National Scholar Updates

In current popular discourse, various parts of the political spectrum are internally rupturing as they struggle to ascertain whether all human beings are indistinguishably identical or irreconcilably different, failing in their lack of nuance to comprehend that both are simultaneously true. On the political left, ironically, the very same criticism raised by Foucault of the Panopticon wielding “invisible power” could be leveled against those pledging fealty to thinkers like him; in their ideological zeal, they have created a world in which the individual must “virtue signal” and not step outside the groupthink. Meanwhile, on the right, the same jingoism that has ever fostered tribalism and sectarian violence has resurged in recent years with renewed vigor. The Jewish world has not been immune to these changes, but consider how traditionally, Judaism allowed for plurality of thought, although not plurality of action, in order that the Torah not be made into two torot. However, as early as the sixteenth century, it became apparent that there are not two torot, but many hundreds of different torot, shattering the Jewish unity of practice.[1] In stark contrast to this plurality has been the growing constriction of “permissible” Jewish thought, whether that be the book burnings of Maimonides’ works, or the excommunication of Elia Benamozegh. Increasingly, those who express opinions outside the “accepted mainstream” are considered dangerous, disruptive, and deviant, often emitting that distinctive, imperceptible-to-the-layperson yet perceptible-by-the-great-rabbi “waft of heresy” that has been the cause of so many bans and censors. I would like to therefore present an idea of equality, which, I believe, stems from rabbinic ideas found in our classical texts. This notion of equality, which draws on modern ideas as well as some post-modern thought, permits one to recognize the difference between individuals, and yet not feel afraid or threatened by their divergence. On the contrary, there is much to be learned from those with whom we disagree.

To begin, the Torah presents a model of society without hierarchy. This is seen in enactments such as the cancellation of debt (which amounts to no permanent loans), the inability to permanently lose ancestral land, as well as how acts of tzedaka are enshrined in law to create a culture of support and generosity. Those relationships of subordination that do still exist, such as master/slave, are steered away from the harsh Ancient Near Eastern parallels and humanized. This horizontal model is produced by an absolute equality under the law of Israel; Judaism functions much more as a legal system than as a religion, and all are equal subjects under the nomos. For example, distinct from other Ancient Near Eastern societies is how the king is subject to the law. Deuteronomy 17:15–20 enumerates how the king is appointed at the behest of the people (not self-appointed by the power of his own might), has additional laws limiting his position, and must write a copy of the Torah to be with him at all times.[2] Further, in the Ancient Near East the king was frequently a manifestation of the divine, considered to be in the literal “image of God.” In the Torah’s presentation of creation, not the king but rather all human beings are described as being in God’s image. Even more surprising than the king being bound to the law, is that God is likewise bound by the covenant of Torah God formed with Israel. The Talmud Yerushalmi[3] quotes a Greek saying: “For the king, the law is not written.” The Talmud contrasts the conduct of a human king, who does not fulfill his own decrees, with the conduct of God, who is first to fulfill his own decrees.[4] The completely infinite being who is utterly free has chosen to be bound in Its actions and relate to humans in a specific way, thus is a subject under the law. This covenant between God and Israel, through its bilateral nature, gives an unprecedented role to human beings in their relationship with the Sovereign Being.

God forms the covenant of Torah in much the same way as a sovereign king does with the representative of his suzerainty in the Late Bronze Age, usually the subordinate king.[5] However, this “treaty” with the subordinate king is formed not with Moses, the leader, nor with the group-entity Israel. It is formed with “the common man of Israel… every man in Israel is to view himself as having the status of a king conferred on him—a subordinate king who serves under the protection of, and in gratitude to, a divine sovereign.”[6] The option for relationship with the divine sovereign is open and available to all, regardless of class or status. This is echoed in the following statement of our Sages:

There are three crowns: The crown of Torah, ‎the crown of priesthood, and the crown of kingship. The crown of priesthood—Aaron ‎merited and took it. The crown of kingship—David merited and took it. The crown of ‎Torah—behold, it is placed for [all] generations [to merit]; anyone who merits Torah, is ‎as if he has merited all three [crowns], and anyone who does not merit Torah, is as if he ‎has not merited a single one of them.[7]

What are ostensibly privileged classes of priests and royalty, are instantly undermined by the single authority for Jews—the Law. This democratization of the law was achieved even in biblical times. With the development of the alphabet, writing was removed from the sole province of the priests (hieroglyphs) or scribes (cuneiform), and instead transferred to the people, all of whom were charged with the writing of a scroll of the Law. 

