Delivered Shabbos Chol Hamoed Pesach 5777 at Congregation Shaare Tefilla, Dallas, TX
“Sit back, relax and enjoy your fight.”
“Southwest: We beat the competition, not you.”
“Enjoy your complimentary copy of SkyMaul.”
These are just a few of the hilarious tweets, memes and facebook postings that erupted in the aftermath of 69 year old Dr. David Dao being dragged from the United flight from Chicago to Louisville, and United Airlines’ epically awful handling of the situation. It would be hard to think of a worse PR debacle than this one, and this in a week where there were several noteworthy competitors. For those living under a rock, the indisputable facts are as follows: United Airlines needed four crew members to be in Louisville so that a flight the next day would not have to be cancelled. After offering an escalating amount to anyone willing to give up their seats and finding no takers, four passengers were selected for removal from a flight departing Chicago to Louisville. Three of the four passengers left without incident, but the fourth, a 69 year old physician named David Dao, refused to leave, claiming that he had to be an an operating theater at 8 AM the following morning. After an exchange in which Dao firmly refused to leave and told United agents they would have to do so bodily, the agents took his suggestion. The viral video of the incident shows passengers screaming at the United officials that what they were doing was wrong; according to Dao’s attorney, he sustained a broken nose, two broken front teeth and a concussion, creating traumas worse than the suffering he endured upon leaving Vietnam. In his horrendous initial press release, United CEO Oscar Munoz asserted that Dr. Dao had been belligerent and uncooperative, and had to be “re-accommodated.” Legal scholars have weighed in on whether United Airlines had a legal right to remove Dao from the plane, and whether this kind of behavior comports with the fine print in United’s Contract of Carriage. Talking heads have commented ad nauseum about the disastrous PR effort of United, whose stock price plunged after the incident. In just a few days, as Yom Tov ends, thousands and thousands of our fellow yidden will return home via the ring of hell that has become modern air travel. Knowing our fellow Jews, they will no doubt contribute to the awfulness of the experience. So this morning, I’d like to ask a simple question. What can we, as Jews in 5777, learn from this incident?
This morning, we read the book of Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs. In the Mishna in tractate Yadaim, Rabbi Akiva states that if all the books in the Tanach are holy, Shir Hashirim is kodesh kodashim, the holiest of all holy books. This seems like a strange description for a book that reads, at its most simple level, like an exceedingly racy and overwrought romance novel. What is it about Shir Hashirim that makes it so holy? An answer may be found in a reinterpretation by the Midrash of a recurring name throughout the book- the name Shlomo. When the book opens שיר השירים אשר לשלמה, the standard translation is The Song of Songs composed by Solomon. Since Shlomo composed several poetic works, such as Kohelet and Mishlei, it describes this song as the crowning achievement of them all. But the Medrash does not see this name as a noun but rather as an adjective, referring to מלך שהשלום שלו, to God himself, the One who possesses peace. We often refer to God in this way. In the mornings, we pray that that God שים שלום טובה וברכה,that He place peace, goodness and blessing upon us and all of Israel His people. In the afternoons and evenings according to Nussach Ashkenaz, we say- שלום רב על ישראל עמך תשים לעולם כי אתה הוא מלך אדון לכל השלום- place multitudinous peace upon your nation forever, for You are the King who is the master of peace. In manuscripts of Siddurim from Provence, this was the text used for the Shemonah Esrei in all three daily prayers. This Midrashic reading of the name Shlomo as a shem kodesh, as another name for God, bolsters the characterization of this book as one possessed of extreme holiness. But if the name Shlomo refers to God- if it is a shem kodesh, a name of holiness-why not just say God’s name? I will admit that I am heavily invested in the answer to this question, as a proud parent of Avraham Shlomo Rackovsky. Does this mean that if I say Avremi’s full name in exasperation whenever he pulls all the pots and pans out of the cupboard, I am taking the Lord’s name in vain? I’d violate that several times a day!
