Bias

and its confirmation

When we open our eyes, are we seeing the world itself, or our potentially-deeply-mistaken perception of the world that exists in our minds?

When we meet a person, how much of what we perceive them saying is actually what they're trying to communicate, and how much of it is what we imagined they were going to say before they ever opened their mouths?

It's all so subtle — how could we ever tell?

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The McGurk Effect is a vivid illustrations of how our senses are literally distorted by what we think we’re seeing.

These questions about if we are living in reality or our own fantasy/worst nightmare strike at the heart of all exile — all disconnection — all sadness, disappointment and estrangement with all of their sharp pains and dull aches throughout our personal and national histories.  

We are so deeply in exile in 2023 that the word “exile” has almost completely lost its meaning. Rarely does a Jew feel displaced. It seems most natural to most of us that we are indigenous to Long Island, Brooklyn, New Jersey and South Florida. Haven’t Jews always lived here since time immemorial?

No. We haven’t.

But exile is more than just displacement of people from their homes and homelands — although, it should never be diminished how terrible physical displacement is in and of itself.

Exile is when our true essence and identity are banished, and all that’s left is the shell of what was. 

Instead of living in reality, willing to be surprised by everything it has to offer, we find ourselves in a stilted, imagined, Hollywood mock-up of what we think the world looks like. Hollywood is sexy and stimulating until the house lights go back on, and you remember that you’ve been sitting in a mostly empty movie theater with sticky floors.  

We have a tendency to forget who we are.  We lose sight of what life's about, and just go through the motions. 

The Holy Torah becomes the "Old Testament." 

Hashem, Whose Name we don't pronounce for fear of minimizing Its awesomeness, becomes "God." And "God" becomes "OMG." 

And our fellow human beings — made in the Image of G-d — become "just some dudes."  Or worse. 

Subject becomes object.  "Thou" becomes "It."  Clients become excels rows. Friends become profiles. 

Physical exile is being expelled from our homes.

Spiritual exile is being expelled from reality — from true contact with other people — from a pulsating, living contact with ourselves — and from the vibrant experience of Godliness that life is meant to be.

Jeremiah the prophet, when he returned to the desolate shell that was once Jerusalem alluded to the source of this tragedy with a delicate switch of verses — visible only to those who would appreciate its lesson.  He composed the mournful soliloquy of Eicha, written in acrostic alphabetical order to give the semblance of order amidst chaos. Deftly, he switched the ע ("ayin") and the פ ("peh").  

From amidst the rubble, emerged the subtle rebuke of the prophet who had warned us so explicitly before Jerusalem's destruction — the verse that started with a פ preceded the one that began with an ע. But why?

We had put our mouth before our eyes — our "peh" (“mouth” in Hebrew) before our "ayin" (“eye”). 

We had decided what we would see before we opened our eyes to actually look. 

We claimed to be going on a “fact-finding mission” in the Land of Israel with open minds, ready to discover what we did not yet know.  But the chatter had already begun. Our conclusions forgone. Our bias had to only be confirmed.

Like the victim of character-murder-through-gossip — her true identity buried alive.  All onlookers could only see what they had heard about her over lattes that morning.  

We'd like to believe that seeing is believing, but too often, we only see what we want to believe.

Long before Jeremiah wept these words over Jerusalem — before we so much as stepped foot on her holy soil — we sent spies who knew what they would say before their eyes beheld her.

What can do about it???

Well, awareness is certainly the first step.