If you see your brother’s donkey falling down on the road from too many burdens, don’t turn away. Hakem Takim imo. Lift it up together. (Deuteronomy 22:4, with help from Exodus 23:5)
Our Own Collapse
I think we recognize this scenario from an emotional perspective. Someone is so overburdened that they have fallen down in their life journey, collapsed in a heap on the ground, the heavy baggage they have been carrying strewn about, a look of despair on their face. We feel like that sometimes. We carry a lot of burdens – the weight of our own personal troubles and those we are close to, and often also the weight of the larger world, so much heaviness and responsibility. Of course we fall down sometimes.
Imo, “With Him”: The Fallen Must Participate
What does the Torah suggest here? If you see this situation happening to someone, hakem takim imo. This is a strange phrase. It doesn’t say: hakem takim oto, “you shall surely lift him up.” It says: hakem takim imo, you shall surely lift up imo, together with him. Rashi explains that this word, imo, “with him,” comes to teach you that a person whose donkey falls down cannot sit on the sidelines and say to you – hey, it’s your mitzvah to help me, so I’m just going to sit here while you do all the work. No. You are only obligated to lift him up imo, together with him, only if he is also taking a willing part (Rashi on Deuteronomy 22:4).
There is such deep truth in this insight both in terms of how we get raised up when we fall and also in terms of how we help others get up when they fall. In both cases, there can be no one-sided rescuing. The person who has fallen must be willing and ready to participate in their own recovery. Otherwise it simply won’t work. Healing requires the fallen person’s active participation, to care enough about yourself to be willing to do your part, to find the will to live and stand up again, with help and support from others, yes, but also with your own inner desire, finding that place in you that wants to heal. There is always support somewhere in the world for our getting up – others will come to our aid – but only if and when we can do it imo, together with that help.
And on the other side, when we see others there on the ground sometimes, we need to know that we cannot rescue them, that it does them no good for us to take over and do it for them, that they can only really heal if they take an active part in their own process. We need to hold for them a reflection not of their powerlessness, but of their wholeness, their own capacity to stand up again, remembering that even when they have forgotten it.
Talmudic Story: How Rabbi Yochanan Heals
A story is told in the gemara (Brachot 5b) about how Rabbi Yochanan would offer healing to his colleagues who were ailing. He would go to their homes, sit with them and ask – are your sufferings dear to you? In other words, are you ready to let go of your suffering and heal? I cannot help you unless you are willing to play your part. If the sick person said that yes, they were ready, their sufferings were not dear to them, then Rabbi Yochanan would say – hav li yadakh. Then give me your hand. He didn’t offer them his hand. He said to them – give me your hand. You take the first step, he said, reach your hand out to me. And then, once they did that, once they took their part, he would lift them up, ukmeih, from the same root as hakem takim in our verse. Lifting up requires participation, a willingness to let go of whatever attachment we have to our suffering and to take part in our own healing.
Returning to Our Own Collapsed Part
We can do the same thing with our own fallen part, the one that is lying on the ground like the donkey, collapsed under the weight of all those burdens. Maybe those burdens are in part a symbol of our attachment to our suffering, what makes it hard to get up, how drawn we are to the familiarity of being down. We can ask that part – Are your sufferings dear to you? Are you ready for help? Do you want to try getting up together? You don’t have to do it alone, but you also can’t lie there and expect to be rescued. There is some middle ground that most of us are pretty unfamiliar with, that middle space of getting support while also taking part in our own recovery. We can offer that support to our own little hopeless part on the ground, saying – I’ll help you up if you give me your hand, but you have to give me your hand, you have to reach for the help. Maybe she is ready and maybe not yet. The process unfolds at its own pace and we can have lots of patience, letting her know we are there, that help is available when she is ready. And if the moment is now, we can meet her hand reaching up and help lift her up, doing it together. Hakem takim imo.
We Are Both the Helper and the Fallen One
We do this for our own parts and we do this for each other. Sometimes we are the ones offering the support and sometimes we are the ones lying on the ground. We take turns. That gemara tells three stories of healing. In the first and last one it is Rabbi Yochanan who does the healing, but in the middle story it is Rabbi Yochanan himself who lies ill in need of healing. Even the healer needs someone else to help him stand up again. We are all identified with both the fallen and the lifter, we are both, moving back and forth between them.
