It is Well with my Soul

Shalom! Mah-Shlom-chah?

This is how almost every conversation starts in our Hebrew class. It’s a wonderful group of people and a lovely elderly couple who teach it. We look forward to going each week and as we’ve moved from Hebrew 1 to 2 over the last few months, we’ve become rather invested in one another.

Shalom is a pretty standard greeting, “Peace.” And the question that follows is one we typically understand as, “How are you?” As we have come to care how each of us is doing each week by that evening, we usually answer pretty honestly with how we’re feeling or how the day has been. Answers like Yah-feh (tired) and Rah-ev (hungry) are common (a few of the students are pregnant).

However, Moshe, our professor, explained some new grammar to us this week and in doing so taught us something culturally significant. The question is not quite, “How are you?” but closer to “How is it with your being?” In other words, not how are you this moment, but how are things with you or how are things with your being, your soul? This is an entirely different question, not just because it’s deeper or broader in its inquiry, but because the responsibility for answering it is also greater.

When we ask someone how they’re doing in the United States, we really mean how they’re doing recently, typically in this very moment. And we answer accordingly. Maybe we’ve had a good week, month, year or even lifetime on the whole, but we answer for the moment. “I’m doing horribly! I had a bad morning at the DMV followed by a parking ticket.”

Ask the same person how it is with their being, how it is with their soul? Their answer may have to put that lousy morning into perspective with a bigger picture. “I’m doing ok really. Lousy morning, but doing well, you?”

We live in a culture now where our every emotion, stray thought, insult or commentary on every person, action, political position or event can be broadcast instantaneously. Why ask how someone is doing? Follow their Facebook status updates or Twitter feed. You’ll have a blow by blow of their emotional status and mental analysis of everything they’ve encountered recently.

The problem then is that you are possibly well-informed about the general status of their being, but none of us has had the opportunity to reflect each time on our being as a whole, how our soul is doing. Our reflection is shallow, our analysis narrow. Twitter doesn’t ask you how you’ve been or how your life is going. Facebook doesn’t ask you how content your soul is or how your being is. They ask how you are this moment, what you’re thinking. And so do we.

I think the importance in the question, “Mah-shlom-chah?” is not merely to be a more deeply concerned friend or family member, but that answering it requires reflection and perspective. So in case I’m the only person to ask you this today, “Mah-shlom-chah?”