            No fewer than 36 times does the Torah enjoin the people of Israel not to oppress the stranger, let alone the plethora of prophetic passages dealing with this idea. What marks out the prophets of the Hebrew Bible is their increased sensitivity to, and consequent decrying of, social injustices, not cultic ones. As Heschel writes:

We and the prophet have no language in common. To us the moral state of society, for all its stains and spots, seems fair and trim; to the prophet it is dreadful. So many deeds of charity are done, so much decency radiates day and night; yet to the prophet satiety of the conscience is prudery and flight from responsibility. Our standards are modest; our sense of injustice tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent; yet human violence is interminable, unbearable, permanent… The prophet makes no concession to man’s capacity. Exhibiting little understanding for human weakness, he seems unable to extenuate the culpability of man.[8]

What makes this so significant? Why is ill-treatment of the stranger so highly criticized, above all else? Perhaps because the stranger is the paradigm of the “other.” Hebrew teaching has, since days of old, placed a premium on treatment of the ‎stranger.‎ In II Samuel 21, we read of the famine in the land on account of Saul’s mistreatment ‎of the Gibeonites. The Talmud[9] greatly expands this story ‎homiletically, portraying multiple points of interest. The story begins with a famine, brought about because of both the lack of honor given to ‎Saul (he had not received proper burial) as well as Saul’s negative actions toward the Gibeonites—‎both are injustices that need to be addressed.‎ When the Gibeonites demand their savage appeasement price of seven of Saul’s ‎offspring to be publicly executed, David agrees.‎ The Talmud notes how David considers this request to be particularly ‎merciless, rendering the Gibeonites unfit to be a part of the Israelite nation ‎—and yet he still accedes!‎ Finally, the text records how their bodies were left unburied, nailed atop the rock in Givat Shaul, exposed to the fowl and beasts. The Talmud challenges the idea that children can be put to death for the sin ‎of the father, and that corpses can be left exposed overnight, based on ‎verses in the Torah. To the first, the Talmud responds, “Better a letter of ‎Torah be uprooted, than publicly desecrate God’s name,” and to the second, ‎‎"Better a letter of Torah be uprooted, in order that God’s name be publicly ‎sanctified.” The Talmud explains that passers-by would inquire about the ‎bodies, and thereby come to know what had happened. Which, as Levinas ‎puts it, was that “in Israel, princes die a horrible death because strangers ‎were injured by the sovereign.”[10] As we see, the treatment of the stranger is made equivalent to the sanctification of God’s name, because God is the ultimate other. In fact, the human relationship with God is frequently modeled in regard of human relationships with other humans, and thus our ‎treatment of the stranger is an index for our relationship with God.‎

A mishna states: “A human being imprints one hundred imprints with a single seal, and all are similar to each other. But the King, King of kings, the holy One, blessed be He imprinted every human being with the seal of Adam the First, and yet not a single one of them is similar to his fellow.”[11] The singular imprint of God is expressed in the very diversity of humanity. To truly begin to see the signification of God in creation, one must learn to appreciate the other. As José Faur observed, this idea of God as the ultimate “other” is captured by the Hebrew term ‎ot.[12] This term can mean a “sign” as well as a “distinctive mark” (and therefore ‎letter of the alphabet) but also thereby “absolutely distinct.” Ot is thus used by the Talmud to refer to God as being an ot among His myriad angels,[13] i.e., absolutely distinct ‎from them. Faur concludes, “As an ot, God is the absolute and unbounded difference.” He cites ‎Derrida’s description: “Whether He is Being or is the master of beings, God himself is, and ‎appears as what He is, within difference, that is to say, as difference and within dissimulation.”[14]‎ As Sacks puts it:

‎We encounter God in the face of a stranger. That, I believe, is the Hebrew Bible's single ‎greatest and counterintuitive contribution to ethics. God creates difference; therefore it ‎is in one-who-is-different that we meet God. Abraham encounters God when he invites ‎three strangers into his tent. Jacob meets God when he wrestles with an unnamed ‎adversary alone at night. The Book of Ruth, which tells the prehistory of David, Israel's ‎greatest king, reaches its climax when Ruth says to Boaz (her “redeemer”), “Why have I ‎found favour in your eyes such that you recognise me, though I am a stranger” (2:10). ‎The human other is a trace of the Divine Other.‎[15]

