לֹא־תִרְאֶה֩ אֶת־חֲמ֨וֹר אָחִ֜יךָ א֤וֹ שׁוֹרוֹ֙ נֹפְלִ֣ים בַּדֶּ֔רֶךְ וְהִתְעַלַּמְתָּ֖ מֵהֶ֑ם הָקֵ֥ם תָּקִ֖ים עִמּֽוֹ׃
If you see your fellow Israelite’s ass or ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it; you must raise it together with him (Deuteronomy 22:4).
I want to think through this mitzvah of raising up in relation not just to physical falling, but also to our frequent emotional “falling” on the “road” of life.
Part I: What Does it Mean to Fall?
Noflim baderekh, the Torah says. “Falling on the way.” What does it mean to be “falling” emotionally? Consider the following sources:
(1) The parallel to this mitzvah in Shmot (Exodus 21:33) refers to an animal that is falling down under the weight of its burdens. This is one type of falling which we experience, feeling so weighed down by our burdens, by the false beliefs and baggage and expectations placed on us by our families, legacies and culture, that we fall along our journey because it is all just too heavy to bear; the weight of our burdens sometimes feels like it stops us from being able to move forward.
(2) Or, alternatively, sometimes we fall because we feel alone, without support. The word nofel appears at the end of last week’s parsha with reference to the eglah arufah case, where we find a person killed on the road and we don’t know who did it. The Torah refers to this person as nofel basadeh, fallen or slain in the field (Deuteronomy 21:1), This is a person who fell because they were traveling alone on the journey of life and not given the support they needed. This type of falling is also familiar to us, the falling that comes from a feeling of total aloneness in the face of difficulty and overwhelm, of having to deal with it all on our own, even, sometimes, when we are not physically alone, but still very much suffering alone inside ourselves.
(3) The Torah also uses the word nofel a few verses after ours with reference to the mitzvah of ma’akeh, of building a gate around a roof so that a person doesn’t fall off – ki yipol hanofel mimenu, lest the faller fall from there (Deuteronomy 22:8). Here, too, we can understand what it means to be such a nofel, a faller, emotionally – to stand at a rooftop and “fall” or perhaps jump off, the suicidal impulse to escape, to fall off the world and disappear, to quit when things feel very hard, to give up and fall off the journey we are on.
Part II: Lifting Others
Hakem takim imo. You shall surely raise it up with him. The mitzvah here is to help someone else who is in this fallen position, to help raise them up. When we see someone else falling on their way, and we touch inside ourselves what that feels like, we do have a deep desire to help them, to raise them up in some way.
But the Torah cautions imo, “together with him.” Rashi explains – only if the other person is a willing partner; you are meant to do the work together with him, not on your own. This is very important. You can’t raise someone else up through your work alone. It must be a joint project. The person suffering must be ready to be helped and be part of the process of raising herself up.
The gemara in Brachot (5b) tells a series of stories about rabbis visiting their sick colleagues, and in each story, the visiting rabbi, who comes to help with healing, asks the sick person – is your suffering dear to you? Do you want to get better? And if the person responds – my suffering is not dear to me; I am indeed ready to be healed, then the healer says – give me your hand. The invalid gives him his hand and the healer would, according to the gemara, “raise him,” ukmeih, a word that has the same root as our hakem takim, raise him or lift him up.
That is how it works. In order to be healed from suffering, in order to be raised up, you need to want it and be a willing partner, to stretch out your hand so that together you can gain the strength to stand again. We can’t help others by doing it alone. We can’t come in and fix them by ourselves. They need to be willing partners, to be ready to let go of the pain and to put a hand out so that we can do it imo, with him, together.
Part III: And Ourselves
There is more, and it relates back to ourselves and our own falling parts. The Sefat Emet reads this phrase as meaning – hakem takim imo – when you help someone else get up, you raise yourself along with him, both together. We do feel this sometimes, how, when we help raise someone else up even just a little bit, when we are part of that raising up energy, how it helps us in our own fallenness, how the lifting energy flows back into us and into the parts of us that need the same thing. We have brought that healing into the world for another, but it circles back onto us as well. It is all of a piece, helping others and ourselves. Hakem takim imo. We do it together.
Indeed, we could read the doubleness of hakem takim, “you shall raise up, raise up,” as implying a reciprocal back and forth kind of help. We take turns – sometimes you need help; sometimes I need help; the help flows back and forth between us so that we create a culture of imo, of raising each other together.
This reciprocality is implied by the gemara’s stories of the visiting rabbis as well. There are three such stories. In the first and the last story it is Rabbi Yochanan who serves as the great healer, visiting and raising up his sick colleagues, while in the middle story Rabbi Yochanan becomes the sick one, and it is another rabbi who comes to visit and heal him. The gemara asks – why? Let him heal himself! The answer: a prisoner cannot free herself from prison. We need each other. None of us is free from sometimes being sick or suffering, sometimes being the one who is falling and in need of help. Even Rabbi Yochanan, when he fell, needed someone else to pick him up.
I am imagining a road and we are all walking along the road; we walk and we stumble; we walk and we stumble; all of us walk straight and proud some of the time, and all of us stumble and fall some of the time. And as we do, we help each other. When we are walking strong, we pause to offer a hand to someone who is on the ground, and when we stumble, we reach up for help, without shame or embarrassment; we reach out our hands for help getting up and we accept the help willingly. We walk and we stumble; we raise up and we reach out for help. Hakem takim imo. It is a continuous cycle of aid.
Indeed, Torah Temimah cites a midrash that interprets our double verb – hakem takim – as implying that it happens many times: “If he made her stand up and she fell, he made her stand up and she fell – even five times, he is still obligated to raise her up.” We don’t need help once and we don’t offer help just once. We are all continually falling and getting up, continually helping each other and needing help. What we are building here is a culture of ongoing support and incredible patience with ourselves and each other, not expecting it be over after the first time – “oh, now I know how to get up when I fall” – but understanding that we will continue to fall many times over, and developing the patience and trust to be with ourselves through all those falls.
Part IV: God as the Third Partner
Imo can have another meaning here and I want to finish out our exploration with this other meaning. Imo, “with him,” does not specify who the “him” is, leaving open the possibility of God as the object: Imo – with God. Hakem takim imo. How do we help raise each other? Imo. With God. God is the third partner. It is together with God – as we channel God’s love and hesed through our human bodies and let it flow out to one another – it is together with God that we manage to raise ourselves and each other. On our own, none of us is fully capable, but imo, with God, we have the strength to keep raising each other, so that God can be somekh noflim, “support those who are falling” (in Ashrei and the Amidah) through our human hands. Allowing God in is a relief and a comfort as we walk the road of healing together, in humility. We can’t do it alone, and we don’t need to do it alone. We do it most effectively when we open ourselves to knowing that God is also supporting each of us and all of us.
Photo by Pixabay at Pexels
