The Lonely Doll

Rabbi Margaret

One day when I was seven or eight years old I went down the street and knocked on the door of a neighbor girl, Janice.  Janice was my age, but we went to different schools.  She was a beautiful girl, with straight blond hair and a cool countenance.  I remember seeing the book The Lonely Doll, and on the cover was a picture of a porcelain doll that I thought looked like Janice.  She was an only child, which to me meant that she had a perfect life of ease and order.  And she was mean.

Janice met me at the door.  She said, “My mother says I have to play with everyone who comes to the door, so I guess you can come in.”  She brought me into her immaculate bedroom and told me to sit on the edge of the perfectly-made bed with the chenille bedspread with little balls on it.  There were shelves of dolls.   “Don’t touch anything” she said.  And she left the room and didn’t come back. 

Another time I went over there and she brought me into the kitchen.  She took a carton of milk out of the fridge and poured herself a glass.  (It didn’t occur to me until writing this just now that she never offered me a glass.)  And then she opened the freezer and took out an ice cube.  “Do you know what happens when you put ice in milk?” she asked me.  I shrugged as she dropped the cube into the glass. “”It explodes.  And you’d better go hide.”    I ran out the back door and hid under a hedge.

I’ve been thinking of Janice because we’ve been reading Psalm 27 every day.  And there is much talk in the psalm about enemies.  

בִּקְרֹ֤ב עָלַ֨י ׀ מְרֵעִים֮ לֶאֱכֹ֢ל אֶת־בְּשָׂ֫רִ֥י צָרַ֣י וְאֹיְבַ֣י לִ֑י הֵ֖מָּה כָשְׁל֣וּ וְנָפָֽלוּ׃ 

When evil men assail me

to devour my flesh—

it is they, my foes and my enemies,

who stumble and fall. 

אִם־תַּחֲנֶ֬ה עָלַ֨י ׀ מַחֲנֶה֮ לֹא־יִירָ֢א לִ֫בִּ֥י אִם־תָּק֣וּם עָ֭לַי מִלְחָמָ֑ה בְּ֝זֹ֗את אֲנִ֣י בוֹטֵֽחַ׃ 

Should an army besiege me,

my heart would have no fear;

should war beset me,

still would I be confident.

וְעַתָּ֨ה יָר֪וּם רֹאשִׁ֡י עַ֤ל אֹיְבַ֬י סְֽבִיבוֹתַ֗י

Now is my head high

over my enemies round about;

אַֽל־תִּ֭תְּנֵנִי בְּנֶ֣פֶשׁ צָרָ֑י כִּ֥י קָמוּ־בִ֥י עֵדֵי־שֶׁ֝֗קֶר וִיפֵ֥חַ חָמָֽס׃ 

Do not subject me to the will of my foes,

for false witnesses and unjust accusers

have appeared against me.

I don’t think that Janice was exactly my enemy, certainly not in the way that people in Ukraine, say, face enemies — but she certainly scared me and shamed me.  (In years to follow I learned that Janice’s life wasn’t the pleasure dome that I had thought it was by any means, and today I feel for the lonely doll that she probably was.)

Enemy is not a word I have ever been accustomed to using about my personal life.  But as a child and as a young adult I definitely felt like there were people who helped and people who hurt, people I felt safe around and welcomed and seen, and people around whom I did not.  

In our aliyah today in Ki Tavo we meet up with a bunch of curses.  They are to be recited as part of a ritual of entry when the people cross the Jordan river and enter Canaan.  On that day, Moses and the elders command the people, they should build an altar on Mount Eval of stones coated with plaster, on which they should inscribe “All the words of this Torah, well clarified.”  The talmud in tractate Sotah says that ‘Well-clarified” means translated into seventy languages!  Half the tribes were to stand on Mt. Eval, the other half on Mt. Gerizim.  The levites stood on Mt. Gerizim as well and cried out with twelve curses:  

“Cursed is the one who will:

Make a graven or molten image and emplace it in secret;

Move the boundary of one’s fellow;

Cause a blind person to go astray on the road;

Pervert the judgment of a proselyte, orphan or widow;

Lie with the wife of his father;

Lie with any animal;

Lie with his sister;

Lie with his mother-in-law;

Strike his fellow stealthily;

Take a bribe to kill an innocent person;

Not uphold the words of this Torah to perform them.”

Reading this list with Psalm 27 fresh in mind I thought: this is a pretty good description of an enemy: a person who has a secret and corrupt inner life, who tricks you, who leads you astray, who lets other people judge you for ill, who does not respect your boundaries and covenants, who is willing to do violence.  A person who acts in these ways is dangerous.  A person who would do any of these things does not have your best interests at heart.  

Part of being a child is that you are stuck with whoever is around, in your family, in your classroom, on your street.  You can’t choose to have different parents or sibs or relatives.  You can’t usually choose where you go to school or who will sit in the desk next to you.  You can’t choose your neighbors.  And so enemies can be close, and there is little you can do about it.  Reading these curses now I think with horror of the sexual violations that are implicit in some of them — not necessarily the specifics of having sex with your mother-in-law or whatever, but the lack of regard for other people’s relationships and commitments.  For children this kind of enmity is unthinkably horrible and accursed.

When I went to high school and especially later in college it was such a luxurious feeling to be around enough other human beings that I didn’t really have to relate very much to people that I didn’t like or who didn’t like me.  I could pick my friends and associates.  

But as I grew up and formed more of my own chosen relationships I sometimes still found myself connecting with someone who would move the boundaries or lead me astray on the road.  I was easily seduced by someone’s outer presentation, and sometimes I didn’t know until I was well along the road that I wasn’t walking in a good direction.  It’s also very possible that sometimes I was that person for someone else.  Part of being young, at least as I experienced youth, was that I didn’t have the discernment to know who was truly worth walking with on the road, whose boundaries were firm and had integrity.  It was something I had to learn. 

How do we learn to be far from enemies?  I think it has a lot to do with having good companions and teachers and parents — people who treat you in the opposite of the accursed way, who move with integrity, who keep clear boundaries, who are truthful and open and transparent.  But this is a tautology — you need to have good companions so that you can learn to have good companions.  

This is an important role, at best, for a shul or a church or a sangha or a mosque — to be the Mount Eval — to be a place which publicly articulates clear moral values.  Not hateful and divisive and exclusionary values but values of integrity and transparency and respect.  We are surrounded by religious leaders who espouse hateful values, and this makes it hard to see the importance of religious and cultural institutions espousing genuine moral values.  We have to learn how not to be enemies and not to be attracted to enemies.  It doesn’t always come naturally.  I don’t think that hearing communal norms announced from a mountaintop in a loud voice, or carving them into the mountainside, even in seventy languages, is enough.  The deep learning is in one’s own gut, feeling what it is like to be treated with respect and fairness and kindness.  And there are times, even outside of situations of war, when encounters with enemies are grievous and unavoidable.

But the public role is not nothing.  

I wonder what it might have been like for me as a child if I heard in the synagogue, or from my teachers, “Don’t let people humiliate you. You deserve to be treated kindly.  Anyone who doesn’t do that is not a friend.”  Would I have stayed for as long in Janice’s bedroom afraid to wrinkle the bedspread?  Would I have run and hid under the hedge? 

I was a lonely child, and sometimes I felt like playing with Janice was all that was available for me.   But mostly not.  I did have good friends and teachers and parents, enough that I did learn, over time, what it felt like to be well-loved and well-treated and, I hope, to treat others lovingly and well too.  

Some years ago I was talking with a friend who was at that time well into her eighties.  I remember her saying that by this time in her life she didn’t have any more bad relationships — she had either worked things out with people in her life or she had moved away from them.  I wonder and hope sometimes that one of the fruits of old age is that you don’t have enemies anymore.  You have the strength of character, the experience, the self-respect, to not go to someone’s house who will shame you or deceive you, that you won’t knock on their door.  And if you do, and they do, that you will walk away.  Your head will be high and your heart will be fearless.  

ה֤וֹרֵ֥נִי יְהֹוָ֗ה דַּ֫רְכֶּ֥ךָ וּ֭נְחֵנִי בְּאֹ֣רַח מִישׁ֑וֹר לְ֝מַ֗עַן שֽׁוֹרְרָֽי׃ 

Show me Your way, O LORD,

and lead me on a level path

because of my watchful foes. 

אַֽל־תִּ֭תְּנֵנִי בְּנֶ֣פֶשׁ צָרָ֑י כִּ֥י קָמוּ־בִ֥י עֵדֵי־שֶׁ֝֗קֶר וִיפֵ֥חַ חָמָֽס׃ 

Do not subject me to the will of my foes,

for false witnesses and unjust accusers

have appeared against me. 

לׅׄוּׅׄלֵׅ֗ׄאׅׄ הֶ֭אֱמַנְתִּי לִרְא֥וֹת בְּֽטוּב־יְהֹוָ֗ה בְּאֶ֣רֶץ חַיִּֽים׃ 

Had I not the assurance

that I would enjoy the goodness of the LORD

in the land of the living…

קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְ֫הֹוָ֥ה חֲ֭זַק וְיַאֲמֵ֣ץ לִבֶּ֑ךָ וְ֝קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְהֹוָֽה׃ {פ}

Look to the LORD;

be strong and of good courage!

O look to the LORD!