Both Lifted
Through such an encounter, both parties are lifted, not just the official patient on the ground. Hakem takim imo has no clear direct object. “You shall surely lift with him.” Who is getting lifted here? Not just him, but also you yourself; as you lift him, you are also lifted. Helping someone else somehow rebounds back onto us, as if the energy of healing cannot be contained in one direction, but infuses the air and affects all those present. Hakem takim imo, together you are both lifted. There is not a healer and an invalid, but two humans, each both whole and broken, walking alongside each other and lifting each other up. Imo. Together. It’s like that exercise where two people are sitting on the ground, back to back, and they link arms and push against each other until they both slowly stand up together. Imo. Lifting each other together.
Imo: With God
There is one more meaning to imo, “with him,” which I feel lurking in this phrase: lift yourselves up imo, with God. This is really important. I believe that all lifting, all healing, all recovery, happens with God’s assistance, imo. We don’t do the work alone. Sometimes we are lying on the ground, toppled over by the weight of our burdens, and the only way to get up is to really let go into this otherworldly assistance, into our Higher Power, to admit that we can’t do it alone, but only imo, with God, and to open to that grace-filled support.. Maybe you can sense that possibility for yourself in those moments of collapse, the possibility of participating in your own recovery by asking for help from beyond, crying out from that low place and feeling the imo of God being with you, right there next to you, supporting you in your process of getting up off the ground. I give thanks for these moments of divine grace.
God is Also With Us As Helpers
And when you are the lifter, the helper, the same thing is true. The process of getting up is still always happening imo, with God. When we are with another person on the ground, then, too, perhaps then, especially, we need to let God in to do the work, to know that all healing comes from God and we are just a vehicle for that divine process, witnessing and supporting the divine healing process that is unfolding in the other person. Imo, the lifting is always happening in partnership with God.
God Needs Our Assistance, Too?
I want to take another more radical step. Given that the imo relationship generally goes both ways, what if at times it is God who is as it were on the ground with all the heavy burdens needing us to lift a hand? I might not be so bold to suggest this if not that the midrash already does so. At the burning bush scene, God calls out to Moshe and doubles his name – Moshe Moshe. The midrash (Shmot Rabbah 2:6) notes that the doubling has no punctuation between the two names and compares the situation to a person carrying a very heavy burden who calls out desperately for help – Moshe Moshe – without pausing between the names. Perhaps that is indeed how it is for God sometimes, overburdened by the terrible suffering in this world, desperately calling out to us for assistance in carrying the load.
Imo, with God, too, we can have this double relationship, both taking support and strangely also offering it; sometimes we are the fallen one and sometimes we are the one who lends a hand, even to God. Can you feel how important and needed and vital that means you are in the world? God needs your assistance in lifting. The word imo is a word of participation, together with God, and that is the message here – God needs us to participate in redemption, to play our part in lifting ourselves and each other up. God can’t bear the weight alone.
Understanding Our Role
And neither can we bear it alone. Perhaps that is our primary mistake, the thing that makes us feel so heavily burdened that we fall down in the first place – the false belief that the weight of the world and each other and even ourselves is on our shoulders alone. In learning to get up imo, together with others and with God, we heal ourselves of the burdens that brought us down in the first place. We learn the imo lesson, the lesson of participation, that the work is not ours to complete on our own, nor are we free to desist from it. Lo alekha hamelakha ligmor, the work is not “on you,” alekha, as a burden, velo atah ben horin lehivatel mimenah, but neither can you sit idly by (Pirkei Avot 2:16). Your role is to participate in the lifting up that is redemption, the lifting up, the hakamah, like the hakamah, the erection of the mishkan, a sacred task of raising up.
God is calling your name, too, like Moshe, not to burden you down, but to take your precious, essential part in the uplifting of the fallen. Imo, together with one another and with God.
Photo by cottonbro studio at Pexels
Thank you Rachel. This resonates with me. When people feel defeated and depleted, they have to want to heal. Very insightful