National Scholar Updates

Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Shemot

by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

Moses was raised by Pharaoh’s daughter who had saved him as a baby floating in a basket in the Nile river. Moses was nursed by his own mother, but once he was weaned he became the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. Moses lived in the Egyptian court.

The Torah informs us that when Moses grew up “he went out to his brothers,” i.e. the Israelites. How did Moses know they were his brothers? How did he identify himself as an Israelite if he had been raised as an Egyptian?

When God told Moses to go to Egypt to lead the Israelites to freedom, He told Moses that his brother Aaron would meet him and help him. How did Moses know he had a brother?

Later, when Moses assumed leadership of the Israelites, he spoke an eloquent Hebrew. When and where did he learn Hebrew?

The answer to these questions leads back to one person: Pharaoh’s daughter. (The Torah never tells us her name, only identifying her as Bat Par’oh, Pharaoh’s daughter.)

Bat Par’oh saved baby Moses even though she knew that Pharaoh had ordered the death of all Israelite baby boys. While this might have simply been one spontaneous act of mercy, perhaps it reflected something more about Bat Par’oh. Although an Egyptian, she felt a bond with the oppressed Israelites. Although a daughter of Pharaoh, she had humanitarian instincts that transcended her father’s palace. She saved Moses not only as an act of compassion, and not only as an act of defiance against her father’s cruel policies; she saved the Israelite baby boy because of her own identification with the suffering of the Israelites.

When she raised Moses, she apparently wanted him to know that he was an Israelite. She must have kept him in touch with his family members. She must have made sure he learned Hebrew…and she herself must have learned some Hebrew. When she first named him, she called him Moses; in Egyptian Mose means son. The Torah, though, gives a Hebrew derivation for the name: “ki min hamayim meshitihu,” for I drew him out of the water. Scholars ask: Did Bat Par’oh actually know Hebrew? Surely she gave the baby an Egyptian name, and the Torah “Hebraized” the source of the name. But maybe Bat Par’oh actually did know Hebrew and consciously chose a name that had both Egyptian and Hebrew resonance.

Midrashic sources suggest that Bat Par’oh left Egypt with Moses when he fled to Midian. The Talmud identifies her as Bithiah, mentioned in I Chronicles 4:18; Bithiah married Mered who is identified as Caleb, one of the righteous spies (Sanhedrin 19b).  Even though these identifications may be far-fetched from a historical vantage point, they underscore the essential righteousness of Bat Par’oh and her choice to become part of the Israelite people.

The Torah includes just a few lines about Bat Par’oh, not even providing readers with her name. Yet, the entire exodus story could not have happened without her heroic actions. She literally saved Moses’ life as well as imbuing him with an Israelite identity. Without her, Moses would never have developed as he did.

The Torah is teaching that even seemingly minor characters can have tremendous impact on the unfolding of history. Even people whose deeds are hardly noticed, whose names we don’t even know—even such people may be courageous beyond measure.

Rabbinic tradition identifies Bat Par’oh as Bithiah…a name meaning daughter of God. In effect, she wasn’t a “daughter” of Pharaoh, whose policies she rejected and defied. She was indeed a daughter of God, a woman of wisdom, compassion, and remarkable heroism.

There are surely Bat Par’oh personalities in all ages, including our own. They often pass their lives in relative anonymity. Their heroic actions generally go unnoticed and unappreciated. But their quiet deeds impact powerfully on their families, societies, and the world at large.

Memoirs of a Sephardic Rabbi: A Book Review by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

“A Rocky Road,” by Rabbi Abraham Levy (with Simon Rocker), Halban Publishers, London, 2017.

Rabbi Abraham Levy has been associated with the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of London for nearly six decades. Those of us who have known him over the years have been impressed with his energy, optimism, single-mindedness, devotion, British elegance…and more.

And now, he has written a volume of memoirs in which he offers candid reflections on his long service as a Sephardic rabbi. Rabbi Levy highlights his many achievements, especially in the area of Jewish education for children and adults. He writes warmly of those congregants who supported his work, who shared his ideals, and who were genuine friends to him and his family.

But he does not shy away from the less pleasant aspects of his rabbinic life. He openly discusses conflicts between himself and others of the synagogue religious and lay leadership. Indeed, the book seems to jump from one crisis to the next, some within the congregation itself and some involving other factions in the Jewish community.

He entitled his book “A Rocky Road,” as an allusion to his upbringing in Gibraltar with its famous rock; and also to the fact that his years in the rabbinate were “rocky,” with plenty of ups and downs. Throughout his long rabbinic tenure, he stayed focused on his mission to provide religious leadership to his people. His Sephardic upbringing and worldview served him well.

Growing up in the warm Sephardic Jewish community of Gibraltar, he learned to love his Judaism and its many mitzvoth. “The Judaism we experienced was never a burden nor driven by anxiety or fear. It was part of our natural habitat.” (p. 11)  The happiness and naturalness of his childhood Judaism has imbued his religious life ever since.

He also learned that a religious leader must identify with his community and must strive to create a sense of family among the various members. In a sermon he delivered in 1977, Rabbi Levy “reflected that a rabbi can only be effective in his work if he is prepared to identify with congregants in their times both of joy and festivity and of sorrow and calamity. A rabbi could not be a detached spectator.” (p. 42) 

In a sermon he gave on Rosh Hashana in 1987, marking his 25^th anniversary with his congregation, he stated that “while there had been quiet and productive years, a few had been tempestuous and unhappy. I compared the role of the rabbi to that of a shofar. The protracted single blast of tekiah was a wake up call, urging people to think what more they should do to improve the religious lives of themselves and their children. It didn’t always make the rabbi popular…The broken three-note sequence of shevarim, the sound of lament, represented the rabbi’s sharing in the troubles of his congregants and holding their hand in times of need. The staccato burst of teruah—blown in biblical days as a rally to war—was a summons to action. For if I believe that something needs doing I will continue to blow the notes of teruah into everybody’s ears until hopefully it gets done.” (p. 62)

Rabbi Levy, like most (all?) rabbis, had to deal with various synagogue leaders who were less than ideal. “When it came to lay leaders, I always made a basic distinction: there were those who brought honour to the office and those who sought honour from the office…I prayed for honorary officers who were successful in their careers and happy at home because if they were frustrated or unfulfilled, they tended to make the rabbi’s job more difficult.” (p. 116) How difficult it is for a rabbi—and for the congregation as a whole—if synagogue leaders are rude, egotistical, control-freaks. Improper leaders, bent on seeking honor for themselves, end up causing vast damage to the spiritual and material health of the congregation.

Rabbi Levy’s Sephardic ideology shines through his book of memoirs.  He expressed pride in the fact that Sephardim “can present a religious interpretation of Judaism which does not have an ideological adjective such as Orthodox or Reform attached to it…We Sephardim, with a little give and take, have always managed to have only one Jewish community.” (p. 143)

In looking back on his rabbinic career, he confessed: “I have tried not to deviate from the values I inherited from my parents and their family before them. We all remain sentimentally attached to the traditions we grew up with, but I continue to espouse the classical Sephardi outlook out of conviction that it remains important in a polarized Jewish world…I remain a defiant centrist.” (p. 235)   As the religious ground has shifted to the right, “I came to occupy a lonelier position in the middle of the road.” (p. 233)

Rabbi Levy broods over the growing dissension within the Orthodox community, and within the larger Jewish community. Factionalism is rife. Extremism increases. Harold Levy, the former warden of Jews’ College, once remarked: “We are becoming a dumb-bell religion.” He meant, we are becoming thin in the middle and heavy on the extremes. (p. 111) Rabbi Levy takes genuine pride in the school he established and which has provided strong Jewish and general education to its students. Many families have become more religiously observant thanks to the influence of the school. Yet, some of the graduates have gone on to become more “right wing” Orthodox, and have turned away from the classic Sephardic religious moderation.

    In reading Rabbi Levy’s “A Rocky Road,” we call to mind another road mentioned in a poem by Robert Frost, The Road not Taken.  “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--/ I took the one less traveled by,/ And that has made all the difference.” Rabbi Abraham Levy, as a young man, could have chosen many roads to live a happy and fulfilling life. He chose the rabbinate, a road less traveled by—and that has made all the difference to him, his family, and his community.

How the Torah Broke with Ancient Political Thought[1]

by Joshua Berman

For some, the proposition that the Torah needs to be understood in its ancient context seems to diminish from the sacredness and divinity of the text. However, it is precisely through appreciating the Torah in its ancient context that we can arrive at a set of illuminating insights into how the Torah stands out from that context and reveals its divinity, particularly in its approach to political thought.

In ways that were astonishingly new and counterintuitive, and in ways that served the purposes of no known interest group, the political philosophy of the Torah rose like a phoenix out of the intellectual landscape of the ancient Near East. Throughout the ancient world the truth was self-evident: All men were not created equal. It is in the five books of the Torah that we find the birthplace of egalitarian thought. When seen against the backdrop of ancient norms, the social blueprint espoused by the Torah represents a series of quantum leaps in a sophisticated and interconnected matrix of theology, politics, and economics.

