In 1942, a member of the Polish underground named Jan Karski smuggled himself in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto. He then took what he saw to world leaders. When he came to the United States, he had dinner with several high-profile Jews, including Supreme Court Justice, Felix Frankfurter. Justice Frankfurter turned to Karski late in the evening and said, “There are so many conflicting reports about what is happening to the Jews in your country, “Please tell me exactly what you have seen.”

Karski patiently explained his missions and the gruesome details of persecution, deportations, and murder that he had personally witnessed. He then waited for the other man to respond.
Silently, Justice Frankfurter got up, paced back and forth for a few moments and then returned to his seat. Karski looked on in puzzlement.

“Mr. Karski,” the Justice said after a further pause, “a man like me talking to a man like you must be totally frank. So I must say: I am unable to believe you.”

The Polish Ambassador to the US who had arranged the meeting, jumped from his seat. “Felix, you don’t mean it!” he cried. “How can you call him a liar to his face! The authority of my government is behind him. You know who he is!”
Frankfurter replied, in a soft voice filled with resignation, “Mr. Ambassador, I did not say this young man is lying. I said I am unable to believe him. There is a difference.”

After a forced exchange of pleasantries, Frankfurter and the ambassador left the room. Karski sat alone in the vast room as their footsteps echoed away.

“It’s rarely the truth itself that people can’t accept. It’s how they feel about it.”
― Karen Russell, The Antidote

The truth was too big, too awful for Justice Frankfurter to be able to believe. Everything he had seen and heard in his life, which undoubtedly contained its fair share of horror and tragedy, did not prepare him for what Karski had to say. Nothing could have. These were atrocities on a scale the likes of which the world had not seen. For him to be able to believe Mr. Karski, Justice Frankfurter would have to let go of both his ideals about human compassion and the limits of cruelty and hate. While we do not necessarily face any assaults on our worldview as severe as he did, it is no less true for us that we can accept hard truths more easily than we can accept how we feel about them.

However small it is, the destabilization of our understanding can be deeply upsetting. It comes in many forms. There is one truth, but our reactions come in many forms.

How do we feel about the truth that people are not who we think they are? Most often this happens when someone we think is a friend hurts us in a deeply personal way. Other times we watch as people who previously loved one another act with cruelty and hatred during a divorce. Other times, people who we rely on let us down when we need it most. As we often define or identify ourselves by our social circles, finding out that someone in that group is not who we thought they were shakes us. We see this in God’s at the building of the Golden Calf. God invested everything in the Israelites and God came to find that many of them worshipped a calf instead, the ultimate betrayal. It feels personal – it feels like a mark on our character, that we misjudged someone so badly. But it is not us. As the Rabbis say, “Sometimes people just suck.” That does not make it easier to take, but can help us out of our reactions and self-criticism.

People do just suck – the concept of weltschmerz is the gap between our expectations for the world and the world as it is. This sort of thing happens the first time we get scammed or robbed – anyone who has had a home or car broken into knows this sense of loss of innocence or trust. It feels awful. The world as a whole feels less safe or kind. We know bad things happen, but our sense of security is not always threatened and it is. Eventually, we get over the idea that it happened to us, but making sense of that is much harder.

We accept the truth but struggle with our feelings about it when our leaders and institutions do not live up to our shared values. Countless nations have been built on the ideas of freedom and equality, only to deny them to many. Many nations built by immigrants have closed their borders and sealed the gates after them. Politicians promise one thing and then deliver another. We have come to accept that truth maybe too easily. The whole truth is that these humans and human institutions are imperfect – but we knew that. We accepted that long ago. What we reckon with is the hurt we feel when we pinned our hopes on them only to see them dashed. We struggle with moral countries committing immoral acts. We struggle with the gap between our pride in a nation’s values and our crushing ambivalence over its actions. To the contrary, we hold onto the way we wish things were rather than hate our feelings and what their implications are. The longer we do this, the more entrenched we get, and the more hurt we are when we cannot hold on any longer.

We cannot change others and we certainly cannot change the past. We can change ourselves and how we feel is what animates that. Rabbi Abraham Twerski was sitting in the waiting room of a dentist’s office, and he came across an article entitled, “How do Lobsters Grow?” Twerski, an orthodox rabbi, thought “I don’t care about how lobsters grow.” But he read the article anyway and learned that lobsters are actually soft, mushy animals. They form the shell around themselves for protection. But while the lobsters grow, their shells do not. As they grow larger, the shell becomes too small, confining, and uncomfortable. So the lobster sheds its shell and while it is vulnerable it hides under a rock until it grows a new shell. Eventually it will grow too big for that shell, and will repeat the process again. The lobster will do this numerous times, responding to discomfort with change. We go through some of the same things. Times of stress and discomfort are also times for growth and change. We do not change until we are uncomfortable.

What do we do when the truth is uncomfortable and how we feel about it makes it worse? We dedicated ourselves to something and now we feel betrayed, abandoned – how do we accept that part of our identities has been redefined?

The Prophet Habakkuk was appalled at God’s violence. Rather than rationalize it or change his values, he raged at God:
“Why do You make me see iniquity
[Why] do You look upon wrong?—
Raiding and violence are before me,
Strife continues and contention goes on.”
Habakkuk did not give up on God. He did not recast the violence as good or right. He acknowledged his frustration and disappointment. And he directed it at God.

Our frustration, our discomfort at the world as it is can turn into action. When we come to accept that people in our lives have hurt us and may do it again, we can change our relationship. We may not be able to cut them out of our lives, but do not let how we feel about them keep victimizing us. There are upcoming elections that will have a real effect on the world. We have the power to make our voices heard, to influence the outcomes, and to work to ensure that the truth of what happens and our feelings about it are not in conflict. When it comes to ourselves, we can change. Changing ourselves might be the only thing we can change on our own. And when we are hurt over a difficult truth, change is essential.

There are many things we need to accept – truth of course. But for what we cannot accept: bad behaviors, unhealthy habits, destructive tendencies, discomfort is a good thing. If we are resigned to them we never improve. Giving in to our worst attributes means that we continue to be dissatisfied with ourselves and hurting ourselves – or others.
“It’s rarely the truth itself that people can’t accept. It’s how they feel about it.”

As Jews, we have long been tellers of truth. Our Prophetic tradition is one of people speaking truth to power, of moral voices crying out, and often of harsh and wounded reactions. Increasingly, we have also been receivers of truth, hard realities of the moral failings in our world, our nation, our communities. Both roles require us to acknowledge the uncomfortable feelings that follow hard truths.

The High Holy Days are days of truth – for even the hosts of heaven are judged. Rabbi Alexander Davis says that the High Holy Days “teach us to renew our relationships and our world.” He reminds us that last night the Torahs stood before us like judges, and today we offer confessions and truths and await our judgment.

Today we are faced with a litany of truths. We confess, we recite our sins, we are reminded again and again of those awful truths. And if we are to fix them or atone for them, we have to accept them. We probably do not like what we hear. We probably do not like how it makes us feel. And it is in that discomfort, that we find our path towards change.