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A week ago, on Friday afternoon, I took my toddler on the train from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side. 

This is a trip we know well. The schlep down the stairs at Grand Army Plaza, the annoying maneuvering of the stroller onto the car, and then the Mama Show. Sometimes, Nathaniel is happy to stay in his stroller, looking around and singing with me. Sometimes, like last week, he demands “up” and spends most of the trip on my lap.  

At first, the train wasn’t particularly crowded. Nathaniel kicked his feet and babbled cheerfully. I felt a little bad about taking up two seats since the stroller blocked anyone from sitting next to me, but when wrangling a little one there’s only so much you can do. Then, a dad and elementary-school aged daughter stepped onto the car. She looked right at me. “Can you scoot over?” There was a single seat that she could have taken, but that would have left dad standing, and that clearly wasn’t going to work for her. So I said “Sure!” and awkwardly turned the stroller so dad and daughter could sit, sliding myself and Nathaniel down. 

“I wouldn’t have asked you to move,” the dad said apologetically as he squished in next to me. “I know how annoying that is when the brakes are on. Wait, is that a yoyo?” He told me about how his daughter, now 10, was in the same stroller— but red instead of blue— and how well he remembered having to navigate it on the train. Meanwhile, Nathaniel was making friends with the woman on our other side, saying “hi” repeatedly, delighted each time she said “hi” back. With all the spacial and social awareness a 21-month-old could muster, he put his sandaled foot on her thigh. I apologized and moved it off but she said “no no” and happily let him rest his leg there while she complimented his shoes. And that was how it went. Chatting with Nathaniel. Chatting with me. Looking at a picture of the woman’s 22 year old daughter and hearing about her grown son who used to love Thomas the Tank Engine so much that decades later she still remembered all of the trains’ names. The dad being wowed by Nathaniel’s toy car. Small moments of connection. 

At Times Square I transferred (the elevator at 72nd has been out for months so it’s easiest to walk from Lincoln Center up to WES). I have no idea who these people were, where they were going, what their stories were beyond the little each of us shared. But we were, for those 20 minutes or so, together. And not just together in the way that most of us are physically together on the MTA whether we’re happy about it or not. Together as human beings, hearts opened a little more than usual.

Now look, babies and toddlers, like dogs, cats, and disasters, are a natural social lubricant. And I know that as a mom I was more likely to be spoken to than if I’d been a dad, as my husband pointed out to me when I told him about this episode later. But what I couldn’t help thinking, as I pushed the stroller up to WES, was that for a brief moment, these strangers and I had had an “I-Thou” encounter, rather than an “I-it” encounter— something made all the more remarkable when we consider just how many “I-it” interactions most of us are having these days. 

For those less familiar, I’m referencing here Jewish philosopher Martin Buber’s quintessential work, I and Thou,  which was published just over a century ago but is more essential than ever today. Buber’s premise was that every moment of connection is either a relationship with divine underpinning– “I-Thou”– or an ego-based connection– “I-It.” When we order a coffee and reply “good how about you?” to  the barista who asks how our day is going, we are usually operating from the “It” place. We aren’t opening up to them, nor they to us. We might be polite, and we might smile, and we might tip well (we should always tip well), but the relationship is– usually— a transactional one. 

When we get onto a crowded train and grab onto the pole, and other folks move their hands slightly to accommodate ours, that’s “I-it”. “I-It” could be a utilitarian relationship like when we call our accountant. Or a transactional reminder to our partner to pick up carrots on the way home. Or those all too common multitasking-but-not-really moments like when we’re checking emails on our phone while watching our child on the playground (guilty). That’s all “I-it.” And certainly, when we make a snap judgment about someone based on what they’re wearing, or a label they use for themselves, or how they speak, that’s “I-It.” 

An “I-It” encounter is one of ego and experience. An “I-Thou” encounter is one of personhood and relationship. 

Now, nobody can be in an “I-Thou” space all the time. Buber himself wrote “No human being is pure person, and none is pure ego. Each lives in a twofold I.” So, I’m not here today to tell you all that you need to be completely present for every moment of every day. That’s far from realistic, and it’s not how most of we human beings work. But I do find myself thinking about how, in this time of ever-increasing polarization and digitization, it’s easy to objectify much of our engagement with the world. Perhaps committing to try to find more “Thou” space in our lives could benefit ourselves, our  Jewish community, and humanity as a whole. The same, I think, could be said of the first Jews, our biblical ancestors, and their community. 

I’ve spoken in previous years about how challenging it was in our text for our earliest Jewish ancestors to treat each other well. Two years ago, I spoke about how things could have gone differently if Avraham had protested Sarah’s wish to cast Hagar and Yishmael out. Last year, I spoke about how things could have gone better if Sarah and Hagar had become allies rather than remaining adversaries. Both of these drashot were driving at the same point: when we act from a place of community rather than from a place of ego, we create space for collective care, and that is a tide that lifts all boats.

Of course none of us gets through this life alone. We all rely on systems— familial, professional, medical, overall societal— that keep most of us in contact with other people day in and day out. But that’s not the sort of community that I’m talking about. I mean that as human beings we need one another in the way that those of us who are theists might say that we need God. We simply aren’t able to be our best selves without one another. We aren’t able to give what we could be capable of giving without one another. And we aren’t able to truly encounter life without one another. 

Buber wrote, about the two “I’s” of “I-It” and “I-Thou” (and I’m quoting a century-old work, so excuse the gendered language): “The I of the basic I-It world appears as an ego. The I of the basic I-You appears as a person. Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons…. The person becomes conscious of himself as participating in being, as being-with, and thus as a being. The ego becomes conscious of himself as being this way and not that…. The person beholds his self; the ego occupies himself with his My: my manner, my race, my works, my genius.”