Given that this is the case, the respect shown for the other is a yardstick of measuring the development (some would say morality) of a society. Further, it is thus impossible for an individual or community to have a genuine relationship with God, if that individual or society mistreats the other. One’s relationship with God must be predicated on recognition of God’s ultimate otherness, hence Maimonides’ via negativa to remove all traces of one’s self-projection onto God. If one’s actions toward the stranger indicate that one is incapable of loving freely one who is different, then their relationship with God must also be called into question, for they must surely be incapable of loving one as supremely other as God. Instead, such a person has—consciously or unconsciously—recreated God in their own image, imputing to God the characteristics deemed positive in their subjective eyes.

Let us digress, for a moment, to the nature of existence. Thinkers from the kabbalistically inclined R’ Zadok HaKohen Rabinowitz of Lublin[16] to the philosophical Gersonides[17] have described the world as a book, authored by God. This means that the world is subject to interpretation through different lenses, as is the text of a book. This idea is captured by the Eastern parable of The Blind Men and the Elephant, in which a group of blind men encounter an elephant, each one feeling a different part of it, and therefore describing it differently. If creation is a book, then some discussion of linguistics is in order. Consider Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole. In the parole, or speech act, speakers draw on langue, a shared repository of a sign system with specific sign values. These sign values do not inherently contain “positive” value in the construction of sentences in an essentialist way, any more than individual phonemes do in the construction of words. Instead, the sign values are generated by the difference between the signs. Further, compare the sentences “I went to the bank of the river” and “I went to the bank near the river.” Despite ultimately deriving from a shared etymological source, the two “banks” in these sentences have completely different values. The specific value in each sentence is created by its standing in syntagmatic opposition to the other parts of the sentence, most pointedly “of” and “near.” Additionally, these sign-values can be exchanged for similar values without changing the meaning of the syntagm, and thus the specific sign chosen is not essential. For example, “I went to the bank near the brook/stream/flowing water” would all be acceptable, or even “I went to the bank near the post office” if the sign “river” serves only as a placeholder for a geographical indicator of proximity to the bank. A corollary of interpreting the world and existence as a book is that words in the book (by which I mean entities within creation) do not have inherent, essential value. Value derives only from standing in syntagmatic opposition to an other. There is no pre-existent, metaphysical self/other dichotomy in which cogito ergo sum, to the exclusion of all others. The presupposed metaphysical “I” does not exist. This idea, beyond Sartre’s regard or George Hebert Mead’s Symbolic Interactionism, postulates that the self is not just influenced, even formatively so, by the other, but that the very existence of a “self” is only created in its opposition to “other.” Sacks argues this point from the creation of the first two human beings:

God says about the first human, “It is not good for man to be alone.” He then creates the first woman, and the man, waking and seeing her, says: “This is now bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman [ishah], because she was taken from man [ish]”… Biblical Hebrew has two words for man, adam and ish. Adam (meaning, taken from the Earth, adama) signifies man, the biological species. Ish means roughly the same as the English word, “person.” The subtle point of the Biblical text is that this verse is the first in which the word ish appears. Adam must pronounce the name of his wife before he can pronounce his own. He must say “Thou” before he can say “I.”[18]

Human beings, existing solely as products of intersubjectivity, stand in syntagmatic opposition to each other – they are all equally as essential to the syntagm of existence. In a sentence such as “Abi is talking to Sam,” the value of “Sam” could arguably be substituted for another similar value, such as “Gideon,” as they stand in paradigmatic opposition to each other. However, in “I am talking to you,” the personal pronouns cannot be substituted for any similar term! There is no situation in which the unique dialectic interaction of “I” and “you” could be replicated by any others. This view of the world as a book gives unparalleled meaning to the existence of the other. It is not possible to have value or signification without the presence of the other, and the difference that emerges from the interaction between the self and the other.

