It is a very busy and early morning. In addition to an 8:00 AM virtual meeting, I actually have an in-person meeting out of town that I have to get to. The type of meeting where an updated Biblical text might say, “Moses spoke to God mask-to-mask as a person speaks to a friend.” But I digress…..

Nine is the loneliest number in Judaism.  Anyone who has ever been in a room needing to say the mourner’s kaddish, a prayer that requires a minyan, knows exactly what I mean. You can be standing there with 9 folks prepared to recite the prayer, but since it requires the minimum number for a minyan—which is 10—you can’t recite it. Two quick stories. In 2013, a group of us traveled to Poland. It would be the first of two trips I would take there to bear witness to the utter destruction of European Jewry. This group was formed by a dear friend in Boston, and all of us who traveled there had connections that dated way back. In any event, standing at the memorial ASH HEAP site on the grounds where the Majdanek concentration camp was, we recited Kaddish in memory of those whose ashes were now the only remaining reminder of their lives. Standing next to us were a group of 6 Orthodox men, who listened intently to our prayer and even offered an “amen” to it. A gesture of recognition. They then turned to this mixed group of women and men and asked, “if four of you could join their minyan.” They knew and we knew that they meant 4 men. But we knew and they knew that all of us would join in, and they could count the 4 men they wanted to count, even as we would not reject our understanding of the Divine imperative as to what constitutes a minyan either. It was a moment of great redemptive meaning—not only for the deceased souls for whom prayers were offered, but for a people that is so often divided by ultimately petty differences that seem to weigh heavily for some religious decisors in trying to eliminate pluralism from our peoples' midst.  Ten were needed—and ten were counted. We just counted to ten differently.

Yesterday, in one of the more painful days in American history, I felt a small piece of redemptive hope was evident. While arguments flew from one side of the aisle trying to create moral equivalency where none existed, I would imagine that probably 300 of the Congresspeople present yesterday actually believe that the President bears a great deal of responsibility for the damage done to the Capitol and our country last Wednesday. But because of the great divide inside this country and our inability to seek common-sense solutions to problems with which all of us are living—and probably because we have gerrymandered Congressional seats in such a fashion that we are now segregate deep blue people from deep red people, we live with the unfortunate results that it creates. And yet, watching (I admit, I watched the vote tally—which is actually the only thing I watched yesterday during the debate—as I was otherwise working) I saw that 9 members of one party had lined up to support the articles of Impeachment. There were like 12 members of the GOP left to vote, and all I could think of was a minyan. Would America get the minyan it needed to begin the redemptive process it also needs? And then the screen flashed 10. And a minyan of courageous members of the President’s party provided the country with the message it needed to see and hear. “Kaddish” the memorial prayer recited as a result of a death could be heard on the floor of the House. Not really, of course. But in the sacred American Temple that had been desecrated only a week earlier, the process of healing that a week of mourning is to provide was evident—at least for me. 

Don’t get me wrong. All that happened isn’t going to be forgotten and erased just like that. The death spiral we have endured over the last 4 years will not suddenly become a country of immediate resurrection. We got some work to do—after every death the survivors always do. But I sense we might be able to get it done a little more easily today than we could have done a year ago. Nine would have been the loneliest number on the House floor. Ten is a whole different ballgame.