Equality: A Brief History

To appreciate the claim that the Torah represents the dawn of egalitarian thought, let us set the idea in historical perspective. It is only in the European revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that we find the rejection of the privileges of rank and nobility that resulted in the delegitimation of entrenched caste, feudal, and slave systems. Greece and Rome had known their respective reformers, yet nowhere in the classical world do we find a struggle to do away with class distinctions. Nor do we find this articulated as a desideratum by any of the ancient authors in their ideal systems. “From the hour of their birth,” wrote Aristotle, “some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.”[2] It was assumed that some would be rich and that many, many more would be poor—not simply because that was the way things were, but because that was the way things were actually supposed to be. Justice, for Aristotle, meant that equals would be treated as equals and unequals as unequals. The Greeks and Romans possessed an overwhelming belief in the harmony of various classes.

The medieval mindset, too, believed that an ordered society was one in which each socioeconomic class performed its tasks for the common good. Social stratification was likewise endemic to the empires and lands of the ancient Near East. Nowhere in the region is there articulated the ideal of a society without class divisions founded on the control of economic, military, and political power. It is not merely that the notion of social mobility was unknown to the ancient world; it would have been unthinkable. These cultures believed that the only way that a society could function was if everyone knew his or her station in life. The modern ideas of free choice and equal opportunity would have struck them as surefire recipes for anarchy and chaos. It is in the books of the Torah that we find the world’s first blueprint for a social and religious order that seeks to lessen stratification and hierarchy and to place an unprecedented emphasis on the well-being and status of the common person.

Religion and Class in the Ancient World

The Torah’s revolution of political thought begins with its theology. The attempt to treat things political as distinct from things religious is a thoroughly modern notion; in not a single culture in the ancient Near East is there a word for “religion” as distinct from “state.” To appreciate the ancient mindset and the conceptual default settings that it supplied, imagine that we are archaeologists digging up an ancient culture called “America.” Deciphering its religious texts, we discover that the paramount god of the pantheon bore the title “Commander in Chief,” resided in a heavenly palace called “White House,” and would traverse the heavens in his vehicle, “Chariot One.” We further discover that Commander in Chief had a consort known as “First Lady”—herself a goddess of apparently meager powers, yet assumed by some to be a barometer of desirable values and fashionable dress. In the heavens was another palace, this one domed and populated by 535 lesser, regional deities, who routinely schemed and coalesced into partisan groupings, and who were known, on occasion, to have been able to depose the Commander in Chief.

Put differently, what we would discover is that the institutional order “down below” manifests the divine order of the cosmos “up above.” This phenomenon, wherein the political structure of the heavens mirrored that of the earthly realm, was widespread in the ancient world, and it is easy to see why. Political regimes are, by definition, artificial, constructed, and therefore tenuous. Always implicit is the question: Why should he reign? The imposed institutional order can receive immeasurable legitimation, however, if the masses underfoot believe that it is rooted in ultimate reality and unchanging truth, that the significance of the political order is located in a cosmic and sacred frame of reference. Ancient religion is the self-interested distortion that masks the human construction and exercise of power.

For example, we find that Enlil, the chief god of the Mesopotamian pantheon, utterly resembles his earthly counterpart, the king. Enlil, like his earthly counterpart, rules by delegating responsibilities to lesser dignitaries and functionaries. Like his earthly counterpart, he presides over a large assembly. He resides in a palace with his wives, children, and extended “house.” Generally speaking, the gods struggled to achieve a carefree existence and enjoyed large banquets in their honor. Like kings, gods needed a palace, or what we would call a temple, where they, too, could reside in splendor in separation from the masses, with subjects caring for them in a host of earthly matters.

If a god wanted something—say a temple repaired, or the borders expanded—he communicated through various agents with the king, and the king was his focus. The gods never spoke to the masses, nor imparted instruction to them. Within ancient cosmologies, the masses served a single purpose: to toil and offer tribute. They were servants, at the lowest rung of the metaphysical hierarchy. The gods were interested in the masses to the extent that a baron or feudal lord would have interest in ensuring the well-being of the serfs that run the estate and supply its needs. Servants, no doubt, play a vital role in any monarchical order, but it is an instrumental role. From an existential perspective, it is a decidedly diminished and undignified role.

Religion and Class in the Torah

By contrast, the Torah’s central accounts—the Exodus and the Revelation at Sinai—preempt claims of election and immanent hierarchy within the Israelite nation. The Exodus story effectively meant that no member of the children of Israel could lay claim to elevated status. All emanate from the Exodus—a common, seminal, liberating, but most importantly equalizing event. Although we normally think of the Revelation at Sinai in religious terms, its political implications are no less dramatic, and constitute the bedrock of the Torah’s egalitarian theology. Elsewhere, the gods communicated only to the kings, and had no interest in the masses. But at Sinai, God spoke only to the masses, without delineating any role whatever for kings and their attendant hierarchies. The ancients had no problem believing that the gods could split the seas, or descend on a mountaintop in a storm of fire. Nevertheless, the stories of the Exodus and Sinai necessitated an enormous stretch of the imagination, because they required listeners to believe in political events that were without precedent and utterly improbable, even in mythological terms. Slaves had never been known to overthrow their masters. Gods had never been known to speak to an entire people.

The pact or covenant between God and Israel displays many common elements with what are known in biblical studies as ancient Near Eastern vassal treaties, which were formed between a great king and a weaker one. In these treaties, we typically find that the more powerful king acts on behalf of a weaker, neighboring king; sensing an opportunity to foster a loyal ally, he may send food during a famine, or soldiers to break a siege. In return, the lesser king demonstrates his appreciation to the powerful one by agreeing to a series of steps that express his gratitude and fealty. In these treaties the vassal king retains his autonomy and is treated like royalty when he visits the palace of the powerful king. Having been saved from Egypt by God, the children of Israel sign on at Sinai to a vassal treaty as sign of fealty, becoming junior partners to the sovereign king, God. The theological breakthrough of the Torah was the transformation of the metaphysical status of the masses, of the common person, to a new height, and the vitiation of nobles, royalty, and the like. The common man, in short, received an upgrade from king’s servant to servant king.

Yet no less significant is the Torah’s call that these stories should be promulgated among the people as their history. The point requires a note of context for us as moderns. Although there are over one million inscriptions in our possession from the ancient Near East, there is nowhere evidence of a national narrative that a people tells itself about its collective, national life, of moments of achievement or of despair, recorded for posterity. Stories abound in the ancient Near East—but they revolve around the exploits of individual gods, kings, and nobles. The most important audience of these materials was the gods themselves—as witnessed by the fact that these texts were often discovered in temple libraries, buried, or in other inaccessible locations. Myths were recited to remind the gods of their responsibilities. Details of a king’s achievements on the battlefield were to constitute a report to a deity about the king’s activities on his or her behalf; they were not composed for the masses. The Kadesh Inscriptions of Rameses II were the exception that proves the rule: Those inscriptions were not only textual, but pictorial; and they were not only carved on stone, but copied and disseminated via papyri. However, most inscriptions of royal activity in ancient times were limited to monumental structures in writing that was inaccessible to the common person.

We may take a page from the history of technology of communication to understand the implication of the Torah’s call to promulgate the accounts of Israel’s early history. The distribution of printed texts in the early modern period is said to have occasioned the birth of modern citizenship within the nation-state. The vernacular languages that were now fashioned and standardized led to the creation of newspapers and novels designed for a mass readership comprised of people who were in disparate locales but could now envision themselves as a public sharing a common heritage, destiny, and range of interests—religious, social, and political. People could now imagine themselves as a political collective, and thus was born the political “we.”

It is in the Torah that we see for the first time the realization that the identity of a people may be formed around an awareness of its past. Indeed, the Hebrew Bible is the first work of literature before the Hellenistic period that may be termed a national history. Moreover, the Torah displays an attitude toward the dissemination of texts among the populace that is in sharp contrast to the relationship between texts and society that we find elsewhere in the ancient Near East. It is a contrast, further, that is a reflection of the egalitarian agenda that the Torah seeks to pursue, over against the entrenchment of class distinctions. In an age and place such as our own, where literacy is nearly ubiquitous, access to texts of many kinds and the knowledge they bear is unfettered and, in theory, available to all. But in the ancient world physical access to written texts and the skills necessary to read them were everywhere highly restricted. Indeed, in the cultures of the ancient Near East as well as of ancient Greece, the production and use of texts was inextricably bound up with the formation of class distinctions: Those who possessed the capacity to read and write were members of a trained scribal class who worked in the service of the ruling order.

Writing in the ancient Near East was originally a component of bureaucratic activity. Systems of writing were essential for the administration of large states. Indeed, the elite in these cultures had a vested interest in the status quo, which prevented others from gaining control of an important means of communication. Far from being interested in its simplification, scribes often chose to proliferate signs and values. The texts produced in Mesopotamia were composed exclusively by scribes and exclusively for scribal use—administrative or cultic—or for the training of yet other scribes.

The Cambridge anthropologist Jack Goody notes that a culture’s willingness to disseminate its religious literature inevitably reflects an emphasis on the individual within that culture.[3] The comment sheds light on the Torah’s agenda to establish an ennobled egalitarian citizenry, as we are witness to an impetus within the biblical vision to share the divine word with the people of Israel. Moses reads the divine word to the people at Sinai (Ex. 24:1–8). Periodically, the people are to gather at the Temple and hear public readings of the Torah (Deut. 31:10–13). It is telling that the Tanakh never depicts kohanim or scribes as jealous or protective of their writing skills, as is found in neighboring cultures.

In sum, we have seen something remarkable about the most basic, familiar aspects of the Torah. The idea of covenant; the story of the Exodus; the fact that the Torah is a written, publicized text—these are as significant politically as they are religiously. They each point to the equal and high standing of the common person in Israel.

The Torah’s Radical Conception of Political Office

Turning from theology, we see that the Torah radically revamped regnant notions of political office and the exercise of power. What is most striking about the Torah’s statements on political office are two radical ideas about how these offices are to be governed. First, we are witness here to the transition from the law of rule to the rule of law. Elsewhere in the ancient world, the kings composed and promulgated law, but were above it, not subject to it. Before the thinkers of Athens came along, the Torah arrived at the notion of equality before the law. All public institutions in the Torah—the judiciary, the priesthood, the monarchy, the institution of prophecy—are subordinated to the law. Moreover, the law is a public text whose dictates are meant to be widely known, thus making abuse of power more obvious and safeguarding the common citizenry.

Second, we may see that the most important body of authority in the polity envisioned by the Torah is none other than the people themselves. The Torah addresses the fraternal and egalitarian citizenry in the second person, “you,” and charges them with appointing a king—if they desire one—and appointing judges. Put differently, the Torah specifies no nominating body for appointing leaders or representatives. Rather, the collective “you”—the common citizenry—bears ultimate responsibility to choose a king and to appoint judges. From American history we know how unthinkable it was only a few generations ago for many to contemplate the notion that persons of color or women should play a role in choosing who rules. For the royal monarchies of the ancient Near East, the notion that the masses—who elsewhere were serfs and servants—would hold any sway over those that ruled them was equally unfathomable.

If the people did elect to have a king, the Torah was determined that he should be but a shadow of what a king was elsewhere. Elsewhere kings played central roles in the cult. In the Torah he plays none. Elsewhere, the king aims to build a strong army. The Torah calls for him to have a limited treasury and to forgo a cavalry (Deut. 17:16–17), limitations that would leave him commanding only a small army. Moreover, were a royal chariot force to serve as the backbone of the nation’s defense, it would inevitably emerge as an elite military class. The great jurist of Athens, Solon, extended preferred status to the members of the cavalry over other citizens. But what confers status in the Torah is citizenship in the covenantal community, and this is shared by all. Elsewhere, the king would consolidate his power through a network of political marriages. The Torah forbids the king from taking a large number of wives (Deut. 17:17).

Finally, we see in the Torah a page in the history of constitutional thought, one that would not be written again until the American founding. It pertains to a highly advanced notion of the separation of powers. Classical Greek political thought had already understood that in the absence of a strong center in the figure of a monarch or a tyrant, factionalism threatened the stability of the polity. It was inevitable that the population would contain rich and poor, nobles and commoners. The absence of homogeneity led classical theorists to balance power by ensuring that each faction within society would receive a share of the rule. Yet, the balance of power was not a balance of institutions of government, as we are accustomed to today. Rather, the balance was achieved by allowing each of the socioeconomic factions a functioning role within each seat of government. Thus, in Roman jurist Polybius’ conception, the legislative branch of government in the republic was to consist of two bodies—the senate for the nobles and the assembly for the commoners—with each institution permanently enshrined in law.

The notion that the effective division of power was predicated upon its distribution across preexisting societal seats of power was one that would hold sway throughout most of the history of republican thought, from Roman theorists through early modern thinkers. It is central even to the thinking of Montesquieu, the father of modern constitutional theory, who is credited with proposing the separation of powers into three branches—executive, legislative, and judiciary—in his 1748 work, The Spirit of the Laws. Looking at the English model of his day, Montesquieu held that the legislative power should consist of a body of hereditary nobles and of a body of commoners. He saw hereditary nobility not as a necessary evil, nor even as an immutable fact of life, but rather as a boon to effective government. The nobility, with its inherent wealth and power, would serve as a moderating force within government against the abuses of the monarch. Moreover, the fact that the nobility’s strength was derived from its own resources would endow its members with a sense of independence. This, together with developed education and time for reflection, would enable the nobles to contribute to effective government in a way that members of the lower classes could not. Montesquieu could not conceive of a classless society and a regime in which the division of powers was purely institutional and instrumental, where the eligibility to hold office was independent of class.

Here the Torah stands distinct. For the first time in history we see the articulation of a division of at least some powers along lines of institution and instrument rather than of class and kinship, where office legitimizes preexisting societal seats of power. Anyone who is “among your brethren” (Deut. 17:15) is eligible to be appointed king. Moreover, the king is appointed by the collective “you” that we mentioned before. How that selection occurs, apparently, is an issue that the Torah deliberately left open so as to imply that there is no body that a priori has a greater divine imprimatur than any other. In this sense, the Torah’s notion of offices that are entirely institutional and instrumental is an idea that would again appear only with the American Founding Fathers.

The same is true with regard to the judiciary, as outlined in the book of Deuteronomy. Anyone may be appointed judge, and no less importantly, anyone, in theory, is eligible to participate in the process of appointing judges (Deut. 16:17). One could have thought of any number of bodies that could have been charged with appointing judges: the king, the prophets, the kohanim, or other judges. But the Torah insists: “Judges and officers you shall appoint for yourself” (16:18). The appointment of judges is mandated with the sole purpose of achieving the execution of justice, rather than the assignment of office to perpetuate the standing of a noble class. As Montesquieu noted in the eighteenth century, it is critical that the people appoint judges, so that they have faith in the justice that is meted out. The only source prior to Montesquieu to arrive at this insight was the Torah.

God the Economist

The Torah understood that in order to create an egalitarian order, it would also need to re-envision the economic structure of society, for without equity, there is no equality. What the Torah proposes is the Western tradition’s first prescription for an economic order that seeks to minimize the distinctions of class based on wealth, and instead to ensure the economic benefit of the common citizen.

A ubiquitous feature of the socioeconomic landscape of the ancient Near East was the threat faced by the common person of falling into irreversible insolvency. Social stratification would emerge as the common people would have to sell off their farm animals, their land, and even their own freedom to repay debts. Famine, drought, or war could lead to precisely the kind of economic landscape we witness in the account of Egypt under Joseph, in Genesis 47. The Torah sought to remedy this through radical legislation on several fronts. Elsewhere, the norm was that land was owned by the palace and by the temple. The Torah, in contrast, knows of no land holding for either king or cult. Instead, nearly the entire land is given to the people themselves, in an association of free farmers and herdsmen, subsumed within a single social class. The idea that wide tracts of available land should be divided among the commoners was unprecedented. Perhaps the most famous example of such an initiative from modern times is the American Homestead Act of 1862. With the Great Plains open to mass settlement, nearly any person 21 years of age or older could acquire, at virtually no cost, a tract of 160 acres that would become his after five years of residence and farming. For millions of new arrivals and other landless Americans, the Homestead Act was an opportunity to acquire assets and to bring equality of economic standing in line with equality before the law.

The Torah also took specific aim at the institution of taxation. Elsewhere, taxes to the state and to the cult were deeply integrated. In the Torah, no taxes are specified for the state. Of course, no regime would be able to function without taxing its populace—but the Torah apparently envisioned that taxes would be levied without sacral sanction, as was so prevalent elsewhere. God would not be invoked as the tax collector. Moreover, far less surplus is demanded from the people of Israel for the Temple than was customary in the imperial cults of the ancient Near East.

Whereas elsewhere cultic personnel controlled vast tracts of land, the Torah balances the status that these groups maintain in the cult by denying them arable lands of their own. They are dependent upon the people they represent for their subsistence, and in some passages are even grouped together with other categories of the underprivileged. The Torah further legislates that one type of tax—the ma’aser ani—should not be paid to the Temple at all, but rather distributed to the needy—the first known program of taxation legislated for a social purpose (Deut. 14:28–29).

What is most remarkable about the Torah’s economic reforms is the manner in which the new economy is incorporated into a new measure of time. Elsewhere in the ancient Near East, the calendar was based upon readily perceptible astronomical rhythms: The counting of days stems from observing the rising and setting of the sun; of months, from observations of the waxing and waning of the moon; of years, from observing the seasons and position of the sun. The ancient Near East, however, knows no calendar that incorporates the notion of a week. The week is the invention of the Torah, and is rooted, of course, in the Torah’s account of Creation, in which God worked for six days and rested on the seventh. The result is that throughout the Torah the Shabbat principle determines the schedule of the laws of social welfare, and serves as a great equalizing force between haves and have-nots. Shabbat day is a day of rest for all. In the seventh year—the Sabbatical year—the field lies fallow and is available for all to enjoy, and debt release is enacted. Time itself is marshaled in the establishment of the egalitarian agenda.