Bearing this system in mind, Faur proposes a distinction between narcissistic love and selfless love.[19] Narcissistic love follows from the view that there is a metaphysical “I.” Since I and all my qualities are good, then in order for me to love the other, the other must be similar to me, and then incorporated into the I. “For [persecuting societies], the Biblical commandment to love others as ourselves is implemented by imposing their ego on others. Those refusing to let themselves be narcissistically absorbed, as in the case of the Jews, or when deemed unworthy of absorption, as the Native Americans, are void of human qualities.”[20] This love is also passive, where those who are the same are simply naturally part of the self and are absorbed. This type of love forms the basis of Sartre’s pessimistic outlook, that “one must either transcend the Other or allow oneself to be transcended by him. The essence of the relations between consciousness is not the Mitsein; it is conflict.”[21] Conversely, selfless love is offered from an “I” to a “you.” It only exists when both parties are present, and is an active form of love, where the “I” recognises the otherness of the “you.” In contrast to its fulfilment in persecuting societies, “The commandment to “love your fellow human as yourself” is grounded on the parallel I-you. Inter-subjectivity occurs when the “other” is accepted as a you—a fully autonomous person with his or her subjective perspective… you must be respected with the same intensity as the I.”[22]

As an aside, this distinction between subsuming the other within the self and the self and other standing in opposition to generate difference, is also present in the difference between Greek and Hebrew “logical” analysis. The Classical Greek syllogism seeks to identify X with Y: 

All men (A) are (=) mortal (X)
Socrates (B) is (=) a man (A)
Therefore Socrates (B) IS (=) mortal (X).

In broader terms, all A have quality X. B = A, therefore B also has quality X. “[The syllogism] depend[s] on a subject-predicate relation between two terms… wherein one tries to show that the predicate is included in the subject… Aristotle argues that all valid arguments involve syllogistic reasoning, and the syllogism is for him the ideal model of logic and thought.”[23] In contrast, rabbinic thought is much more focused on similarities and generated differences that exist between A and B when stood in opposition to each other. In the model of the kal vaḥomer (a fortiori argument), for example, the similarities between two things are used to imply that there should be a shared characteristic. When Moses is told again by God to request of Pharaoh that he let the Israelites free, he responds: If the children of Israel (A) [who lack good reason to ignore me (-X)] will not listen to me (Y), then Pharaoh (B) [who has good reason to ignore me (X)] will certainly not listen to me (Y)! Since A, which lacks X, has Y, then B, which has X, will certainly have Y. This form of reasoning “is relational rather than ontological,[24] dealing with propositions rather than predicates.”[25] “[It] depends on an if, not an is, and therefore conclusions are always relative and are subject to further interpretation and application… the coexisting predicates retain their independence and do not cancel each other out.”[26] Rabbinic thought never sought to collapse the distinctions between two entities when assessing their comparative similarities and differences.

Faur briefly mentions the connection between narcissistic love, in which the other is absorbed into the self, and Christianity, in which the good Christian is absorbed into the corpus Christi. However, there are additional points of connection. For example, when Jesus is asked the famous question regarding the so-called “Great Commandment,” the New Testament reports: 

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”[27]

And in Jesus’ interpretation of the second commandment, he instructs: “In everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you; for this is the law and the prophets.”[28] Firstly, in this presentation, Jesus proposes a theocentric purpose to the fulfillment of the commandments. He does this by prioritizing a certain category of commandments between humans and God, over and above those that are between humans. Ultimately this means sacrificing the other in favor of divine worship—something unfathomable to rabbinic Judaism. Consider the mishnayot that caution against trying to deduce which commandments have greater weight than others,[29] or that teach that with whomever people are pleased, God is pleased, and with whomever people are not pleased, God is not pleased.[30] Additionally, consider the words of Maimonides: “[There are commandments which] they call “between man and God,” even though in reality they move [a person] toward matters that are between man and man.”[31] This clearly posits an anthropocentric focus to the commandments, which are intended to bring social cohesion and serve a societal function. Secondly, Hillel also reformulated the commandment to “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” However, his reformulation is markedly different: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.”[32] This negative reformulation is essential to the discussion at hand. Jesus’ command necessitates projection of oneself onto the other. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” makes the assumption that what the self enjoys and wants, the other must also enjoy and want. One projects themselves onto the other in order to express this kind of love, narcissistically incorporating that other—whose desires are your desires—into the self. This implicitly relies on the following syllogism: I like X, you are like me, therefore you like X. As discussed above, like all classical syllogisms, this collapses the distinction and difference between two subjective entities in a stifling “love.” Conversely, Hillel does not make this projection. He only goes so far as asserting that something the self hates, may be hateful to the other, and so should not be perpetrated against the other. There is no scope to assume anything beyond that, as further assumptions require an active projection onto the other, rather than passive abstention from potentially hateful activities. This again returns to the idea of God as other. As mentioned above, one must remove all projections of the self onto God, the ultimate other. We can now see that the model to achieve this relationship with God is the removal of projections onto the human other, in order to engage in authentic intersubjectivity.

