Today was garbage day pickup in my neighborhood.
I drove down the street and saw two different neighbors taking out their trash.
Very pedestrian activity.
Very normal behavior.
I didn’t think much of it.
As I drove on - I had an epiphany.
These two people had something in common.
These two people are not just “regular” people.
Each of these people experienced great challenge in their lives and prevailed.
Each of these people were faced with very grim outcomes to their situations and they overcame nonetheless.
Sometimes during the course of those events they appeared surly or short tempered. But they were navigating harsh circumstances. They were sensitive to the comments made by others who did not understand the depth of the pain they were experiencing.
Yet they persevered and now were blissfully ignorant of my thoughts on their successes as they were engaged in the mundane activity of taking out the trash.
I know this about them because they happen to be my friends.
But if you did not know their story you would never know these are actually heroic individuals.
Just watching them take out their trash makes them seem so average because you just see a tiny fraction of who they truly are at their core.
But to me they are superheroes.
Hanoch Daum is an Israeli comedian. He plays to sold out crowds and writes books which are parodies on Israeli life.
That is who Hanoch Daum seems to be.
But there is much more than meets the eye.
Hanoch Daum has become the spokesperson of the Israeli man or woman about town.
In many of his posts he doesn’t focus on humor. Instead he tells the back story we would not know about a brave soldier who lost his life in service of our country. He will highlight the story of a soldier who has lost most of his livelihood as he has been at service and Hanoch will post about the soldiers business and ask the country to support him. Of he will highlight the greatness of our soldiers and pray we will merit their sacrifices.
Hanoch posted a picture today of an amputee. A man who lost his leg in combat.
The picture evokes sympathy. We feel so sorry for this young man and the loss of his limb and the reality that this disability will hamper him forever.
But then we read the soldier’s letter that Hanoch posts.
Hanoch shares the soldiers story. His name is Amit Brenner and he has created a speech about his situation called “A leg will not grow”. In his speech Amit shares that the unfortunate loss of his leg, the incident that has happened to him is just a tool. “The real message is about the day after. On how we choose to look at reality as a starting point and not as the end of the road, on appreciating the obvious and the resilience that each of us has inside - even when it seems everything has fallen apart.”
Amit Brenner seems to be a handicapped individual, but that is a very narrow view of who he is. Amit is actually a soaring spirit whose feet don’t touch the ground.
And Hanoch Daum is not simply a comic, he is a prophet of positivity, an elevated person who uses his platform to lift all in his orbit by seeing them for who they really are.

How funny life is - there is so much more to any situation than meets the eye. If we will only take the time to look.
This week the Torah portions are Tazria Metzora and they discuss the laws of speech. Speaking ill of another is an egregious sin and warrants two entire Torah portions dedicated to full disclosure on the topic.
Why do we speak badly of another?
Perhaps it is because we only focus on a small part of the person and don’t investigate to
access and understand the bigger picture which will shift our attitude in a positive direction.
In 1969 photographer Eddie Adams was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his photograph entitled Saigon Execution. The photo depicted the point blank
execution of a civilian by a soldier. The soldier who shot the civilian was vilified for his barbarism. However, it turned out as Paul Harvey would say, there was the rest of the story.
It turned out that the civilian was in fact a soldier wearing stolen civvies in order to escape his punishment. He had shot 34 civilians in cold blood and was not an innocent bystander.
There was much more to the incident than the still captured by the lens.
Eddie Adams apparently carried a great deal of guilt regarding this photograph.
He was wont to say that two people died that day, one killed by the shot of a gun and another “killed” by the shot taken by his camera.
Loshon Hara or slander and gossip is insidious. It is a single lens shot depicting the actions of a person. We are quick to judge another and often can come to inaccurate conclusions regarding what we think we see.
And then if we have shared that perspective of a persons shortcomings far and wide we can never repair the damage that has been done. With a few words, lives can be destroyed forever.
How can we change the tendency to speak ill of others?
Perhaps we can try to look at the bigger picture.
Maybe we can cast a positive eye on the situation.
If we can cast a positively positioned eye on someone, we can see the good the good in others.
That will uplift our opinion of them and ultimately our opinion of ourselves. After we speak badly of another we feel
yucky, (that is a technical term) and when we speak positively we feel uplifted, because we have connected to the best version of ourselves, the spark of Gdliness within.
The Talmud makes a suggestion to a man looking for a bride. The Rabbis say “find someone with beautiful eyes and that will
prove to be a good choice. That is who you should marry”.
This seems a strange piece of advice and somewhat superficial. Why are we being told to look for gorgeous eyes.
The suggestion is not to
look for physically attractive eyes but rather for eyes that are focusing on beauty. If you marry such a person whose sight is honed to look for the good in all they see, then life will be beautiful indeed.
We are surrounded by inspiring people. If we take the advice of the Torah and from Ethics of Our Fathers, we will extend the benefit of the doubt when we look at them. We will train ourselves to look beyond the surface and far deeper than what meets the eye.
We will consider that the grumpy neighbor is perhaps struggling with a financial crisis while still caring for an ailing parent and the crotchety worker may be a sleep deprived parent due to a crying infant. If we don’t judge so fast we may discover real greatness may be present just below the surface.
Your neighbor may look like a regular person taking out the trash but take a moment to imagine that there may be a super hero hiding behind the facade of the ordinary. Then take the time to discover who those neighbors are really.
How delightful it will be to uncover we actually live amongst greatness, in others and in ourselves.
That will eradicate any desire to gossip or speak ill. because greatness dwells among us.
The difference between being untied (disconnected) and united is where you put the I.
Let’s focus our I (eye) on the prize-the wonders of those we are privileged to know.
Chodesh Tov
Shabbat Shalom and so much love!