A Revolutionary Document

What power interest could have been served by this program? We have already seen that it was a program that favored neither the king, nor the rich, nor the priesthood. Prophets are hardly mentioned in the Torah, and the criteria set out for validating an individual as a prophet are exacting in the extreme. Sages or philosophers are nowhere mentioned at all. No immediate candidate jumps out of the pages of the Torah as the interested party in the formulation of this new egalitarian order.

Throughout the ancient world, the truth was self-evident: All men were not created equal. They saw the world they had created and, behold, it was good. It was good, they deemed, because it was ordered around a rigid hierarchy, where everyone knew his station in life, each according to his class. For the first time in history, the Torah presented a vision to the masses in which the gods were something other than their own selves writ large, a vision with a radically different understanding of God and humanity. It introduced new understandings of the law, of political office, of military power, of taxation, of social welfare. It conceived in radically new ways the importance of national narrative, of technologies of communication, and of a culture’s calibration of time. What we find in the Torah is a platform for social order marked with the imprint of divinity. Within the annals of political thought it is difficult to think of another document that revolutionized so much in such anonymity, and with so little precedent to inspire it.

Of course, these notions of equality are but early precursors of our more developed notions of equality today. Yet, the Torah instructs us with the implicit understanding that society changes, and with it, the form in which we fulfill God’s will. We can marvel at how utterly removed the Torah’s political thought was from the prevailing spirit about such things in ancient times. And, at the same time, we can appreciate that without believing that we are limited to the notion of equality as it had been expressed in those ancient times. Rather, the Torah serves as an inspiration for the further elaboration of those ideas as times change and events warrant so doing.

Book Review

Rabbi Dr. Marc D. Angel, Sephardim Sephardism and Jewish Peoplehood (Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals: 2022), 266 pages.

By Rabbi Hayyim Angel

          Imagine an authentic vision of Judaism fully rooted in tradition. A vision that properly represents the particularistic covenant between God and Israel through the Torah and halakhah. A vision that properly represents the universalistic aspect of God as Creator of the entire cosmos, where Israel has a role to play in the community of nations. A vision that learns from the best of traditional Jewish thinkers—Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and beyond, so that we may broaden our discourse in discussing complex contemporary issues. A vision that learns from the best of human wisdom. A vision that embraces the classical Jewish values of questioning, critical-mindedness, and diversity. A vision that demands that Jewish communal institutions be faithful to halakhah, while incorporating all Jews, regardless of background or level of observance. A vision entirely true to the axioms of Judaism, while being humble enough to recognize that the rest of humanity may pursue its own religious worldviews.

          For over half of a century, Rabbi Marc D. Angel has taught that we can realize this vision. After a long and distinguished career as Rabbi at Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, he founded the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals in 2007 to promote his religious worldview to a much wider audience.

All but one of the essays in this volume have been published previously in various books and journals. This collection reflects many of Rabbi Angel’s “greatest hits” in representing his grand religious worldview, his Sephardic role models, and the central tenets of the ideology that animate us at the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

          Jewish diversity is celebrated by Jewish tradition, which mandates the blessing Barukh Hakham HaRazim, the one who understands the root and inner thoughts of each individual, upon seeing throngs of Jews (Berakhot 58a). In contrast, the Talmud ascribes forced societal tyranny and conformity to the wicked City of Sodom, which used the notorious Procrustean bed on its visitors to ensure conformity (Sanhedrin 109b).

          Teaching Sephardic thinkers, customs, and history to all Jews is vital on many levels. Halakhic decisors must consider the learned opinions of both Sephardic and Ashkenazic responsa before reaching conclusions on today’s complex halakhic questions. Educators must be informed of Sephardic traditions and convey them as part of the wholeness of the Jewish people. Rabbis and teachers cannot be expected to know every custom or legal opinion throughout Jewish tradition, but certainly can be held to the standard of teaching an openness to diversity and willingness to learn new ideas and customs. On the negative side, Rabbi Angel cites several painful personal experiences from when he was a student, where several rabbis and teachers negated the validity of long-standing Sephardic practices and traditions.

          When people shut down other valid opinions, Judaism itself is harmed and the Jewish community suffers. Overly dogmatic, authoritarian, or superstitious worldviews likewise compromise the grand religious tradition of the Torah which instills a pursuit of truth, embraces debate, teaches openness, critical-mindedness, and humility, and grows closer to God through arguments for the sake of Heaven.

          Many of Rabbi Angel’s articles were previously published in our own journal, Conversations, or in other publications largely of the Orthodox world. However, his reach extends far beyond that. One essay, entitled “Sephardim, Sephardism, and Jewish Peoplehood,” was published in a collection of essays by the Central Conference of American Rabbis of the Reform Movement. Rabbi Angel expresses the need for all Jews to highlight the strengths of their respective communities and come together under the Sephardic communal model where institutions are committed to halakhah while people represent the range of observances. He even dares to dream that

The day will surely come when all Jews—of whatever background—will come to view each other as “us”—as one people with a shared history and shared destiny…I think that not only will ethnic divisions become increasingly irrelevant, but the division of Jews into religious “streams” will also decline. A century from now, I don’t think it will be important for Jews to identify as Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Renewal or any other subdivision (16).

Another essay, entitled “Theological Unity,” is based on the remarks of Rabbi Angel at a conference at the United Nations on “Religious Pluralism and Tolerance” under the sponsorship of the Kingdom of Bahrain. We are part of one humanity, all created in God’s Image, who have much to learn and appreciate from one another.

          Through over 53 years in the rabbinate, Rabbi Angel has consistently advocated these principles and has articulated models of how the entire Jewish community can benefit from this worldview. This new collection of essays is a wonderful entry point into Rabbi Angel’s vision—and with that an entry point into several of the great luminaries and ideas that Judaism ever has produced.

We thank all of our members and supporters at the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, for helping us promote and realize this vision in schools and communities worldwide.

Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Vayhi

by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

Among Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s lectures was one that dealt with the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. “A grandfather stands before his newly born grandchild filled with paradoxical thoughts. Feelings of renewal merge with fading memories of the past.”

A grandparent gazes at grandchildren with a sense of wonder. Fifty, sixty and more years may separate them. The grandparent is part of the “old generation,” while the grandchildren are part of a new world with new challenges and opportunities. Yes, the grandparent feels a sense of family continuity—but also a sense of anxiety. Will we—of different generations—feel a sense of harmony, a common history and destiny? Will we be able to talk to each other heart to heart? Or will alienation set in? Will the grandchildren have different life agendas than we have?

The larger question is: how can we hold our community and culture together from generation to generation? How do we avoid the ubiquitous problem of “the generation gap”?

The Mishnah (Eduyot 2:9) cites the opinion of Rabbi Akiba, who stated that parents transmit 6 characteristics to their children: physical appearance, strength, wealth, wisdom, longevity. The sixth quality is “mispar ha-dorot lefanav”, the number of generations before them. But what exactly does this mean?

Children are not born into a historical vacuum. They are heirs to the generations of their family going back through the centuries and millennia. In the case of Jewish children (and grandchildren), they are not only heirs to their particular family’s traditions, but “inherit” all the previous generations of the Jewish people going back to the time of Abraham and Sarah.

The challenge to the older generations is to transmit to the new generations a feeling of connectedness with the past. We introduce our children and grandchildren to “the number of generations before them”, so that they come to see the biblical characters of thousands of years ago as part of their own group of close friends. We teach them that “we” were slaves in Egypt; that “we” were redeemed; that “we” built the Temples in Jerusalem; that “we” went into exile. Rashi and Rambam “are” our teachers. Our earlier generations continue to live in our memories, and are a presence in our lives. We want our children and grandchildren to understand that they are engaged in a life-long dialogue among all the generations of their family and of their people. What a wonderful gift to give children! And what a tragedy when this gift is not conveyed!

In a traditional religious setting, there need not be a generation gap where alienation sets in between the generations. In some unique, mysterious way, the different generations see themselves as contemporaries. We share a spiritual outlook, a set of ideals, a style of living according to the mitzvoth. We have the gift of “the number of generations before us”.

In this week’s Parasha, Jacob gives his blessing to his grandchildren, Joseph’s sons, praying that “the angel who redeemed me from all evil will bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.” Jacob wanted continuity from generation to generation; he wanted the grandchildren to cherish the names and ideals of their grandparents and forebears; he wanted the family to grow and prosper, spreading the word of God throughout the land.

These are the blessings we pray for our own children, grandchildren and generations yet to come. Od Avinu Hai, Am Yisrael Hai.

Modern Orthodox and Haredi Judaisms have traditionally been distinguished on the basis of attitudes in three areas: secular knowledge and education, Israel and Zionism, and the role of women. We can safely add a fourth theme that has gained prominence over the last two or three decades: Daas Torah---is the authority of great Rabbis limited to their expertise in Jewish law, or does it extend to other realms, such as science and politics?

It now appears that a fifth theme is emerging, and a critical one: the place of Jews in the world, or our very mission here on earth.

What difference or division could there be in this regard? Is it not the case that Haredi and Modern Orthodox Jews agree that our obligation, our purpose is to obey God and observe the 613 mitzvot, to do what is required and abstain from that which is prohibited?

