"Loving Your Neighbors"

I grew up in one of the older suburbs of northern New Jersey,

        where houses were close together.

From my brother’s bedroom window we could look across the driveway

        directly into our neighbors' house,

                where noisy drunken rampages

                        provided us children with a sobering message

                                about alcohol abuse and bad marriages.

As those neighbors grew frail and declined further into infirmity,

        my mother was the one to notice 

                that when things were too quiet next door,

                        someone was probably in trouble.

More than once she helped one or another of them up off the floor.

I now realize what a generous effort she made.

 

On the other side, 

        lived people who for some reason I cannot recall,

                were feuding with us.

We didn’t speak.

But at night, over the dinner table,

        my mother frequently produced a detailed narrative of everything 

                that went on over there,

                        embellishing her observations

                                with a scathing critique of the way 

                                        they raised their children and pets. 

I grew up believing that feeding children bologna 

        was a form of child abuse.

I wouldn't be relating all of this right now –

        and probably shouldn't be –

                but a recent article by Jeffrey Toobin 

                        in The New Yorker restimulated the memories.

Toobin tells the story of a landlord shooting his tenant.

The tenant was an eccentric 

        but well loved elementary school teacher

                who had lived in the same building 

                        as her landlord for thirty years. 

She paid her rent on time,

        but she used her "rent checks as a forum

                in which to air her complaints," Toobin writes.

"In a careful hand, she nearly covered 

        the back of each check with accusations."

These ranged from sleep deprivation to vandalism and robbery.

They had little basis in reality,

        but she clung to her suspicions for decades.

 

Finally, the landlord couldn't take these accusations any longer.

He made her an offer:

        four months of free rent, 

                to be followed by the tenant's voluntary departure.

She did not respond.

The eviction proceedings were well under way

        when the landlord and tenant came to a showdown.

She waved a hammer at him

        and he shot her with his .38.

 

This tragic outcome should have been avoidable.

There was no basis in the tenant's accusations

        against her landlord:

                her delusions had taken over her life.

Colleagues tried to convince her to move out,

        but she refused,

                because she thought that her apartment was 

                        in every other way, ideal.

Locked into a struggle that fed on proximity 

        and lack of communication,

                the neighbors led each other to their demise.

 

What is it about neighbors?

What accounts for the intensity of our feeling

        towards people we barely know?

True, neighbors may know more about you

        than some friends do.

 

There is an intimacy between neighbors,

        even when the relationship is bad,

                as the New York landlord-tenant feud

                        so tragically illustrated.

Although they hated each other,

        in some perverse way 

                they were the most significant people

                        in each other's life.

When neighbors become friends,

        the world is friendlier.

There is a sense of safety and warmth

        in knowing that the people who live near by

                care about you.

Whether neighbors are friendly,

        distant,

                or at war with each other

                        affects our lives more deeply 

                                than we realize.

Whatever the condition of the relationship,

        we are connected to each other.

 

The teachings of the Jewish and Christian traditions

        aim directly at this connection,

                to name it,

                        sustain it,

                                and heal it when needed.

In the Hebrew bible, Leviticus, 

        the book of rituals and laws, 

                offers this advice:

"You shall not hate your brother in your heart,

        but you shall reason with your neighbor,

                lest you bear sin because of him.

You shall not take vengeance 

        or bear any grudge 

                against the sons of your own people,

                        but you shall love your neighbor as yourself."

It is clear that "neighbor," in this case,

        refers to fellow Israelites only –

                your neighbor is one of your own.

You do not take vengeance or bear grudges

        against one of your own people.

 

Jesus critiqued many accepted social norms of his time,

        including this one.

In the Sermon on the Mount, 

        Jesus directly challenged Hebrew law:

"You have heard that it was said,"

        he says, referring to Leviticus,

                "'You shall love your neighbor

                        and hate your enemy.'

But I say to you,

        Love your enemies 

                and pray for those who persecute you."

 

And Jesus even goes so far as to redefine 

        what a neighbor is.

When one of his followers asks him,

        "Who is my neighbor?"