            We have thus established that there is absolute equality under the nomos of Israel, that every member of the polity forms a covenant with God and is invited to relationship with the divine. The stranger is also entitled to protection under the law, and ultimately the stranger who is different from us is where we may encounter the divine. In fact, the other is essential to the very existence of the self. Let us conclude with a few remarks regarding the relation between Judaism and other ways of life. The Torah is not universalist, in the sense that it is not intended to be kept by every member of humanity. It is thus not exclusivist—there is no claim that following the Torah is the “only way to achieve salvation,” whatever that may look like. The Torah is intended for the Jewish nation, in its homeland of Israel.

[Maimonides] refrained from defining “pious”… or what constitutes a “sin” for a gentile; cf. MT Teshuba 3:2. He defined a pious gentile in terms of the seven Noahide miṣvot in the section about Jewish governance and territory, concerning the status of non-Jewish residents in the Holy Land (MT Melakhim 9:2). The sense is obvious. An alien residing in Israel must respect Jewish standards and regulations as it would be expected from every alien to respect the laws and regulations of the host country.[33]

There is a tendency in interfaith settings to place the emphasis “on similarities and commonalities, as if the differences between faiths were superficial and trivial.”[34] However, not only does this greatly undermine the role of difference discussed heretofore, it is also insufficient for effectively living with those who are different from ourselves. “There is nothing so slight that it cannot, under pressure, be turned into a marker of identity and thus of mutual estrangement. We need, in other words, not only a theology of commonality… but also a theology of difference… why it represents the will of God.”[35] “We don’t rush… to simply contrast another religion with our own or to declare that its adherents are unknowingly our own coreligionists; instead we honor both the commonalities of another religion with our own and its differences.”[36] Sacks’ call is as relevant now as it was then, over twenty years ago: “Can I, a Jew, hear the echoes of God’s voice in that of a Hindu or Sikh or Christian or Muslim or in the words of an Eskimo from Greenland speaking about a melting glacier? Can I do so and feel not diminished but enlarged?”[37]

Notes

Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Hukat

By Rabbi Marc D. Angel

This week’s Parasha deals with death, rebellion and war. It points to the perennial dissensions that plague humanity, including our situation today.

All of us are concerned with the hatred, strife and violence that are infecting our societies. We worry about Israel, the Jewish world, and all good people everywhere.  For this week’s Angel for Shabbat, I’m reprinting an op ed piece I wrote that appeared in the Jewish Link, April 11, 2024.

It is a strange feeling to be hated by people who don’t know you and don’t want to know you. It is perplexing to hear people calling for your death and the death of all your people without ever considering your humanity, your goodness, your contributions to society.

Haters don’t see their victims as fellow human beings. They create and foster ugly stereotypes. They promote outrageous conspiracy theories that dehumanize their targets.

Hatred is an ugly thing. It not only promotes hatred of the perceived enemy, but it distorts the lives of the haters themselves. Energy and resources that could be utilized to build compassionate societies are instead diverted to hatred, weaponry, death and destruction.

We have always been aware of an under-current of antisemitic and anti-Israel attitudes, but things today seem qualitatively and quantitatively different. We witness throngs of people throughout the United States and throughout the world who brazenly and unabashedly call for the annihilation of Israel and the murder of Jews. The public display of raw hatred is alarming.

I suspect that almost all of those spewing hatred of Israel and Jews don’t even know Israelis or Jews in person. They don’t hate actual Jews: they hate stereotypes of Jews. They are indoctrinated with propaganda and are fed a stream of lies about Israel and about Jews. The haters are steeped in their hateful ideology and are not interested in civil dialogue and relationship with actual Jews and Israelis. They know little or nothing about the connection of Jews to the land of Israel going back thousands of years, from Biblical times to the present.

So why do so many haters take aim at Jews and Israel? Some of this hatred stems from anti-Jewish religious teachings. Some of it stems from jealousy at the phenomenal success of such a tiny group. Some people spew hatred as a way of making themselves seem important, as though picking on Jews somehow makes them appear stronger and braver.

Erich Fromm has written of the syndrome of decay that “prompts men to destroy for the sake of destruction and to hate for the sake of hate.” Many people poison their own lives with hatred and only feel truly alive and validated when they express hatred of others.