I’d like to suggest that there is a deeper lesson to be learned here from the ambiguous identity of Shlomo in Shir Hashirim. In blurring the true Shlomo, it is possible that studying the traits of the corporeal Shlomo can lead us to emulate those ascribed to the melech sheHashalom shelo, the Eternal King who possesses peace. King Solomon’s surpassing wisdom was dedicated to arriving at creative solutions to problems in which both parties were intractably convinced of their correctness and rectitude. Most famously, it was used to solve an ugly dispute over the maternity of a certain child, recounted in the third chapter of the first book of Kings. In that incident, one woman of ill repute accused another of kidnapping her baby after having suffocated her own through cosleeping, an accusation the other vehemently disputed. After deliberation, King Solomon announced his verdict: To cut the baby in half and give half to each woman- a verdict that prompted the actual mother to beg Shlomo to hand the baby to the other women and spare its life. How did Shlomo do this? Some of it was ingenuity, but much of it was his ability to get each side to understand that it is possible to be right, and not to be in the right. If each side stands on ceremony, if every person asserts principle and refuses to back down or budge, it leads to the escalation of conflict- in institutions, in families, in professional interactions and in marriages- even if each side has excellent reasons for holding the positions they do. I think this was the problem with the United flight- on all sides. United adhered slavishly to their self serving and insanely tone deaf interpretation of an opaque and murky set of rules, letting fine print overrule fine behavior, and they lost- in the form of execrable PR, plummeting stock prices and viral vituperation. Dr. Dao refused to budge, even if he was within his rights not to. Despite the outpouring of public support, he lost too- in the form of significant physical injury, compromised dignity and the uncovering of a sordid past he thought he could keep under wraps; several news sources pointed out that Dr. Dao had a checkered past, including six felony convictions in 2004 that led to the suspension of his medical licence, only recently reinstated under extremely limited conditions. All this could have been avoided if United had tried other ways. For example, it is about a 5 hour drive from Chicago to Louisville; United could have driven the crew members there. I know that airlines do this, because we once waited three hours for a pilot to drive from Peoria to Chicago when a pilot timed out on one of our flights. Or they could have tried to find space on another airline- you know, the airlines everybody will now fly instead of United. This is not to say that there is never a time to take a stand, and that peace means, by definition, avoiding conflict and compromising principles. Sometimes, we have to take a stand and fight for what what is important. In the Shir Hashirim itself, Shlomo’s bedchamber is described as a heavily guarded room, containing a bed surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards at all times.
“הִנֵּה, מִטָּתוֹ שֶׁלִּשְׁלֹמֹה–שִׁשִּׁים גִּבֹּרִים, סָבִיב לָהּ: מִגִּבֹּרֵי, יִשְׂרָאֵל. כֻּלָּם אֲחֻזֵי חֶרֶב, מְלֻמְּדֵי מִלְחָמָה; אִישׁ חַרְבּוֹ עַל-יְרֵכוֹ, מִפַּחַד בַּלֵּילוֹת”
The bed is surrounded by sixty trained warriors, brandishing swords on their thighs to fight terror in the night. Sometimes, it is time to fight. Maybe the passengers could have been more vociferous in their condemnation of the thuggery of the airline officials; perhaps they should have linked hands in a gesture of civil disobedience, or all marched off the plane at once. It is easy to judge the behavior on all sides as armchair moralists when we don’t know how we would behave if we were to be placed in the same scenario. But the challenge to us is in which direction we are oriented. Do you know what the Medrash Tanchuma says about those sixty warriors surrounding Shlomo’s bed? Those are the sixty letters of the ברכת כהנים, the priestly blessing. This is why we recite that verse in the Shema prayer before we go to bed, and then we Birkat Kohanim. And how does the Birkat Kohanim end? That’s right- וישם לך שלום, that God should grant us peace. Even when we take a stand, achieving a peaceful resolution is what should inform our behavior. As Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm put it in a speech on Shabbos Chol Hamoed Pesach in 1966,
Even in the modern day, when some people preach “peace at any price,” we maintain that there are times when war is justified, when in order to preserve human dignity we must take up arms; and nevertheless we continue to teach: never, never must we relinquish our fervent hopes and striving for peace throughout the world.
Our challenge is to follow the human Shlomo to connect with the ultimate Shlomo. In all of our interactions, in all of our relationships, we need to be open to possibilities beyond the views we hold on to without compromise. We can solve problems creatively, or create more of the same problems. We can be intractably principled or intelligently peaceful. We can choose to be right, or we can choose to be in the right. Let us make the choice that speaks wisdom, creativity and peace.
shaarerabbi 