Texas Jewish Post (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 72, No. 8, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 22, 2018 Page: 21 of 24
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TEXAS JEWISH POST $ SINCE 1947
February 22,2018 I 21
Florida shooting hits home for Federation's Laye
By Bradley Laye
Go with God, and power will never corrupt
RABBI YOGI
Bradley Laye is the CEO of the Jewish Federa-
tion of Greater Dallas.
GUEST
COLUMN
By Rabbi Yogi
Robkin
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TEXAS JEWISH POST $SINCE 1947
that may be a
of empathy. This
neurological basis
as I am writing
1
To provide some context,
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School in Parkland, Florida, is the
equivalent of our Plano West. It is
an upper-class northwest suburb
of Fort Lauderdale with over 3,000
kids. Its feeder cities of Parkland
and Coral Springs are, from the
time I grew up in Broward County,
the “really good areas.” My brother
moved there in 2010 for the quality
of the public schools. An active
shooter was simply never supposed
to happen in a school like Douglas.
Since Sandy Hook in 2012,
there have been at least 239 school
shootings nationwide in which 438
people were shot, 138 of whom
were killed, The New York Times
reported. From my memory, this
is at least the third time I have
from any degree of empathy
deficit. Quite the opposite. From
the moment of Moses’ maturity
when he “went out to his brethren”
to defend the anonymous Israelite
suffering under the blows of his
Egyptian taskmaster (Exodus 2:11-
12), to his defense of the entirety
of the nation of Israel at the sin
of the Golden Calf (“And now if
You would but forgive their sin!
— but if not, erase me now from
Your book that You have written”)
(Exodus 32:32), until his very last
breaths at the end of 40 years of
leading the people through the
desert and shouldering countless
national trials along the way,
Moses never tires of service. His
empathy and sensitivity toward
others never wane.
It’s more than a bit instructive
that the defining characteristic
which the Torah uses to define
this most powerful of men is
humility. “Now the man Moses
was exceedingly humble, more
than any person on the face of
this Earth” (Numbers 12:3). And
it is this very humility which
enables Moses to wield his power
and influence for the good of the
people, without succumbing to the
dire consequences of the “power
paradox.”
As hard as it is for us to imagine
Editor’s Note: This article first
appeared in the Friday, Feb. 16
Federation e-newsletter.
I landed in Israel for The Chai
Mission last week, and the day
after I arrived, an Israeli F-16 was
shot down by the Syrian Army
as Israel was retaliating for an
Iranian drone incursion into Israel.
Immediately, my phone rings, and
my parents are asking if I am OK
in Israel. They have been to Israel
before, so they understand that
what is on TV does not reflect
Israeli life, but nonetheless, they
are Jewish parents.
Four short days later, I call my
father on his birthday, Feb. 14. He
answers the phone and I barely
get out “Happy Birthday” before
he says he needs to call me back
for what Keltner has termed
the “power paradox”: Once we
have power, we lose some of the
capacities we needed to gain it in
the first place.
Other experiments have
uncovered that powerful people do
worse at identifying what someone
in a picture is feeling, or guessing
how a colleague might interpret a
remark. Most importantly, Keltner
added, is the fact that powerful
people stop mimicking others’
behaviors, tensing when others
tense or laughing when others
laugh. It is precisely this behavioral
mirroring that helps trigger the
same feelings that others are
experiencing, and without it, the
powerful are led down a dangerous
course toward what Keltner calls
an “empathy deficit.”
How very analogous is this to
historian Henry Adams’ (1838-
1918) description of power as “a
sort of tumor that ends by killing
the victim’s sympathies.”
So, what is it about power that
causes such trouble? The research
suggests that power primes our
brain to screen out peripheral
information. In most situations,
this provides a helpful energy
boost. In social ones, it has the
unfortunate side effect of making
us less sensitive to those around
written about a mass shooting
that has happened in the U.S. Each
time, after the very first, I refuse to
offer “thoughts and prayers” — it
feels too anemic.
It’s just after midnight on Friday
morning here in Israel, and I am
looking out the hotel window to
the lights of the Haifa port below
from Mount Carmel. It’s been an
amazing few days on our Chai
Mission. It is peaceful. It is a bit
windy. It’s a perfect temperature
with the window open. It’s safe.
