From the Sacred Society to a Greater Society
Thoughts
on Kedoshim
The
Dead Sea Scrolls are now on display at the California Science Center. We owe so
very much to the members of the society at Qumran, where these scrolls were
found. It was their dedication to writing the words of the prophets as well as
the words of later teachers that has given us an invaluable window on the world
of Judaism in antiquity.
These
people, identified with the Essenes and other groups of the period, were
exemplars of piety- frumkeit, to use the Yiddish expression. So frum,
that they refused to get married, bathed daily to remain pure, devoted
themselves to poverty and acts of charity. They refused to send sacrifices to
the Temple in Jerusalem, because it was, in their eyes, impure.They disassociated
themselves from their fellow Jews, whom they saw as “ The Children of Darkness”
or the “ Children of the Worthless One.”
You
might think that they would gain the respect of the great scholars for their
outstanding idealism. However, the Rabbis denounced anyone who refused
intentionally to have marital relations and the great Hillel warned, probably with such Jews in mind,” Do not
withdraw from the community, do not trust in yourself until the day of your
death, do not judge your fellow until you have put yourself in his place.(
Avoth 2:5) It was a direct challenge to those who considered themselves holier
than the rest.
The
deserts around Judea in the years that followed were filled with Christian
monasteries carved into the cliffs hundreds of feet up the side of inaccessible
mountains. The Christian monks, in many ways, followed in the path of these
Jewish monks.
Yet
Jewish monasteries disappeared and Qumran was left aruins, unknown till a
shepherd stumbled across it in 1946.
What
did we Jews do then, in the centuries before and after and during that gave us
our sense of the sacred, without running off into the desert. We definitely did
not take the advice of Hamlet to Ophelia,” Get Thee to a Nunnery”. No Ashram, no Zen meditation in splendid
isolation.
No, we
created families, we created communities, and we worked in town and country.
Our
path to sanctity is laid out in this week’s Torah portion, Kedoshim, (
Lev 19 ). Kedoshim Tihyu ,“You
shall be Holy because I , the Lord your God, am Holy.” It then goes on with a
chain of social laws, laws of fairness, laws of justice, as well as laws of
religious obligation.
Holiness
was to be found in the realities of society, with all its grit and dirt.
We Jews
are very sensitive as a result to social issues and we sometimes identify
Judaism with social justice, often to the exclusion of other values.
I confess
that like other young Jews of my generation, I flirted with socialism. At one
time, that was the route that all Jews took.
When I
was in Israel, I had worked for Israel's Labor Federation, the Histadrut, which
was closely aligned with the Labor party. I ran a program for adult Jewish
studies under their auspices At one time, every institution in Israel was
Labor based, socialist in orientation, if not to some extent also Marxist.
How
times have changed. Do you realize that I was among the last of the " Red
Rabbis"? The last May Day parade in Israel, organized by the Labor Federation,
was in 1988, and I marched under the red banner, the international socialist
banner, “Worker’s of the World Unite” banner of the Israeli Histadrut!
I also
organized a Passover Seder at Bet Berl, the college of the Labor movement, and
the Israeli newspapers wrote of the Secretary-General of the labor Federation,
that he was at our Seder, among the adumim,
among the Reds at Bet Berl.
Then the Soviet Union fell, and the color red
has fallen with it. ( I could never
stand the current usage of red for Republican and blue for Democrat, a
convention caused by cartographers, since it distorts the historic connection
of the colors, red for socialists, white
for royalist, black for anarchist and so forth. But what do map drawers and
news analysts know of history!)
Since
then, the Red banner has been changed to red and blue, and now, all blue and
the May Day parades have faded into history. Labor Party is no longer labor.
There is little economic difference in Israel between the two parties .
Tempus
mutandis-the times change everywhere.
It is
true that the strategies and theories that underlie these ideals of social
justice- these controlled societies and central planned economies proved to be
great social disasters or the world scene and even here, in the US, the image
of a Great Society has not come to be, despite vast sums of money pumped n.
Nevertheless,
the themes of the books of the Torah still disturb us. We can’t run off to the
desert. We have neither Dead Sea sects nor grand revolutionary dreams. How then
do we keep alive the sense of Kedoshim in society that of necessity, in
order to be a free society, must also be a market society, a society that
inevitably results in inequalities? How do we keep such a society form
devouring itself?
Do we, as Jews, do we still have a
social plank today?
When I
worked for the Histadrut, I tried to create a statement for a foundation of
social justice on the basis of Jewish tradition, not on the basis of Marx, nor
Lenin, but, to quote one of our old members Max Cukier, a declaration he heard
from David ben Gurion," Jewish
socialism is not from Marx-- it is from Isaiah."
