.  “With each snubbing, the Awkward Slider becomes more radioactive,” writes Jason Gay.  “Minor issues become major issues. Shortcomings become longcomings.  It reaches the point where it feels like vultures are circling.”  Indeed, the vultures did more than just circle in Crown Heights. 

But it need not be this way.

The back-to-back commemorations of Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’Atzmaut remind us that there are key values that all Jews share, far more than the values that divide us.  Israel’s President Isaac Herzog spoke passionately on Yom HaShoah last week, commenting that “if we were able to rise from the darkest abyss in human history—we will always succeed. Always… the journey will not be easy. But it will happen. There is only one condition. One alone: we must do it together.”

And he continued: “We are living through days of fierce and painful division… the overwhelming majority of our people cry out with all their might: Enough! Enough with the polarization. Enough with the hatred. History will not forgive those who act irresponsibly and tear us apart from within. History will not forgive those who weaken the foundations of our wonderful country—beloved, unique, Jewish and democratic—born from the ashes of the terrible Holocaust.”

May we learn from these mistakes and pass on values of kindness and inclusion to our kids.

Shabbat Shalom.