I just called Josh to talk. I asked
if he’s OK, and he said yes. He
said it doesn’t feel real yet. I
suggested my brother take him to
the grief counselors available at
the school to talk. Feb. 14, 2018,
what should have been another
immense power and exceeding
humility paired as one, Moses’
experience teaches us that when
one’s identity is centrally that
of a servant of God, power is
acquired with a healthy dose of
perspective. For with every step
toward greatness and Godliness
(those traits which would foretell
Moses’ power as a leader), there
Moses encountered his Creator,
and consequently a reckoning with
his own mortality, nadequacies
and limitations. Moses didn’t
need to reflect upon moments of
powerlessness to bring himself back
to Earth. Moses’ entire existence
was an extended meditation
on his own vulnerability and
ultimate powerlessness in the
face of the King of Kings.
We, too, experience powerful
emotions of powerlessness
when we pray each day. We are
reminded that we are servants,
not beings meant to be served,
and we are reminded that all
our gifts, our talents, and our
power come from the source of
all power. Who, then, are we to
gloat?
Perhaps more than anything
else, the powerful need a religious
awakening of sorts. Some God on
the brain where the power used
to be.
We are all well aware of the side
effects of power. It can intoxicate
as well as corrupt. But can it cause
brain damage? This is the question
asked by author Jerry Useem in
a recent article in The Atlantic
(Power Causes Brain Damage, July/
August 2017 issue). His conclusion,
as the title of his article suggests, is
that power, in fact, has the ability
to alter one’s brain — and not all
for the good.
Much of the research on the
impact of power on the brain was
conducted by Dacher Keltner,
a psychology teacher at the
University of California-Berkeley,
who discovered that subjects
under the influence of power acted
as if they had suffered a traumatic
brain injury. They became more
impulsive, less risk-aware and,
crucially, less adept at seeing things
from other people’s point of view.
Sukhvinder Obhi, a
neuroscientist at McMaster
University, described something
similar. When he put the heads
of the powerful and the not-so-
powerful under a transcranial-
magnetic-stimulation machine,
he found that power, in fact,
impairs a specific neural process,
“mirroring,”
cornerstone
presents a
us.
Keltner’s
advice to the
powerful is
to remember
that power is
but a mental
state. Recount
a time you
did not feel
powerful and
your brain
can once again
commune with reality.
While Keltner’s research is
indeed illuminating, his remedial
suggestion appears less than
promising. It would seem that a
conscientiously minded person
of power following Keltner’s lead
would need a set time (or times)
each and every day for “powerless”
self-reflection in order to dispel the
demons that lie in power’s wake.
How likely, though, is someone to
follow such an uncomfortable day-
to-day formula? And even if they
were to fastidiously follow that
formula, would the results prove
anything more than temporary
reprieves from empathy deficit?
As a rabbi whose primary
source material is the Torah, it’s
of great interest to me that Moses,
one of the most powerful men to
ever walk this Earth, never suffered
great birthday for my dad, is a
day my family will never forget
and for all the wrong reasons.
What you and I know, both from
personal experiences and from
friends here in Israel who deal
with trauma like this too often,
is that Josh isn’t OK.
May we all have a peaceful
Shabbat. This evening, more
than 70 members of our Dallas
Jewish community, along with
Dallasites in Israel on Masa and
other Israel programs, will join
together to welcome n Shabbat
in the Old City of Jerusalem. It
is a time to come together, and it
is of great comfort to be with my
community in Israel at this time.
because my
nephew, Josh,
is on lockdown
at his school
with an active
shooter. I call
my brother
immediately
and I learn
Josh is indeed
locked down
and at least
two people
are confirmed
dead. A day later,
this from Israel, we know 17 are
dead including heroic teachers, one
of whom was Josh’s favorite social
studies teacher. Of the students
killed, Josh was friends with two
and knew a few more.
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Wisch-Ray, Sharon. Texas Jewish Post (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 72, No. 8, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 22, 2018, newspaper, February 22, 2018; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1305629/m1/21/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .