Of Life and Limb, Stinky Messes, & Ki Tissa

The other day, my cell phone fell into a compost bin.

There’s a new composting program in New York City.

A few weeks ago, my husband noticed a compost bin on our corner!

I was so excited about it.

I want to get everyone in my building to learn to use it.

Among the many problems our building—and our city—has is lots of vermin.

It’s especially bad in the basement.

Tenants complain about how bad it stinks down there.

I’m pretty sure that reducing the amount of smelly garbage in the basement can help.

We have a Tenants Association, which has done amazing things for our building.

I’ve recently taken on a new role on the steering committee.

I and one of my steering committee mates have decided to make our new composting bin into a campaign—for the sake of our building and our city—and I guess the Earth, too?

So this bin: it’s not a regular black plastic bin, where you just lift the cover and rummage through a stinky mess.

No. This is a fancy, metal, bright orange, state-of-the-art-made-to-keep-all-sorts-of-vermin-out-and-humans-from-throwing-regular-garbage-in-bin.

You download the app, find the one closest to you, click “Unlock,” and it literally gives you the green light to open a very narrow slot—just in case it should occur to you to dump a huge bag of non-food “stuff” in there.

One by one, you throw in your small amounts of food waste.

The other day, I ran into a neighbor as I was leaving the house with my paper bag full of food scraps.

She was headed to the laundromat, and since we were headed in the same direction, I asked her if she wanted to learn how to use it.

She did!

After getting the green light, I carefully placed my phone on top of the bin—not in the rain water, but on the edge away from the water.

As I placed my first bag inside, my hand knocked the phone.

Like a movie in slow motion, we watched it as it fell to the dark depths below.

I freaked out.

We both freaked out.

After quite a bit of cursing and self-flagellation (or self-flatulation, if you want to go with the stinky metaphor) on my part for my incredible stupidity, we began frantically looking for solutions.

Were there phone numbers to call?

Yes.

But no one knew anything. No one could help.

We were lost in the stinky mess of New York City bureaucracy.

Eventually, however, a whole community of people rallied around my dropped phone in an effort to retrieve it.

We pulled, poked, prodded, with all kinds of implements, tried opening it—of course, to no avail.

The superintendent of our building, though, was the ultimate hero.

Despite many other responsibilities, he took the time to help me.

It took almost three hours, but he finally called a friend who also happens to be the supervisor for composting in Brooklyn!

Such incredible luck.

Within ten minutes of that phone call, the bin was open, and the phone returned to its owner (that’s me).

It was exhausting.

I kept having to remind myself in the midst of the panic that this was not a loss of human life, nor was it the loss of a limb—though I think most of us out there can relate to the feeling that it is—both our life and a limb.

The way we fetishize our phones is kind of an old story by now; many people rest them on their chests or bellies like a baby; panic sets in if we should leave it home alone…how will it survive without us?

We fetishize our phones in much the same way the Israelites fetishize the Golden Calf in this week’s Parsha; “Make us a god!” they yell at Aaron, “for we know not what has become of this Moses fellow; he’s taking too long coming down from that mountain yonder!”

So Aaron tells them to hand over their gold jewelry, he throws it into a fire and, abracadabra, out comes a calf made of gold.

Now they celebrate: dancing, eating, drinking.

At the heart of this fetish is a profound lack of faith—in God, but maybe more so even in humanity; it is Moses, their fearless hero, who brought them out of Egypt, that they complain about, not God.

God informs Moses, “You’d better hurry down!”

When Moses descends with the stone tablets—with laws inscribed in God’s own finger—and sees what has happened, he smashes them on the ground in a great fury.

How could the people betray his trust?

How could his own brother Aaron betray him?

Not only do the people have troubling trusting that Moses will return, where is Moses’ faith in his brother and the people?

Though Aaron gives a lame excuse for making a “god” for the people, can Moses not understand Aaron’s—or the people’s—anxiety?

Speaking of trust and faith, many tenants in my building feel hopeless and betrayed by our management company.

There’s a lot of cynicism around how much we can change things, and they’re right not to trust the company.

Little by little, services have been chipped away at slowly, much the way Roe v. Wade was—along with many other laws and services that have protected Americans over the decades—laws and protections we thought were written in stone!

At our Tenants Association meeting earlier in the week, a lot of people expressed this frustration, and lack of faith in our ability to make changes.

There was a lot of anger.

One tenant told me privately that she’s very cynical.

But lack of faith showed up even before the meeting.

We were putting flyers the meeting under doors, and I noticed and wondered aloud why we didn’t have enough copies for all the apartments.

“Oh, that’s because ‘so-and-so’ decided we shouldn’t bother inviting tenants who never come to meetings.”

I was taken aback; “Why would you give up on people? How do you know?”

At the meeting, when composting came up on the agenda, I pushed for it and our ability to make a difference together in this small way.

I was shocked to get a huge negative shout out from one person on the steering committee: “It will not make a difference!”

In spite of the anger and cynicism, all these people showed up; they can’t have completely lost faith in humanity.

And the nay-sayer about the compost; she’s fighting for our building, though she seems to believe every human we have to interact with is evil.

And me and my phone?

Honestly, the truth is that the whole time my neighbors and superintendent—this whole team of people—were putting their heads together to help me get it back, I was already coming up with solutions for a phone lost forever to a stinky mess.

But these people, who could all relate to the loss of a phone as if it were a life or limb, never gave up, while I was ready to do that.

It was amazing to me that they kept saying, with such assuredness, “We’re gonna get it back.”

Where was my faith in the humans trying to help me?

When Moses throws and smashes the tablets, he’s shown that he’s lost faith in his people.

Though God is irate as well, he sends Moses back to carve a new set.

As angry as God is, God has not given up on his people; this is God’s message by having Moses make a new set of tablets.

We underestimate the willingness of others to help—and also our ability to make change happen, despite seemingly insurmountable powers.

The people of Israel are not giving up; their protests against the Prime Minister’s efforts to overhaul the judicial system for his own advantage and control are loud and clear—and truly an example to us.

Not just day after day, but week after week, they haven’t stopped!

It’s funny that the question people kept asking me after I told them about my phone was, “Was it stinky after being in the compost bin?”

No, actually, it wasn’t.

I know that compost has to rot in order to offer nourishment for plants to grow, but the stink is part of the process.

That’s where we are now.

So let’s put our cynicism aside, and see what we can do—each in our little, or big, way.

And say Amen.