Yet perhaps right here is where we might locate the beginnings of a division. That is, is there a purpose, any mission beyond the observance of the mitzvos? Do we not have a mission over and above this, to change or repair or perfect the world? Perhaps to spread ethical monotheism? Perhaps to bring about the coming of Mashiach? Serve as a light unto the nations?

Or maybe it is not our job to figure out or define the purpose of our mission, but rather only the means? We observe the mitzvos, and let God take care of the rest. Another variation of this approach would claim that our performance of mitzvos, our study of Torah, themselves change the world for the better--that, for example, Israel is protected primarily by the study of Torah and not by its military power, that Torah scholars do more than soldiers to defend the nation.

Such an approach, I would suggest is, more or less, the Haredi orientation towards Jewish mission.

And what follows from such an orientation? First, Jewish mission does not require much or any engagement with non-Jews or the world outside of the Jewish or observant Jewish community. We can accomplish our mission, perfect the world, and never communicate with anyone but Jews. Second, and a logical consequence, some 99.7% of the world population remains inconsequential to the purpose of God's creation, serving, at best, as extras on the Jewish stage, unimportant players in God's play for the Jews. And therefore, from this perspective, perhaps Jews are created "more" in the image of God than non-Jews.

To many, this arrangement might appear odd. Why create a world of several billion self-aware people, and designate only a few million of them as consequential to the story of life? Why then not create only Jews?

And so there is another approach to these matters, one exemplified by such groups as Uri L’Zedek, such between-semester programs as those sponsored and organized by Yeshiva University's Center for the Jewish Future, and overall more characteristic of a Modern Orthodox outlook. It is a world where both Jews and non-Jews are important players in God's plan, and are created equally in the image of God. Where Jews have roles and responsibilities in ending hunger and protecting the environment, where Jews act as paragons of ethics in business dealings and not defend themselves as acting to the strict letter of the law to excuse apparent or even clear moral lapses.

Of course, we remain obligated by the mitzvos and do not replace Judaism with a distorted notion of Tikkun Olam. But neither do we absent ourselves from the great ethical and political issues of our times. Rather, we become leaders and examples and demonstrate that Orthodox Judaism and Orthodox Jews remains relevant to the larger world. We find here a core notion that we are partners with God in the perfection of the world, and not the only essential performers on God's stage, and certainly not puppets in a divine production (according to an even more extreme formulation, where nothiong happens in the world, not a single movement of a single ant, without God orchestrating it).

In such differences, we can see the emergence of a prominent fault line separating Haredi and Modern Orthodox orientations to the world, a distinction as significant as those over secular knowledge, the religious meaning of the state of Israel, the role of women, and the authority of the Rabbis.

We Jews, including Orthodox Jews, do not much use the word mission, having largely ceded the term to adherents of other religions, and we certainly are not missionaries in the sense of seeking converts as a means of perfecting the world (though we welcome those who wish to join us). Yet a sense of mission is critical to giving our lives shape and meaning, and perhaps we ought to use the term more frequently and consider more thoughtfully the mission of our existence.

On more than one occasion, I heard Rav Mordechai Gifter zt”l tell the following story.

Rav Eliyahu Eliezer Grodnanski, the son-in-law of Rav Yisroel Salanter engaged his daughter to a young man, Chaim Ozer Grodzensky. Since the Kallah’s grandfather, Reb Yisroel, had not traveled to attend the vort [a learned speech made by the bridegroom], Rav Eliyahu Eliezer wrote his father-in-law, informing him of his granddaughter’s engagement, and enclosed the divrei Torah that the Hattan [groom] had delivered at the vort. Reb Yisroel wrote back, “Mazal Tov. I received your letter, and from the divrei Torah that you enclosed I can see that the Hattan is indeed a talmid hakham [wise scholar]. However the biblical verse says, “Et biti natati L’Ish hazeh…ve’al haIsh lo katavta li meuma!” (“I gave my daughter to this man, but you wrote me nothing about the man, i.e. the mentch.)¹

When we speak of the midot and derekh erets of a person, that is, the character traits of the person as expressed in his or her actual behavior, we speak of the man/mentch himself. Thus, when we speak of imbuing children with good midot and derekh erets, we are speaking of the creation of the total mentch that he or she can become. This quest cannot be accomplished by measures that address only a part of that whole. We must address the whole person.

Over the years, I have heard, read, and participated in many debates on the most important variables are that affect midot and derekh erets, as well as in attempts to implement programs to instill these qualities in our children. In these conversations, some have argued for our schools to teach midot more, that is, to tell children what proper moral behavior is. Others have argued that the teaching of midot can only come from the home, by example. Some have advocated the intense study of mussar (ethics), while others have created midot programs in which children are not merely told what moral behavior is; they are taught about midot, in organized lessons, complete with worksheets and homework assignments. Still others have instituted school-based hessed programs, with academic credit awarded for the participation in set number of hours of hessed, or volunteer community service.

All of these programs base themselves on underlying theories (generally not explicitly articulated) about what it is that will produce good midot in our children. Those who believe that good moral and ethical character stems from proper moral thinking teach midot via the subject matter of halakha and mussar, i.e., learning to think about right and wrong. Those who believe that good moral and ethical character stems from learning how to behaveproperly focus on providing children with good models for behavior and/or with institutionally based rules for behavior with the implementation of consequences and discipline for infractions of the midot and derekh erets rules. Then there are those who believe that children will learn to do good only by actually doing good; not by learning about doing good. They advocate enticing or demanding that children actively engage in hessed programs. These approaches address the cognitions, and the behaviors of our children, and to a lesser extent, and only indirectly, their affect.² Most educators feel that these programs are ineffective or not effective enough. In a previous article I described some of the failings in our system when it comes to midot.³ Educators and parent advocates of midot programs, judging a program to be ineffective or not as effective as they would like it to be, have a tendency to do what seems prudent—abandon what doesn’t work and begin something new that may. And so, we hop from one program to another, one effort to another, teaching mussar one year, focusing on disciplining children for infractions of midot in another, using a “thinking about midot program” the next, and then, finally, calling parents in and laying the responsibility at their feet. Not enough nuanced thought is given to figuring out what about these programs does work, what should be salvaged, and how the programs should be combined with other approaches.

The field of Psychology suffered from a similar malaise back in the 1960s and 1970s. For every study that showed some variable to have an effect, there was another study showing it to have no effect, or even an opposite effect, until, with a paradigm-changing insight, Urie Bronfenbrenner helped redirect research in the field. Bronfenbrenner compared the growth of the individual and the study of that growth and development to the growth of a plant and the study of that plant’s growth and development. We all understand intuitively that it makes little sense to argue about whether it is mainly the quality of the seed, the amount of water, the sunlight available, the air temperature, or the proximity and kind of other plants and animals, that affects a plant’s growth. Nor can we say simply that it is the combination of these that determines development, for in reality, the absence of any individual factor or variable can often be compensated by the increase of another. It is the combined interaction of all of these factors that actually determines, or more correctly, influences, the plant’s growth and development. Thus, in studying plant life we look at the entire ecological system, and study it as such, as an interconnected and interrelated system of factors and variables that affect each other, and the organisms within it, which in turn affect the system itself. So too, it is futile in children’s development to seek the cause or determiner of a particular behavior or set of behaviors, and to then construct a program around that factor. Instead, an ecological approach is necessary, a study of the combined effects of many interrelated factors, each contributing to, or distracting from, the healthy development of a particular trait.

Researchers in Psychology who study the development of behavioral characteristics in children are no longer likely to try to isolate any one factor and search for its sole effects on the characteristic of interest. Rather, in the case of negative outcomes such as “juvenile delinquency,” they attempt to identify those factors that, when present, are hypothesized to protect a child from becoming a juvenile delinquent, as well as those factors that tend to place a child at risk for developing delinquent behaviors. Then, all of these factors are studied systematically to discover  how they interact and affect each other—and most importantly how they affect the outcome, i.e. the development of juvenile delinquency. Similarly, in studying the development of a positive constellation of behaviors, researchers attempt to identify those factors that serve to enhance or facilitate the development of the positive trait, as well as those factors that serve to inhibit or hinder the development of that positive trait, and how all of these factors interact and affect each other.

If we wish to understand the development of midot and derekh erets we must adopt this approach. We must understand that there is no one method, factor, or place (such as school, home, synagogue, or neighborhood, mussar learning, role models, active hessed programs, and so forth) that, can by itself, assure the development of midot and derekh erets in our children. Nor should we blame and burden any one factor for a child’s failure to develop proper midot and derekh erets. The job is bigger than that. We must become aware of all relevant factors and how they interact—and keep them in mind when we educate our children.

In studying the development of midot, I would first identify the relevant enhancing factors, factors that make it more likely that good midot will develop in our children. I would then identify the detracting factors, that is, factors whose presence makes it less likely that good midot will develop. I would then try to become aware of how all of these factors, enhancing and detracting, interact with each other.

Some of the pertinent factors come to us by way of our biology or genetic endowment, and though we cannot change them, awareness can help guide us in our approach to the individual child, enhancing the effect of their positive natural traits and mitigating the effect of their difficult natural traits. Other factors come to us by way of our social environment, our experiences, our role models, our values, and our beliefs.

