YOU CAN’T UNSEE WHAT YOU’VE SEEN

A Hasidic Tale

Twelve years ago, on May 18, 2008, I made a new friend. I’ll call him Uri. At that time Uri was a thirty-something Hasidic Jew (known as the “Ultra Orthodox”)—a more conservative sub-group of the Orthodox. The Hasidim have a tenuous relationship with military service. Most Hasidic men find ways to be exempt from active duty. Uri, however, voluntarily signed up for a three-year stint with the Israeli Defense Force (the IDF)—Israel’s army.

Uri offered to carry out the gruesome responsibility that he termed “body duty.” This role was first explained to me by my father, a medic in WWII, who seldom talked about his military experiences. But he did tell us about the worst job given to men who served as medics: my dad called it “garbage duty.” While this term sounds derogatory, my dad was applying it descriptively, using the stark and sometimes vulgar language of war.

A Medic’s Story

The task was to pick up the body pieces of soldiers killed in action. My dad’s words: “The only way we could survive this duty was to think of it in the same way as we would think of picking up garbage, NOT because this is how we saw these men”—and tears filled his eyes—“but because we had to be able to remove our minds from what it was we were actually doing, what it was we were holding in our hands.”

Every body part, no matter how small, Dad said, was to be “saved” and sent back home to the family.  Dad explained that he hated this duty more than any other, that he never volunteered for it but was often assigned this task because no one volunteered for this task. It was just too painful.

(Note: I could find no other source that referred to this as “garbage duty.” I don’t know if this was only my dad’s phrase or in use by others. I do know that dad meant no disrespect, especially not to the dead soldiers he was caring for.)

Uri volunteered for this duty for this reason: “For us [Jewish people], every piece of a person is valued and must be preserved for burial if possible.”

The Story Gets Real—Real Fast

While Uri was serving in the IDF, an incursion was launched into the city of Jenin, a Palestinian city located deep in the West Bank. This invasion happened during the Second Intifata (“Uprising” from 2000 to 2006). As a result of the IDF’s assault on the people of Jenin, a five-year-old Palestinian girl was killed—“blown up,” Uri said. Soldiers of the Israeli army recovered her body. Uri, specifically, recovered her body, every piece of it that he could find. Then he was given the responsibility of delivering this little girl’s body to her family.  

“I carried the body like this,” he said, holding his arms to demonstrate the cradling of her body into his chest. “I carried her to her mother, and I put this tiny soul into this woman’s arms. As I did, I looked into her eyes, and on that day, something changed in me that will never change back. I saw in her eyes the same suffering that I’ve seen in the eyes of Jewish mothers, and I knew that no matter what we are told about Palestinians being different from us—having no heart, no feelings like we do—that the truth is that they are not different from us. They are the same. They feel pain as we do.”  

He went on to share that he had to return children’s bodies many times, and each time it was the same. Each time he saw the same look in the eyes of the mothers, and it was a look that he came to know well.

His Side of the Story

He also talked of collecting body parts dispersed by bus bombings in Jerusalem and delivering those sacred remnants to Jewish mothers. Again he said, “I could not see any difference in the eyes of our mothers than I saw in the eyes of their mothers. They may be my enemies, I don’t know, but they are not different from us.”

Our Side of the Story

For the past fifteen years my wife Sally and I, now along with our son Josh, have engaged with a variety of like-minded activists in a ministry of reconciliation. Foundational to any work that seeks to bring people together is this basic truth: whereas some people experience discrimination and injustice at levels many others do not, everyone responds to suffering in the same way— with pain!

Our friend Uri reflected, “You know, we Jews, we have suffered. We have centuries of suffering in our DNA. Jews have pogroms and the Holocaust buried deep in our very bones. And what happens here in this place [Israel/Palestine] is that we see the suffering of the Palestinian people, suffering that we have caused, that we are responsible for, and we say, ‘Yes, of course they suffer. But not like we have suffered.’ And we think we can dismiss their suffering because our suffering was worse, much worse maybe.”