When societies allow hatred to flourish, they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. When universities, media and political forums condone blatantly anti-Jewish intimidation and violence, the infection spreads well beyond Jews. Civil discourse is threatened. Respectful dialogue is quashed.

All who stand for a civil society must not be intimidated by the haters, bullies and supporters of terrorism. The syndrome of hate eats away at the foundations of society. It must not be allowed to prevail.

Rav Nahman of Bratslav taught: The whole world is a narrow bridge (precarious), but the essential thing is not to be afraid, not to be afraid at all.

Virtue signaling is an affectation that has taken hold among many who profess to be virtuous. Living a truly virtuous life and actually doing good deeds appears to be optional. It seems that mindlessly shouting a prescribed slogan that often rhymes, on demand, at exceedingly high volume, is all that is required. 

This conception of idle virtue is antithetical to our Jewish tradition, where what a person thinks in the abstract is not as important as what a person does in practice. Leading a virtuous life means more than just good thoughts; it requires performing good deeds, referred to in the Torah as the mitzvoth (commandments). Notwithstanding René Descartes’[1] famous dictum that I think, therefore, I am,[2] the Torah’s view might better be expressed as, I have a soul and do good deeds, therefore, I am. 

Interestingly, Blaise Pascal, another noted mathematician and acquaintance of Descartes, also disagreed with Descartes on this subject. Many just cite Pascal’s statement[3] that the heart has it reasons, which reason cannot understand.[4] However, he went on to explain that it is the heart that experiences God and not a person’s facility to reason. Perhaps, though, Pascal’s figurative reference to the heart might be better understood as the soul. As the Bible[5] describes, God created Adam from a combination of earthly matter and spiritual essence.[6] As a result, he became a living being endowed with understanding.[7] It is the soul, which is the source of a person’s identity as an individual. 

Both Descartes and Pascal would have benefited from the landmark study done by Dr. Antonio Demassio.[8] He analyzed the role played by what is commonly referred to as the rational mind, which challenged the then prevailing view as to the way the mind functions, in his book aptly titled, Descartes’ Error.[9]

Dr. Damassio reports on his work with a patient who suffered a freak accident that impaired the functionality of his amygdala. This part of the brain is viewed as the seat of our instinctual or emotional behavior, as opposed to the frontal cortex, which is viewed as the rational portion of the brain. Dr. Damassio’s study suggests that decisions are actually made by the instinctual portion of the brain.  The cortex then rationalizes those decisions.

Indeed, many successful decision-makers do rely on what is typically referred to as a gut feeling; but which may be better defined as instinct. They are also rather adept at rationalizing those gut feelings. Given Dr. Damasio’s conclusions, we should be questioning whether our thoughts and decisions should necessarily be viewed as wholly rational. They may in fact just be flawed rationalizations of what our underlying instincts demand, which are not always wholesome or noble. Consider how this instinctual bias, insidiously cloaked in reflexive rationalizations, might yield self-serving decisions that may even be perceived to be altruistic, because of the deceptive functioning of the brain. Is it any wonder that the virtue-signaling crowd believe they are doing good by merely shouting a variety of slogans? Thus, the brain cannot be counted on to be wholly rational and, therefore, our implicit trust in our own rationality may be misplaced. What then can be done to remedy the problem?

The Torah offers a means of dealing with the matter. It begins with the realization that there is another aspect to the thinking process, which is embodied in our spiritual dimension, the soul. Indeed, Maimonides (Rambam) views the brain as an organ of the body, which is joined with the soul. The brain is then something akin to the central processing unit in a computer. The actual seat of character traits, knowledge, thought, and decision-making, is the soul. The soul’s perception and expression in the physical world, though, is limited by the constraints of the body, including the mind. Rambam,[10] therefore, applies a holistic approach to dealing with a person’s physical and mental, as well as, spiritual health, to assure the well-being and proper development of the person. Each of these essential components in the make-up of a person must be nourished in order to assure a good and productive life. How then to nourish the spiritual portion of the person and train the brain effectively to function in expressing the will of the soul? In this sense, the brain is a filter that can impair or distort the desires of the soul.

The performance of the mitzvoth is a means by which the soul trains the mind and body and habituates them to behave properly. By doing the mitzvoth, whole-heartedly and with joy, a person can achieve a higher level of consciousness and connection to the divine. This connection to the spiritual manifests itself in the good feelings that it engenders, which suffuse the mind and body. This blissful state is truly sustainable in that it is both long lasting and repeatable, by continuing to do good deeds.

