I saw the article about the six blind men and the elephant in the Jewish Light (March 2). Beautiful story, probably originating in the Indian subcontinent as I have been taught, used by the 13th century Sufi poet Rumi in a sensitive way and other poets through the centuries, mostly to indicate the limitations of vision. Each person sees with his/her hands, and only knows what he touches. A good story for this article, I suppose.

What I am missing in the expansion of the metaphor is the parts of the community no one pays attention to, the parts of the elephant no one touches. There is little mention in the listing of the services to the truly untouchables – the ones we don’t speak about  – the mentally challenged, the alcoholics, drug addicts, the prisoners, the individuals who have fallen out of the community, so to speak.

I visit a different prison every week as part of the Jewish Prison Outreach. Every visit someone in the group says, “I feel forgotten. I am the one who is left out.” Every time. We also have a program at my synagogue called JAMI-StL, Jewish Attention to Mental Illness. I often hear the same message there. Shalvah is an effort of support and intervention for addicts and alcoholics that my visionary friend Rose Mass and I collaborated on a long time ago. It began in 1981. Imagine that.

About the article in the Light: I would use that metaphor of the elephant as Rumi the poet did. I would return to Rumi’s use of the image, and make it a dark room and not a group of blind men. And I would end it like Rumi does, bringing light into that room so that everyone could see what they were missing – the whole organism, the entire elephant, the complete community.

We are either a community, or we are not. A community includes everyone.

Rabbi James Stone Goodman

Congregation Neve Shalom; Jewish Prison Outreach; JAMI-StL, Jewish Attention to Mental Illness; Shalvah, Outreach on Addictions