What I sought was a Jewish and Judaic basis
for a true society, not a Republican, not a Democratic, not capitalist, not
socialist-but a posture rooted in Jewish social ethos.
Where
do we begin? What is our Jewish social platform?
We can
begin it with this week’s Torah portion. Our founding principal is in this very
portion:.Ve ahavta lereekha kamocha-- you shall love your neighbor as
yourself. As I pointed out last week, it extends to the stranger who seeks to
live among us as well and adopts our laws and society. (Lev 19).Our sage, Rabbi
Akiba, adopted this verse as the great principal of the Torah.
His
colleague, Ben Azzai, insisted on another principal, which does not contradict,
but really supplements this, from the book of Genesis,” Man and woman are
created in the image of God.”
In both
cases, we premise our social concern on the sanctity and holiness of the
individual human being. This is very different from the premise of Karl Marx,
very different, premise in which class and production are the only bases of
human value.
We do
have a special sense of responsibility for our fellow Jews, but that does not
exclude the rest of humanity. The Haftarah which we read today reminds us, in the words of the prophet,
Amos," Are you not like the Ethiopians unto me"-- God is God of all
nations, the mover of history for all peoples.
From
the Jewish perspective, we carry a tremendous responsibility for the life and well-being
of each person. Our Torah portion
commands us," Do not stand by idly over your brother's blood."
Do you
recall history's first recorded homicide? It was the case of God vs Cain, Cain
who killed Abel, Cain who shirked responsibility, Cain, who asked “Am I my
brother’s keeper."
The
foundation for Jewish judicial procedure is found in the Mishna, in the
tractate Sanhedrin, the court system. It is there, in the oath administered to
witnesses, that we are told,
" Whosoever destroys one life, it is as if he destroyed an entire world--
but whosoever saves one life, it is as if he saved an entire world." (This
is a position stated in the Quran)
That
same Mishna reminds us that each of us is of such great value, that we must say
" For my sake the world was created." For my
sake and there I am therefore responsible for this world. I can't shirk off my
responsibility on someone else.
That
same Mishna takes as its premise the uniqueness of each one of us . The world,
for practical purposes, may well be broken up into class, into sexes, into
races, into nations--but none of us is forced to choose right or wrong because
of our birth. Instead, our sages were amazed at the uniqueness and variation of
the human species, and so that Mishna declares: Thus, all mortals are created
in the image of the first man, all share that same common human origin, yet no
two faces and no two minds are alike. Therefore, must each one say," For
my sake the world was created."
Since
we are each in the divine image, each one of us unique, we are in principal
free from human bondage, servants only to God.
This
freedom, for the Jew, is summed up in individual responsibility for one's
actions.
We Jews
have a theory of government, as well. The Torah is the first document in
history to limit the power of the Kings, and the Talmud provides the basis for
a legislative body in the form of the Sanhedrin, and the grounds for majority
rule are present in Jewish jurisprudence. The concept of rule of society by law
is deeply imbedded in every page of Jewish history. " Zedek Zedek tirdof, You
shall pursue justice, that you may inherit the land which the Lord has given
you."
It is a
law which must be applied equally, as the Torah dictates, without regard to
wealth, without regard to country of
origin," One law shall you have, for the citizen and for the stranger who
lives in your midst."
Finally,
throughout the Torah and Rabbinic rulings, with all the exhortations to
personal responsibility which I mentioned, with all that, Jewish teachings also
recognize that human beings, by nature, look out for themselves alone.
Exhortations to be charitable and pious platitudes do not solve the problems of
society.
We know
that we can’t create an absolutely equal society. Every attempt to do so has
been drenched with blood and has bound people in immense political, social and
physical chains, far worse than the chains of capitalism. Nevertheless, we are aware that when we give
tzedakah, our sages tell us, we do not expect to get a thanks—because, they
remind us, we are protecting our own interests—we could always be next. When we
create a fair society, we are not just being nice--we are facing the truth that
our sages knew, that each one of us has the responsibility to keep our
neighbors from hitting that bottom because we could also be on the bottom.
The
challenge to the leaders of our government is to address such issues, both from
the Republican and from the Democratic sides of the aisle, and it is our
position, as Jews, to help both parties keep their eyes on the ball.
Thus words
for all, from Moses, from the book of Deuteronomy :
You
shall not subvert the rights of the stranger or the fatherless; you shall not
take a widow's garment in pawn. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and
that the Lord your God redeemed you from there...the forgotten sheaf in the
field, the fruit of the olive tree...the grapes of your vineyard...it shall go
to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow- Always remember that you were a
slave in the land of Egypt."
May we always remember what we, as individuals
and as Jews , owe our fellow human beings, that, in Moses words, The Lord your
God may bless you in all your undertakings and we can be “ Kedoshim”, Holy as a
people. Amen.
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