Rabbi's Corner

For those who were not able to join us for Courageous Conversations (or who did and would like to revisit it), here is what I shared tehre on April 29, 2025.

How Are You?

For those who don’t know me well, I should share that I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and called LA home until I was ordained as a Rabbi in 2019. 

My first three years as a Rabbi, however, were spent in Indianapolis, Indiana. 

Yeah. Culture shock. 

One of the things I noticed in my first months there was that the cashier at the grocery store check-out would always ask me, “How are you today?”

And I was expected to answer, and have a conversation with them.

You see, in California, when I went to check out at the grocery store, the cashier would ask, “Did you find everything you were looking for today?”

I would answer (truthfully or not), “Yep, thanks.” The transaction would then continue in silence until it was time for me to pay. One of us would say, “Have a great day,” the other would say, “You, too, thanks!” and I would leave.  The interaction would be perfectly polite, but brief. There would be minimal to no conversation. I would not be asked if I’d done anything fun over the weekend or whether my avocados, tomatoes, onions, and limes were destined to become guacamole. I would not be asked, “How are you today?”

It felt odd to my Californian ears, and perhaps a bit forced. Did they actually care how I was doing?

But the power of asking “How are you?” is actually quite deep, and ancient.

The Mishnah, the earliest Rabbinic work that records the Oral Law, describes a ritual that was to take place in the ancient Temple immediately prior to the Pilgrimage Festivals of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.  As you arrived, you would enter the courtyard and walk around it in a circle. If you were doing basically fine, you would walk your circle toward the right, counterclockwise. If you were not, you would instead turn left. This meant that those who were well and those who needed support would be encountering one another as they circled, face to face. 

When someone who was walking around the circle to the right encountered someone walking to the left, they were to ask, “Mah Lakh? How are you?”

And the response not permitted to be the polite-but-rarely-true, “I’m good, thanks, how are you?”

Instead, if you were walking around to the left, you were to answer honestly. 

“I am a mourner.”

“I am an outcast.” 

“Someone I love is very sick.”

“I am struggling at work.”

“I am feeling downtrodden and betrayed by the world.”

And the person who had paused from their circling to the right would look their fellow in the eyes and respond, “May the One who dwells in this Holy Place give your heart the ability to hear the words of your friends and community, and bring you close.” 

Over and over, folks were to engage in real conversation. Before the celebrations of the Festivals could commence, the community was to take the time to ask one another, “How are you?” and they were to mean it. 

How else could they then encounter the Divine as one community?

I often suspected that the cashiers of the Indianapolis grocery stores did not actually want an honest answer from me. I knew it for sure when, by 2022, no one even asked anymore.  In 2022, I could pretend it was about the pandemic. 

Today, I worry that it’s because there are so many differences and divisions between us that we’re terrified to ask anyone anything real, and even more scared to actually show anyone our hearts and enter into community and Divine Presence together. 

How many of us in the room right now would be circling that ancient courtyard to the left? How many of us, if we’re honest, recognize that those with whom we deeply disagree are also feeling anxious and alone and outcast, and that they, too, would be circling to the left?

Rabbi Sharon Brous, author of The Amen Effect, says that the spiritual crisis of our day is that we do not feel seen. We need to feel seen, to be recognized, to feel like a part of sacred community. But when no one is circling to the right, no one is looking us in the eyes and asking, “How are you?” 

But we still cannot fully enter into the House of the Divine Presence beyond the courtyard if we have not taken the time in the courtyard to see one another, to become a true, sacred community. In order to return to a bonded community, we need to stop walking in tighter and tighter circles in smaller and smaller places. We need to instead turn to one another and ask, “Mah lakh, How are you?”. 

Part of the wisdom in this ancient ritual is that circling the courtyard in different directions is indeed that everyone could see who needed support. But what most holds me right now is how the listener is to answer, and how that rebuilds trust.  “May the One who dwells in this Holy Place give your heart the ability to hear the words of your friends and community, and bring you close.” 

The listener acknowledges the pain in the other’s heart, and they become a vessel of blessing. They are to see someone holding pain, ask about it, listen to it, and not run away–even if it terrifies them, even if it brings up some of their own pain. And then, without judging even the excommunicated and outcasted person, they offer a blessing. Seeing the pain, they answer the prayer. Ah-men. Ameen. A-men.

And that blessing offers the opportunity for closeness and connection. It offers the community needed to celebrate the Festival. 

Tonight and in the days ahead, I want you to ask someone, “How are you?”. And if they answer with the pat “I’m good, thanks,” be prepared to ask them again, so that you can be the blessing they need: 

“How are you, really?”

May the One who dwells in this Holy Place give our hearts the ability to hear the words of our friends and our community, and bring us close.  May we have the courage to see one another’s pain, ask about it, and offer the blessing of community.

Ah-men. Ameen. A-men.

The original Mishnah is below: