By Rabbi Harry Zeitlin, Congregation Beth Ha’Ari
You don’t need a rabbi to let you know which way the wind blows — the world is in crisis. Massacres in Syria and Iraq and Nigeria and Mali, regional wars between Russia and Ukraine, renewed race riots in the United States, much of the world economy stuck in the doldrums, and a collapsing EU. And Israel’s almost constant battle for survival against terrorists, this time calling themselves Hamas.
With so many urgent crises, this is no time to don blinders and willfully refuse to see our challenges, our abilities, and our duties.
God created an astonishingly complex world as well as astonishingly complex and capable creatures to partner with Him. Human beings are created “B’tzelem Elohim” (in God’s image), so if God is “Kol Yachol” (capable of all, omnipotent), we have no business placing artificial limits on ourselves. (Of course, we are “b’tzelem,” in the image of and not actually God; but while we are limited, most of us, both individually and institutionally, inflate these limits and then retract them to the point that we become ineffectual).
Ultimately, we will never “absolutely know” why we were created or even why the universe was created, but our Torah does inform us that, relative to “olam,” the universe, our job is to “partner” with the Creator to bring Creation to its fullest. All mankind is mandated to be kind to all living creatures, to seek justice and to live morally — these are the seven Noahide mitzvot which bring one to the threshold of humanness and civilization. As Jews we’re also given the unique “tool” of Torah, which contains the additional 606 mitzvot, completing the 613, which, we’re taught, perform the essential spiritual functions (beyond merely “causing no harm”) that fully develop our world and ourselves.
The mandate of what has come to be called “social justice” is just as incumbent on the entire Jewish people as is our engagement with Torah and mitzvot, and while each of us must specialize, none of us can opt out of any of it. Contemporarily, you rarely see a serious, mature emphasis on mitzvah observance (which includes studying the mitzvot and their underlying logic, and not merely blind compliance or blind opposition) in progressive Jewish communities and institutions.
Likewise, while many Orthodox communities, committed to traditional Torah study and mitzvah observance, commendably look out for their constituencies, they rarely leave their own neighborhoods to join the larger Jewish community in social issues.
There is little, if any, daylight between the concepts of “olam haba/Mashiach” and “a just world;” they’re different sociological labels for the same ideal. This goal, in terms of our human contribution to it, is beyond any single-pronged approach. We both need to create a just society and also to bring an abstract and intangible holiness, “kedushah,” to the world. Additionally, this highest level of human evolution, at least as it specifically applies to the Jewish people, requires that each of us (or, at least, a critical mass of us) reaches it individually.
“Kol Yisrael arevim zeh l’zeh” (BT Shavuot 39a), the fate of all Jews is intertwined, is embedded into the fundamental structure of reality. In other words, none of us gets there until we all get there together — “Leave no Jew behind,” as it were.
One of the greatest challenges facing our people today is that those of us who focus on Torah and mitzvot too often dismiss Jews whose focus is “a just society,” and those Jews dismiss the ones whose main focus is traditional “Torah and mitzvot” observance. Additionally, we cannot (and never have been able to) dismiss or take for granted the survival of Israel and of the Jewish People (which are identical). Those who focus on the political, military and diplomatic approaches to this cannot ignore the other two priorities, and those focusing on halachic or social issues cannot turn away from Israel, especially when she is under attack. While each of us will migrate to our strength, we need to incorporate the other considerations as well into our efforts.
The genius of Judaism is that it reveals reality as infinitely dimensional, and it gives us tools to work with all this beautiful complexity.
Talmud, rather than merely generating The Rules (halachah) or relating folk-culture (aggadatah), trains us in techniques to experience, analyze and process both empirically and intuitively, directly and by inference, associatively, individually, collectively, as well as in other parameters, all at the same time.) As we refine our individual practice and experience of our Jewish tradition, we both see the world as increasingly rich and ourselves as increasingly capable.
It’s a difficult balancing act, because we can’t afford to lose effectiveness in our primary areas. But we can’t afford to lose perspective, either (and thus only worship our own orientation).
In times of crisis, which are also times of opportunity, we must join together, each of us contributing our primary efforts but also our work in those areas in which we’re not initially so gifted. It’s not merely “Leave no Jew behind,” but leave no part of ourselves behind either. All the work must be completed — we must both create and sustain a just society and create and sustain the avenues for all of God’s “sheaf,” God’s light/life energy, to flow to us in fullness — and each of us must maximally expand ourselves to fulfill our part in mankind’s destiny.
We can do this because this is what we were created for.