What’s that smell? On sewage and responsibility

For 15 years I have given a talk on Yom Kippur about the moral lessons which can be learned from renovation and construction at my shul – Kol haNeshama. This year, I focused on the issue of responsibility, a topic which popped up when sewage water flooded the synagogue floor.

The flooding caused no little damage and no end was in sight. However, it quickly appeared that the source was in a sump pump which had given up the ghost. The members of the building committee whipped out their phones – while standing in the ever-widening pool and called the plumber who had installed the misbehaving pump. The man had generously handed over a warranty guaranteeing his responsibility when he had finished the installation.

But once called, the plumber kindly explained that he was not the responsible party. No, this wasn’t a plumbing issue; it was most probably an electrical problem. The plumber rather magnanimously handed us the phone number of the electrician who had done the electrical work. Luckily, he too had supplied us with a warranty.

The board members were glad that the responsible party had been found, as the sewage waters continued to rise.
The electrician was sleepy at first when we called. But he perked up pretty quickly after he understood what was afoot. “Sorry guys”, he responded, “but your problem is a plumbing issue, not an electric one. The plumber is the responsible party here.”

With the flood waters rising, we turned to the plumber, who quickly returned us to the electrician. Neither of them ever said that they were not in any way responsible. They just kept saying that the other one was more responsible. And so it went, round and round.

(At this point, things got a little heated when one of the board members asked who was responsible for hiring these two jokers in the first place. But that is a subject for a different talk.)

Finally, the issue of the pump got resolved when a handyman was called in, who quickly put the pump back into order. The flood waters quickly receded, and everyone went on their way.
Later, I sat with Shlomo, the community director, to figure out what we had learned from the incident. My take on it was that people who say they are responsible don’t seem to think that means they have to solve the problem their actions may have caused. They just pass the buck to someone who they think is even more responsible.

Shlomo thought I had missed the bigger picture, which he graciously explained. “You know, it could well be that someone else really is more responsible, or equally responsible, for causing what happened. But that really isn’t the point. The simple fact is that doesn’t get you, Michae,l off the hook.”

“ME?” I asked.

“Yes, you. If there’s a serious problem at hand, everyone is has a hand in fixing it. Pointing fingers and looking for guilty parties doen’t cut it: working on solutions does. When a crisis breaks, everyone must take part in dealing with them.

What Shlomo pointed out for us in the world of renovations and repair seems to be equally valid on a personal and communal level. This last year hasn’t been our finest, and there are no doubt many people who are responsible for what we are going through. Yet determining their guilt or blame doesn’t help
much. What they did or didn’t do doesn’t fix the problems they caused. And doen’t relieve us from our own personal obligation to aid in bringing things back to where they should be.

As Shlomo said: “Playing the blame game didn’t make the smell of sewage go away. Taking personal action did”.