Jesus responds with the story of the Good Samaritan.

In this story, a foreigner shows compassion for a stranger.

Jesus exhorts his followers,

        "Go now and do likewise."

                The stranger is my neighbor.

 

With Jesus, the teaching evolved        

        from loving your neighbor 

                because you belong to the same tribe,

                        to loving the stranger and the enemy

                                as your neighbor too.

It is an idealistic and challenging teaching in any time.

 

Most of us have enough trouble 

        simply loving our neighbor,

                as Leviticus instructed: with reason and without vengeance.

There's almost no such thing anymore

        as belonging to the same tribe,

                and the person who lives across the way

                        is probably as strange as they come.

These days the neighbor might even be

        the stranger and the enemy.

Our new neighbors across the way from us

        are building a tall fence,

                the maximum height allowed in Santa Monica.

In a few more days,

        we won't even have to say hello 

                to each other anymore.

Everyone seems relieved.

 

A good fence is a tempting solution

        to the problem of implementing what Jesus taught:

                don't even try anymore.

We still have the sense of connection,

        perhaps even have a longing for it,

                but have lost the ability to act on it.

Most of us live in neighborhoods 

        from which we come and go,

                without really knowing anyone.

Such teachings as "love your neighbor,"

        or "love the stranger and the enemy

                as you love your neighbor,"

                        are difficult to interpret,

                                as well as act upon.

That's why we were relieved to see the tall fence go up

        across the way from our home:

                we don't have to figure out what to do.

 

In the story I told earlier, "Old Joe and the Carpenter,"

        two old neighbors, long-time friends,

                fall into a petty dispute and become alienated from each other.

It's sad because they're the only friends

        they have left –

                their wives have died,

                        and they have grown old.

They don't know how to mend their friendship,

        so they give up.

One puts in a creek on the property line

        between them.

Not to be outdone, the other proposes a fence.

But along comes a wise young carpenter,

        who offers to do the work –

                and then, instead of building a fence –

                        he builds a bridge.

The bridge leads the two old neighbors to reconcile

        and they restore their friendship.

 

That traditional American tale gives a new image

        of what it takes to be a good neighbor.

It takes the deliberate building of bridges

        to join together what has been disconnected:

                a nice metaphor for our times.

We are well beyond the time

        when we can follow the advice 

                to treat our neighbors well

                        because we are all belong to the same tribe.

That thinking was outdated

        even when Jesus began challenging it:

                it's not our own people we must love,

                        as Jesus pointed out,

                                it's the strange and foreign people,

                                        the ones who are different from us.

We should be like the Good Samaritan.

As biblical scholars always point out,

        people shunned and looked down on Samaritans.

Jesus used the example of a Samaritan

        to illustrate the need to reach beyond social differences

                and sameness,

                        as the Samaritan himself did.

 

The chasm is just as wide now as it was then,

        perhaps even wider.

We all need bridges to cross over

        if we want to be good neighbors to each other.

The bridge is a good image 

        because it shows us that perhaps 

                we cannot do it on our own.

Just as the two old neighbors needed a wise carpenter

        to build the bridge between them,

                we need interventions too.

 

What sort of intervention the New York tenant and landlord could have used

        to settle their dispute before it turned to violence

                challenges the imagination,

                        although mediation and psychological attention might have helped.

The really bad neighbor problems

        are intractable and dense:

                consider the Israelis and the Palestinians,

                        or closer to home,

                                the clashes over gang turf

                                        or ethnic transitions from one block to another.

If people can learn to love their enemies,

        they must first cross over their boundaries and meet.

And when we meet, we remember,

        just as Old Joe and his friend did,

                that we still need each other.

Human beings live in our connection to each other,

        and when that connection is broken,

                the world becomes a scary place.

What that world asks of us now

        is to make the new connections 

                and build the new bridges

                        that are needed in these new times:

                                for we are strangers and neighbors,

                                        still trying to figure out how to love one another.

Sources:
"Shotgun Eviction," by Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker, December 11, 2000.