All of these domains and factors interact with each other constantly and in a dynamic fashion. Thus a positive factor, such as having a good role model, may offset the effect of a negative factor, such as not having been given rules. Or, it may even enhance and multiply the effects of another positive factor. For example having a sense of values will multiply the effect of having developed good habits of behavior that are in synchrony with one’s values and allow for their generalization to an increasingly broader range of situations.

In the following pages I will try to elaborate on some of these relevant factors. I will try to make some suggestions about ways parents, teachers, and members of the community at large can enhance the development of midot and derekh erets in our children. I fully realize that my musings will be seen by some as unrealistic “dreams.” However, dream we must. Hazal (Berakhot 14a) tell us, “One who goes seven days without a dream, is called bad.” The Vilna Gaon understands this “dreaming” to refer to having higher thoughts or aspirations. We must aspire to do better.

Laying the Groundwork: The Social Environment

Three main factors help lay the groundwork for the development of midot:

1. Respecting and valuing others. One must feel the value of and gain a sense of respect forall human beings, including one’s self, regardless of race, gender, or religious affiliation.

2. Having role models. One must have positive role models who embody midot and derekh erets.

3. Being affiliated. One must feel a sense of belonging, at first to a family constellation, and later to a school, synagogue, community, and people—and eventually to the greater community of humankind.

Imbuing children with midot and derekh erets begins at home. The home must set down a foundation and create a framework in which this will happen. The first step in such an endeavor requires creating a home environment that teaches children to value and respect everyone created beTselem Elokim—including one’s self. This feeling comes to an infant or child who feels valued by and cared for by his or her parents. Such a child gains a sense of self-respect and later on will not want to sully it. Reb Tsadok haKohen of Lublin writes (Sefer Tsidkat haTsadik No. 154): “Just like a person needs to believe in Hashem, so too he needs to believe in himself,” that is to say, a person should believe in the kohot haNefesh (strengths and abilities) granted to him or her by God. A person needs to believe that God created him or her with a purpose in mind; that he or she is capable of fulfilling that purpose and should not squander those kohot haNefesh. As the Meiri writes in Pirkei Avot (Perek 5, Mishna 1), “A person's humility should not reach so low a level that his humility brings him not to be concerned with himself when he behaves in a lowly manner and with disgusting character.”

From this sense of self-respect follows a respect for all human beings, all of whom were created by God with a purpose and were endowed by God with the requisite kohot haNefesh to fulfill their particular task and purpose on this world. Hazal (Mishna Sanhedrin 37a, and Baraita, ibid. 38a) tell us that Adam was created alone in order that later generations not be able to tell each other “My father was of a more elevated status than yours.” It is only when we, the parents, truly believe, in the deepest recesses of our hearts, in the inherent value of all human beings and in their right to basic respect, that we can hope to instill true midot in our children. This attitude and belief comes to children, with their proverbial “mother’s milk,” through their experiences at home in their most formative years. To use the language of developmental psychologists, early experiences equip children with “Internal Models of Experience,” sets of lenses that will color how they will look at human beings—and how they interpret their actions, strengths, and shortcomings. It is these early experiences that will determine whether they live up to the value expressed in the tefilah of the Rebbe Elimelech of Lizensk zt”l, “May it be your will that we see that which is elevated in our friends rather than their shortcomings.” The first step in imbuing our children with midot, then, is the creation of an atmosphere of respect, a respect for all human beings, for proper, polite, and caring behavior—and a disrespect and even disgust with coarse and uncouth behavior.

The above happens only through parents who serve as role models and instructors for the aforementioned attitudes, and the behaviors to other human beings that naturally result from them. Values and attitudes are fed to children in their earliest years not by preaching, but rather, by the words and deeds of their parents: by how the parents treat each other; by how they treat the meshulah at the door, and by how they treat the cleaning help in their homes. As Hazal tell us (Succah 56b), “The speech of a child heard in the street is either his mother’s or his father’s.”

Parents also instruct by their responses to the suffering of others, by the stories they tell their children, and by the books they encourage their children to read. When I was about fifteen years old, my mother, a Holocaust survivor, handed me Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country, a novel about apartheid in South Africa saying, “Read this, you’ll learn. Not only Jews suffered.”

Along with the sense of respect for human beings, one of the most basic and important things that children get from their parents is the sense of belonging, the feeling of being affiliated with a group, such as the family unit, and valued by it. This is an extremely important component of moral behavior. Belonging is a basic human need,⁴ and it underlies our feelings for others, our motivation to maintain ties, and our sense of guilt when we fail to live up to the moral norms and expectations of the group.⁵ The family is the first unit or group to which an individual belongs. From a child’s experience in the family unit and from his or her attachment to it, the child develops his or her internal model of belonging to other broader groups, those of the school, the synagogue, the community, K’lal Yisrael, and eventually, to the community of humankind.⁶

Children will learn good midot from their parents, but these attitudes need strengthening. This needs to happen in school. Rabbeim and teachers, in action and in deed, serve as role models for respecting others or for denigrating them. When they teach pride in Torah values by pointing to the beauty of Torah, they raise their children to loftier heights. However, when they try to instill pride in our heritage primarily by denigrating all others, they lower their student’s sights. When they treat all children with care and with respect for their persons, regardless of family background, of physical appearance, and of ability level, they instill in their students a sense of respect for others. When they create favorites, inadvertently or by design, or encourage the creation of cliques that define themselves to a great degree by the exclusion of others, they destroy their students’ respect for others. Teachers always need to be careful in how they speak to and about others, even about those whose actions need to be criticized and denigrated. The Hazon Ish (Sefer Emunah U’bitahon, Perek 4, No. 16) writes that when a rebbe admonishes a student using harsh and coarse language—whatever benefit this may seem to have on the student’s hesitance to repeat his transgression in the future—the immediate negative result is that the student learns to use coarse language, as he will mimic his rebbe. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rebbe Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson zt”l (Kuntrus haHinukh veHahadrakha) writes similarly, that a “rebbe or madrikh (counselor) who speaks about one of the greater human defects and refers to them with contemptuous labels—which are actually truly fitting for them”—will nevertheless find that the benefits of his intended message are outweighed by the loss of a student seeing his teacher using coarse language.

It is not sufficient to tell children a story about how Reb Yaakov Kaminetzky zt”l stopped a conversation to stand and watch with silent respect until a non-Jewish funeral passed, because, as he explained to his companion, “He, too, was created beTselem Elokim.” It is not enough to tell stories. We must emulate the actions of the heroes of those stories. At the very least, we should be careful not to destroy the message of a story by the way we actually speak to or about others, or by how we treat them.  When children observe that the kavod due to the tselem Elokim that God endowed people with can be abrogated by mere mortals when they so choose, they will conclude that they too can choose when to grant someone the kavod that comes with tselem Elokim and when to refuse a person that kavod. Much depends on what they see us do.

[H1] Engaging Affect and Emotions

The following are three vital points in engaging the emotions of children:

• Empathy and sympathy. One must develop an understanding for the life condition and pain of other human beings.

• Intuition. One needs to develop intuitive reactions, positive and negative, to proper and improper midot, up to and including a sense of disgust for insensitive, rude, crude, and cruel behaviors.

• Sensitivity. One should develop the ability to anticipate how a person may feel in a given situation, and how one’s actions may be interpreted (or misinterpreted) by another person. One needs to learn how to adjust one’s actions to head off any discomfort to others.

For midot and derekh erets to endure over a lifetime, across a wide and varied array of situations, they must be understood intellectually, and therefore taught and discussed. However, at a more basic level, our children need to feel them; they must engage them emotionally. A very basic ingredient in the development of midot and derekh erets is developing one’s feelings—especially one’s feelings for others. It requires learning to empathize with others, to feel their need, their pain. At the most primitive level, this is limited to feeling immediate pain, as in feeling the pain of someone we have just seen bang his finger with a hammer. Later, we develop our ability to understand and feel another person’s less visible hurts, such as hunger or embarrassment. Eventually we graduate to understanding another’s total life condition. We come to empathize with how a poor person feels when he cannot feed his family, or how one feels when he is different from the majority in his group, be it by dint of ethnic background, of socio-economic level, of being a newcomer or stranger, or by dint of one’s appearance, if it is perceived somehow as “different.” Parents can elicit these feelings from their children as natural opportunities arise. A parent can talk to a child about how he or she thinks a playmate felt when she hurt herself on the playground, or when she was not invited to a birthday party. Or, a parent can read stories to his or her child about people and their difficulties and invite the child to imagine and discuss the feelings of the people in the stories. These feelings need to be awakened in children to the extent possible at home, and then strengthened through the wider educational opportunities available through the school curriculum.⁷ Our learning should address emotion. In literature, in history, and in many other areas, children would gain from discussions of the feelings of the people involved. We teach Humash, which is replete with feelings and complex and difficult interpersonal relationships. But, I’m afraid that in many of our schools we focus on the facts and avoid discussion of the emotions involved. Perhaps daunted and awed by the task of explaining the emotions of the Patriarchs, Matriarchs, and other biblical figures to the young children learning Humash, we avoid it completely, a loss to our children and to their understanding of emotions and of midot.Taking children to visit the elderly who live alone or in nursing homes, having children involved in bringing them gifts or, more importantly their company, goes a long way in bringing a smile to the face of the lonely, and a sense of joy to children as they learn how much they can do for others. Such experiences begun at home and expanded on in school create indelible “memories” in children. In the future, situations even vaguely reminiscent of the feelings aroused by these early experiences will serve as markers to awaken their feelings as well as the appropriate called-for responses. These early experiences equip our children with a moral intuition, a set of internalized feelings and gut reactions to situations and behaviors,⁸ something I call the “yuck factor” or the “yummy factor,” as the case may be.