Much of the story we read today is a story built on I-It. I would hope that both Sarah and Avraham relate to Yitzhak as a Thou most of the time, but Sarah certainly treats Hagar and Yishmael as “its”, focusing only on the threat she perceives them posing to Yitzhak. In all of the rabbinic discourse concerning what exactly Sarah saw when she witnessed Yishmael “playing” — from innocent to quite concerning— there is to my knowledge no notion in Sarah’s mind of Yishmael as a full human being, with all of the capacity for mistakes and growth and accomplishment that she doubtless would ascribe to her own son. Similarly, she sees Hagar purely as a rival and a nuisance, not as a woman with her own dreams and stories and her own love for the son she bore to Avraham. Avraham, ultimately, follows Sarah’s lead in setting aside the fullness of Hagar’s personhood and sending her to the wilderness with nothing but bread and water. There, Hagar is unable to remain in a place of I-Thou with Yishmael when she fears he is nearing death. Instead of offering presence, she lets ego— manifesting understandably as despair at the thought of losing her son— guide her to place Yishmael where she will not see his last moments.

The moment of transition from It to Thou comes not between two humans but between Hagar and a well. According to Buber, we can have an “I-Thou” relationship with inanimate elements of the world as much as we can with another human, and both of these help us to be in “I-Thou” with the ultimate Thou: God. 

But don’t worry— for those of you who are proud atheists, you’re just as much a part of this. Buber wrote: "One cannot divide one's life between an actual relationship to God and an inactual I-It relationship to the world--praying to God in truth and utilizing the world. Whoever knows the world as something to be utilized knows God the same way. His prayers are a way of unburdening himself--and fall into the ears of the void. He--and not the "atheist" who from the night and longing of his garret window addresses the nameless--is godless."

 In other words, it’s not about connecting with God as God per se. It’s about understanding ourselves as being in genuine, humble relationship with all that surrounds us. This reflects Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s reflection in The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion, written about 15 years after Buber published I and Thou. Kaplan wrote: "It is a mistake to lump together into the one category of disbelievers and atheists all who say they do not believe in God, and to classify as believers all who profess theistic belief. A significant classification would divide [people] into two distinct groups holding two directly opposed attitudes towards life. Those who consider life as a meaningless vanity…[And] those who, at great danger and cost to themselves, are identified with some cause of social reform or humanitarian benefit, [and] enjoy and communicate the experience of life's worthwhileness, despite all its tragic waste and ugliness.” The latter group, he says, are believers whether they hold in God or not. The former are, in his words, “the real atheists.” But back to Hagar. 

In the wilderness, God opens Hagar’s eyes and guides her back to relationship.  According to Rambam, the well had been there all along but Hagar couldn’t see it, as she was so wrapped up in her own experience. When she truly encounters her present moment instead of fleeing from a feared future, Hagar is able to accompany her son on his journey to adulthood, even though her life, and his, are surely taking a different trajectory from what she expected. This is what we can strive for in our lives— not an unimpeachable experience beyond ego but rather a swaying from presence to ego and back again. Which brings me to Shabbat. 

Perhaps a year or so ago, I started offering what I called “Shabbat Invitations” each Friday night before the V’Shamru, which is the prayer reminding us of the covenant and the commandment to rest. We’re Reconstructionists, and most of us are not traditionally Shabbat-observant. The vast majority of WES members spend money, use technology, travel, and cook on Shabbat, among other things. And as a Reconstructionist rabbi, it’s not my place to tell any Jew how to observe Shabbat. But I can invite observance. And that’s what I’ve done. I haven’t told people to turn off their phones for 25 hours or avoid using their stoves, but I have invited people to engage with the world as a Thou rather than an It— to really notice how a particular color shows up during the day, to eat just one meal without screens, to call someone on the phone whom they would normally text, and, yes, to consider not taking in the news first thing in the morning. For our ancestors, Shabbat meant ceasing from many physical labors. For many of us, it means being able to, perhaps, turn down even a segment of the mental noise and be more present in the physical world that our ancestors, for better and for worse, had no choice but to encounter. 

This year, 5787,  begins on Shabbat, so today I extend a rather special invitation— a Shabbat Invitation to carry you through this year. And that is this: in 5787, I invite you to connect with your own inner toddler. 

Toddlers, you see, are fully present. They are egotistical little creatures, but not in the way adults or even older children are. It’s an innocent ego— one born of insatiable curiosity in and wonder for the world, and an uncontainable desire to share the world they’re encountering with those around them. 

Toddlers force people into the now. Babies are sweet, but toddlers are socially demanding. Even if, like my child, they’re operating with an exceedingly limited vocabulary, their very essence is about presence and engagement. Nathaniel is in a stage where he says hi to everybody. Us, many times a day. His teachers. Neighbors on the stairs. Ms. Rachel and Mr. Rogers for the few minutes a day we let him have screen time. And yes, strangers on the sidewalk or on the subway. Each of these “hi’s” is an invitation to the now. It’s interesting watching who takes him up on it and who doesn’t. Some folks are ready and able to be people. Others, for whatever number of valid or questionable reasons, remain in the space of ego. 

This year: may we be present enough to offer those we meet the chance to engage as people, and may we be receptive enough to take up the invitation when another offers it to us. May we cultivate our sense of wonder and share it with those around us. I wish each of us a Shabbat Shalom and a Shana Tovah u’Metukah– a good, sweet, and abundantly present new year.