His Pain in His People’s Story

Uri makes this argument because he passionately wants to help us understand him and his people—and we try. “What changed in me on that day in Janin,” Uri notes, “was the realization that this is true, and yet, this is not true. This is NOT true. Maybe they have not suffered as much as we Jews. Maybe nobody has suffered as much as we Jews. This is what I think. This is what we think. Nobody has suffered like us.” Then he paused to gather himself, collect himself. He breathed out a deep sigh, and said, “But they suffer too, and in this suffering, we are the same.”

Uri concluded with this sad note: “I don’t have much hope for peace in my lifetime. But I know that our only hope for peace is to be able to look into the eyes of our enemy and see there the one link we share with them, and it is the most important one, I think. We suffer alike. In our pain we are one with them and they are one with us. If we can both see this, then maybe we can both see that we are not so different, and then maybe we will stop making each other suffer. Maybe.” With that “maybe,” Uri shrugged the shrug common to both Jew and Arab, the shrug that says, “I don’t know what else to say.”

Neither did I, then.

A Blind Man Enters the Story

Now, today, I respond with John 9:40-41. These verses come after Jesus has restored sight to a man born blind. It’s a long story and you can read it for yourself if you like, but at its core are conversations in the local synagogue between the now sighted man and the religious leaders. Eventually, the writer of John informs us that they kicked the man out. Why? These leaders wanted him to unsee what he had seen with his own eyes. I know, it’s a little convoluted, but it’s John, so . . .

Jesus, of course, hears about the expulsion, seeks the man out, and proceeds to identify himself (Jesus) as the “Son of Man”—a reference to being the Messiah. “Who is he, sir?” the man asks Jesus. “You have seen him,” Jesus says. John’s Jesus often makes me smile.

Judgment Enters the Story

Then Jesus talks of having come for judgment so “that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind” (v 39). John’s Jesus also makes me worry.

It is then that the religious leaders re-enter for the final act of this drama. “Surely we are not blind, are we?” It’s not just a question, it’s the question—it’s our question. Jesus answers: “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

And what is the sin of these religious folks? Here is what I think. Like so many of us, these good, synagogue-going, righteous people can’t see that the “other” is a brother (or sister). The gatekeepers of the synagogue cannot bring themselves to accept the fact that this feisty man who was born blind is one of them, and that, in fact, he was always one of them. Their sin is seeing him as a sinner because of who and what he is—a man born blind. In Jesus’ day, people with disabilities were the ultimate “other.” How could anyone not see that the man born blind was NOT like them?

And of course, you can’t unsee what you’ve seen, right?

The “Other” Enters the Story

So then I think about people with disabilities and I think about people who are gay and I think about people of color and others who might be the “other”—and I worry about judgment. I think about the poor and the oppressed and immigrants, and again, I worry about judgment. (I worry a lot—just ask my kids and grandkids.)

What I worry about is that we who perceive ourselves as NOT the “other” only see what we have been programmed to see, and we can’t unsee these prejudices, these awful, ugly lies. You see, it is not that we see the “other” as NOT like us—it’s far worst than that. We don’t see that in those matters that matter—like matters of loss—we are all the same. We hurt. The “other” hurts. And often, it is we—the righteous, church-going “normal” ones—who cause the “other” pain.

We drive them out! God help us—why can’t we see that?

The End of the Story—and a Beginning, Maybe

We do see this, don’t we? The tears we cause—we see them, right? We should remember this: God collects them! (Psalm 56:8)

In the story of the blind man, Jesus might be saying to his religious friends (and they were his friends)—you are hurting this man. And you know you are hurting this man. If you were blind to the pain you are causing, then you would have no sin. But you yourselves say that “you see,” so then, your sin remains.

Uri could not unsee what he’d seen. In the eyes of his enemies, he saw pain that he and his people were responsible for, and he could not ignore that fact. All his life he’d been taught that he and his people—the Jewish people—were different, set apart, chosen, not like other groups. Certainly they were not like the Palestinian people, people they referred to as “animals.” Then his eyes were opened, and he saw that none of this was fundamentally true. The truth is that he and his people were no different than the rest of humanity, and this included the Palestinian people. What made them the same—was pain!

Can you see?