Research suggests that many—perhaps most—of our moral judgments are based not on logic, but rather on intuitive reactions. We recoil emotionally from that which our early experiences have taught us to be “yucky” and we are attracted emotionally to that which our early experiences have taught us to be “yummy.” Thus, for example, a person who is the product of an Orthodox Jewish upbringing will recoil at the thought of eating a cold piece of meat on a plate that had pork on it ten years ago (even though it would be halakhically permissible). Similarly, he will pull back in fright from just touching something muktsa on Shabbat (even though the prohibition is in moving the object rather than touching it). These intuitive reactions were embedded in the child through early experiences with the concepts of pork and of muktsa. He learned that they were “yucky” and recoiled from them. Unfortunately, the upbringing most children receive makes it less likely that they will recoil in the same way from instances of hurting another person, from lashon haRa, from hutspa, and the like. And herein lies one of the failures of our ability to transmit midot and derekh erets to our young. This needs to be changed. It will change only through the conscious planning of experiences for young children that will implant negative feelings for behaviors that exemplify bad midot and positive feelings for behaviors that exemplify good midot. Our children need to have experiences in which they come to feel and empathize with the pain of others, to have experiences in which they see their parents reacting with as much horror to their hurting another child’s feelings as they would to their turning on a light on Shabbat.⁹

Children who learn to empathize with others and gain a moral intuition also develop sensitivity to how others feel or may come to feel in given situations. This sensitivity eventually enables them to monitor their own behavior and its effect on others, to anticipate how others may interpret their behavior, and to adjust their behavior to preclude any misinterpretation and/or resultant hurt. This is a sign of an accomplished ba’al midot, one who contemplates one’s behavior with care always taken to avoid offending others, even inadvertently.

[H1] Teaching and Learning

The following are issues that are central to teaching and learning midot and derekh erets:

• Beliefs. One must have a belief system that proscribes negative behaviors, and wish to remain consistent with that belief system.

• Values. One should strive to gain knowledge and understanding of ethical and moral values (through mussar and other sources).

• Rules. One must have a knowledge and understanding of ethical and moral rules (such as halakha) and of societal or institutional rules governing proper behavior.

• Connections. One should connect one’s behavior back to one’s learning and one’s values.

Although early experiences and the actions of role models are important in instilling in children a feeling for morality, they cannot suffice. We cannot allow children to grow up relying only on feelings and on intuitive instincts acquired at an early age by which to judge moral situations. Many situations require reasoned and nuanced judgments of right and wrong. Intuitive reactions to such nuanced situations will just not do.¹⁰ Thus, our children must learn to reason intellectually about morality. They must be equipped with an understanding of the beliefs and values upon which our moral principles rest and the mitzvoth of Torah that follow from these beliefs and values and ultimately govern our behaviors.

In Parashat Ki Tavo, every Jewish farmer is commanded to bring his first fruits to the Bet haMikdash and to make a confessional declaration (viduy). Among other statements, the farmer is commanded to declare:

“I have eliminated the holy things from the house, and I have also given it to the Levite, to the convert, to the orphan, and to the widow, according to the entire commandment that you commanded me; I have not transgressed any of Your commandments, and I have not forgotten.” (Deut. 26:13)

On the last words, “and I have not forgotten,” Hazal remark, (cited by Rashi), “I did not forget to bless you …when separating the tithes.” To explain the deeper meaning of this addition of Hazal, the Sefat Emet (Parashat Devarim) remarks:

And I have not forgotten: This means that I did not forget while doing the mitzvah by turning it into a perfunctory habitual act. For there are those who do a mitzvah and forget and do not know what they are doing.

Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, it is quite possible to perform the most noble tasks in a perfunctory manner and to forget why we do them. It seems to me to be no coincidence that the Torah teaches us this lesson of not forgetting about the hallowed and holy nature of the mitzvoth we do, specifically as it speaks of giving “to the Levite, to the convert, to the orphan, and to the widow.” It is precisely in performing these acts that we may be most prone to forget the kedusha, or holiness, involved in them, and come to view them as mundane and even discretionary. Therefore, it is here that Torah tells us not to forget the holiness of these acts.

A vital aspect of any midot program is to teach our children that mitzvot bein adam leHaveiro—commandments governing our dealings with other human beings are God’s commandments no less than mitzvot bein adam laMakom—commandments governing our relationship with God. Children need to hear this from their parents at home, from the teachers and rabbeim in school, and from their synagogue rabbis. They need not only to hear this, they need to see the rules governing “mitzvoth between human beings” taught, modeled, adhered to, and in the case of transgressions in these areas, reacted to as intensely as to their transgressions in “mitzvoth between humans and God.” To do this properly, it is important to teach the underlying values of these mitzvoth and how these values emanate from God’s word.¹¹ With further growth, the child in yeshiva will learn the intricacies of these mizvoth. In learning Gemara, Shulhan Arukh, and works of mussar, our children will learn how far-reaching and how complex these mitzvoth and their ramifications are, and how seriously they are meant. This, in context with everything else I am outlining here will give our youth a deeply sophisticated appreciation and loyalty to the mitzvot bein adam leHaveiro.

But our students need to learn the mitzvot bein adam leHaveiro for more down-to-earth, practical reasons as well. As in other areas of Torah, children need to know what Torah requires of them in these areas. There are many halakhot to learn. To pick just one off-the-beaten-path area, there are halakhot governing how one should behave when eating with others. For example, “One may not look into the face of one who is eating or at his portion, so as not to embarrass him” (Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayyim 70, 4). Or, “One should not bite into a piece of bread and place it on the table [for it may disgust others at the table” (Ibid., No. 10, and Be’er Heitev there). If we are to fulfill the halakhot we must learn them.

[H1] Focus on Behavior

 To guide behavior, we must consider at the following:

• Habits. We need to develop habits for proper, civilized behavior, for good midot and derekh erets.

• Controls. We should institute a high level of controls at home and in school against behavior lacking in midot and derekh erets.

• Self-control: We aim to develop of the capacity for self-control.

To train and guide our children in the ways of mitzvot bein adam leHaveiro, of derekh erets and midot, it is important to create and institute some rules in the home and in our schools to safeguard and to promote these ways. Thus, in the home, basic (even if seemingly old-fashioned) rules of respectful behavior toward one’s elders should be stated and adhered to. This might entail having even the youngest child get used to waiting his or her turn in getting kiddush wine or hallah at the Shabbat table. The youngster will at first naturally protest, but if calmed by his mother and told “soon, soon, everybody in turn,” he or she will get used to it, accept it, and eventually even understand it. The child will thus learn a lesson in derekh erets for those older than him or herself. More importantly, the child will learn a lesson in self-control and delayed gratification, probably one of the most important prerequisites for moral behavior.¹² Rules in the house about avoiding fights, about sharing, about helping out with the housekeeping are more than important, they are essential. Parents should demonstrate polite behavior, explain the rationale for such behavior, and tell their children that they expect them to emulate such behavior. Thus, they should learn to hold doors open for others, not to push or cut in front of others in a line, to give their seats up to those older than them or to people with disabilities, and to rise in respect of their teachers, rabbis, other dignitaries, or the aged. Children need to learn through doing, to show respect to others, that they may not abuse others, that they are not entitled to everything they receive. Instead, they should feel thankful for what they receive. They need to appreciate that others (including their mothers) are not there to serve them, and that they should not expect others to clean up after them.¹³ These lessons need to be taught gradually and at age-appropriate levels, but they should not be delayed or forgotten.

Additionally, families must deal with this subset of behaviors and with infractions in these areas as they would with any behavior: with expressed approval and positive reinforcement for adherence to these rules. And, for infractions, families must react with understanding, with explanations for why what the child did was wrong, with guidance as to how the child might correct that wrong, and with negative consequences, if necessary.

Schools also need to foster polite and kind behavior in their students toward their elders and their peers. Schools should be watchful for the negative effects of bullying and cliques. A school that is oblivious to such phenomena creates much immediate damage to the victims of such exclusion and discrimination—but also much long-term damage to the perpetrators of bullying and excluding others. These students will grow up with a lack of midot and derekh erets, sorry human beings with only a shell of their Jewishness connected to the Torah they are learning. Schools have even broader reasons for smothering negative behavior. Schools are communities. They develop cultures. When a culture of aggression, of cliquishness and of exclusion is permitted to develop in one generation of a school’s students, it tends to be transmitted to the next generation of incoming students and becomes harder to eradicate with each incoming freshman class that is welcomed by a negative culture. It is the responsibility of the school administration and its faculty to create a welcoming midot-friendly culture. This they can do by their example, but also by how they react or fail to react to infractions of midot and derekh erets. If they react with greater strength to an infraction of a school rule than they do to a child being taunted by another they are sending a clear and potent negative message. If a school is to foster a culture of midot and derekh erets it must institute and implement clear guidelines for positive behavior and clear controls against negative behavior. These will set the tone. The controls instituted by the school for proper behavior, if properly taught, and fairly and consistently implemented, will eventually be adopted by their students and become the bedrock of their self-control in these areas.

[H1] Naturally Endowed Traits: Temperament and Intelligence

Parents and teachers need to be aware of individual differences among children and take these differences into account. Children with difficult temperaments may have greater difficulties with self-control and with delayed gratification. However, they can learn with greater consistency, with more patience, and with greater degrees of understanding. We dare not declare them to be incorrigible just because they require more from us. Children with difficult temperaments or different learning abilities may need more patience and more explanation, but in the end, they can understand.

Hazal in the Mekhilta (Shemot 19:3) tell us that Moshe Rabbeinu was told to convey the commandments to the Israelite women with an amira raka, a “soft tone” (in contrast to the harsher tone that was to be used with the men). This “soft tone” did not however turn the commandments into suggestions or requests. The fact that women are obligated in mitzvot and are subject to the same strictures and punishments for transgressing them as men are, demonstrates that they are still commandments. What then does a “soft tone” mean? The Malbim (Vayikra 1:3) explains that a “soft tone” means speaking with more elaboration and explanation. Some of our children require this. All are entitled to it. But again, with all of them, our rules for proper behavior must remain just that, firm rules.

[H1] Summary and Conclusion

Children need to be brought up at home in a cradle of respect and value for the tselem Elokim in all human beings. They need to be surrounded by positive role models and provided with experiences in which to learn empathy and develop sensitivity to other people’s feelings. Subsequently, in school, and continually at home, they need to be taught to understand, love, respect, and follow God’s law, both where it governs mitzvoth between humans and God and where it governs interactions between human beings. Such children will develop midot and derekh erets. A lesser program might seem easier, but it will hardly do the job.

What is the mainstream expression of Jewish power? When superstars with millions of followers like Kanye West and Kyrie Irving exhibit antisemitic behavior, more often than not, it revolves around a sinister view of Jewish power. Jews are the bosses. They own the record labels, the movie studios and the sports teams. They run the world.

These stereotypes are not just sinister and antisemitic, but they are also insultingly materialistic. They overlook a whole other view of Jewish power, one that has little to do with material wealth and everything to do with Jewish wisdom and universal values.

When Judaism teaches, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor” and that all of God’s children are “created in the image of God,” there is a special ethical power in those ideas, the kind of power that moves our hearts.

When Jews helped found some of our most important civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), that also was Jewish power.

When, between 1910 and 1940, more than 2,000 primary and secondary schools and 20 Black colleges were established in whole or in part by Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, that also was Jewish power.

When Jews made up half of the young people who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964, and Jewish leaders were arrested with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. after a challenge to racial segregation, that also was Jewish power.

The power of Jewish wisdom during the era of racial upheaval was perhaps most evident when Rabbi Joachim Prinz spoke right before King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Washington Mall in 1963. In front of one of the largest civil rights marches in our country’s history, Prinz started by saying, “I speak to you as an American Jew.”

Then, with brevity worthy of an Abraham Lincoln address, he shared the universal wisdom of his tradition:

“We share the profound concern of millions of people about the shame and disgrace of inequality and injustice which make a mockery of the great American idea.

“As Jews we bring to this great demonstration, in which thousands of us proudly participate, a two-fold experience — one of the spirit and one of our history.

“In the realm of the spirit, our fathers taught us thousands of years ago that when God created man, he created him as everybody’s neighbor. Neighbor is not a geographic term. It is a moral concept. It means our collective responsibility for the preservation of man’s dignity and integrity.

“From our Jewish historic experience of three and a half thousand years we say:

“Our ancient history began with slavery and the yearning for freedom. During the Middle Ages my people lived for a thousand years in the ghettos of Europe. Our modern history begins with a proclamation of emancipation.

“It is for these reasons that it is not merely sympathy and compassion for the black people of America that motivates us. It is above all and beyond all such sympathies and emotions a sense of complete identification and solidarity born of our own painful historic experience.”

There is a profound, elevating power in those words and in the actions so many American Jews have taken to live up to them.

That’s why it saddens me that this humanistic view of “Jewish power” gets totally lost in the modern media circus when power is measured in dollars and clicks, rather than values and wisdom.

I saw parts of the documentary, “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America!” that Kyrie Irving posted on Twitter and that triggered his downward spiral. I saw in the film the demonizing of Jews and outrageous lies denying both Jewish biblical history and the Holocaust.

Someone should encourage Irving and West to watch another film: Rabbi Prinz’s heartfelt solidarity speech from the 1963 march. These two megastars both say they want to share their “light” with the world and seek a higher level of understanding. They can start by learning more about a deeper power that is anything but sinister—the one rooted in the universal wisdom of the Jewish tradition.

Then they can tweet Rabbi Prinz’s speech to their millions of followers.

Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Mikkets

by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

“And Pharaoh said to his servants, can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom is the spirit of God? And Pharaoh said to Joseph, since God has shown you all this, there is none so discreet and wise as you are: you will be over my house, and according to your word shall all my people be ruled: only in the throne will I be greater than you.”  (Bereishith 41: 38-40)

Pharaoh had dreams that troubled him. He obviously ascribed special meaning to them. He asked his wise men to interpret the dreams, and they must have offered their suggestions. But Pharaoh was not satisfied. He felt a persistent foreboding.

His butler told Pharaoh of Joseph, a Hebrew slave who was currently in prison. When Joseph was brought to Pharaoh, the monarch said that he heard that Joseph can interpret dreams. Joseph demurred: no, he could not interpret dreams, only God could do that. Pharaoh must have been surprised by this answer. Who was Joseph’s God? Why did that God have such power? Why weren’t the Egyptian gods able to interpret dreams? In spite of likely misgivings, Pharaoh related his dreams, and Joseph offered the interpretation as well as a plan of action for Egypt.

Pharaoh immediately sensed that Joseph’s interpretation was correct. He was so impressed that he appointed Joseph to be second in power over Egypt. Moreover, Pharaoh acknowledged that God—Joseph’s God—had endowed Joseph with the wisdom to understand the dreams and to offer a constructive way forward.

Why was Pharaoh so impressed with Joseph? Why didn’t he take the interpretation under advisement, discuss it with his wise men? Why didn’t he return Joseph to prison?  Why was he so impetuous as to raise the Hebrew slave to become his top official?

Pharaoh was a great leader! He was remarkably perceptive.

Psychologists remind us that dreams are often a product of our inner thoughts and concerns. Pharaoh was worried about the wellbeing of his people. He knew that economic circumstances vacillate. In his dreams he had forebodings of economic distress for his land. The dreams were really not so mysterious. When lean cows swallow fat cows and when thin sheaves swallow fat sheaves, these would seem to be omens of upcoming disaster.

Pharaoh’s dreams haunted him so he asked his wise men to offer their interpretations. Whatever they told him did not make sense to him. He knew in his mind—and in his dreams—that huge problems loomed for his country. He was looking for confirmation of his insight and for a plan to deal with the upcoming challenges.

Pharaoh’s greatness was not simply in his insightful analysis, but in his willingness to seek advice even from a lowly Hebrew prisoner. Joseph came before Pharaoh without any credentials. He was not a professional wise man, diplomat, or celebrity. Moreover, Joseph claimed to rely on his God, not the gods of the Egyptians.

Pharaoh might have expected Joseph to use the occasion to offer words of flattery and to plead for freedom. But Joseph was humble, unpretentious…authentic. Pharaoh instantly knew he was in the presence of an unusual human being. When he heard Joseph’s interpretation of the dreams, Pharaoh was confirmed in his own understanding of the situation. When Joseph not only interpreted the dreams but offered a plan of action, Pharaoh sensed that Joseph was someone to be trusted.

It must have astonished Pharaoh’s wise men and advisers that Pharaoh immediately appointed Joseph to a position above them. However, it was astute of Pharaoh to appoint a lowly outsider to manage the coming years of abundance and famine.  If Joseph’s interpretation and plan failed, he could be blamed and sent back to prison. If Joseph’s interpretation and plan succeeded, all Egypt would benefit in spite of the unhappiness of Pharaoh’s advisers.

Pharaoh was a great leader. His concerns for his people extended even into his dreams. His search for truth went beyond his professional advisers. His humility enabled him to listen to and grant power to a Hebrew slave.

The great neurologist, Dr. Oliver Sacks, pointed out the psychological barriers that prevent people from thinking “out of the box.” It is natural to resist new ideas from untested individuals. It is natural to listen to one’s closest friends and advisers. But greatness entails the ability to break through the barriers and to think clearly for oneself. Dr. Sacks referred to the need for “spaciousness of mind,” the receptivity to new ideas and unexpected insights. (“The River of Consciousness,”  p. 205).

The people of ancient Egypt were fortunate to have a ruler such as Pharaoh. All nations--all communities-- could benefit from leaders who share Pharaoh’s wisdom, intellectual openness, “spaciousness of mind.”