It is noteworthy that some mitzvoth are classified as hukkim.[11] The term “hok” is derived from the word hakikah, something indelibly engraved in rock, like a picture.[12] It is suggested that, in modern parlance, it might be termed imprinting, in the sense of creating neural pathways in the brain. It results from the habitual behavior associated with the performance of a hok. 

In essence, as the Rambam[13] posits, the actions of the body affect the soul, and we can affect how we think by what we do. Consider how an athlete trains using repetitive routines (habitual behavior) to establish what is commonly referred to as muscle memory. The term is somewhat of a misnomer. Our muscles don’t have memory. The process of reacting to outside stimulus is controlled by our brain or, as the Rambam terms it, the soul. 

Following the Torah handbook of training and programming, neural pathways can be created (i.e., engraved or imprinted) in the brain. This is accomplished through the process of acting out Torah rituals and other observances of the commandments, which is a means of imprinting the brain. Because of the less-than-rational nature of hukkim ,[14] their performance is particularly well suited to bypassing the filter of the so-called rational mind.  In essence, they reach right into the instinctual and emotional part of the brain and create virtuous responses that become second nature and are more consistent with the needs of the soul. 

Establishing and reinforcing good patterns of behavior is an essential and fundamental part of this imprinting process. The effect of this kind of ritualized behavior and conditioning is to train and sublimate those instincts and emotions to higher purposes, nourishing our spiritual side, embodied in the soul. This, instead of reinforcing our baser instincts and desires traditionally associated with this part of the brain that are rationalized by the frontal cortex, as Dr. Damasio found. 

The Torah-derived patterns of good behavior include, for example, praying in a minyan, at specified times, observing the details of the Sabbath and holidays, or following other observances. By habitually acting out these rituals or other observances like hukkim with heartfelt joy, we not only imprint our brains with neural pathways, we also create a positive feedback loop, enhanced by our brain chemistry, which reinforces the good feelings we experience when performing these sacred rituals.

In this light, consider the recent desire by many soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces to wear tzizith as they fight the evil that is Hamas. The tzizit offer no real tangible protection in combat, and as the Midrash Tanhuma[15] notes, like other such hukkim,[16] there is an illogical character to the mitzvah of wearing tzizith. Yet, soldiers are donning tzizith every day just like the body armor they customarily wear, and the comforting feeling they experience putting on tzizith is undeniable. Tzizith are designed to serve as a symbolic reminder of the importance of performing the 613 mitzvoth. The ritual of making the blessing and donning the tzizith every morning, as well as the feeling of having the garment as an added layer close to the body, as a tangible form of spiritual body armor, is most heartening. 

Rabbeinu Bahya discusses the details of the parah aduma (red heifer) requirements,[17] another example of a hok. He notes that features of this ritual are not only devoid of logic—they appear to defy logic. Thus, the very same ashes of the parah aduma purify the ritually impure and defile the ritually pure. Rabbeinu Bahya goes on to explain[18] that the term hok also means boundary or limit.[19] Establishing boundaries and limiting our behavior is an essential element in the kind of habitual behavior that can imprint our brains with a positive message. It is one of the fundamental benefits of performing the mitzvoth. 

The Talmud[20] analyzes the nature of the soul. It does so, poetically, in parallel statements about the characteristics of the divine and the soul, as follows:

1. Just as the Holy One, Blessed be He, fills the entire world, so too the soul fills the entire body. 
2. Just as the Holy One, Blessed be He, sees but is not seen, so too does the soul see, but is not seen. 
3. Just as the Holy One, Blessed be He, sustains the entire world, so too the soul sustains the entire body. 
4. Just as the Holy One, Blessed be He, is pure, so too is the soul pure. 
5. Just as the Holy One, Blessed be He, resides in a chamber within a chamber, so too the soul resides in a chamber within a chamber. 

Rav Bahya ibn Pakuda,[21] in his seminal work, the Hovot haLevavot,[22] describes the interplay between the body and soul, the constituent elements comprising a human being. Both are among the benefits God has bestowed on humankind. The body is visible, and the soul is invisible. Accordingly, Rav Pakuda asserts, a person has a duty to render to God visible and invisible service.

The visible outward service is the observance of the duties of the limbs. This includes praying, fasting, giving charity, learning the Torah and teaching it, making a Sukkah, waving a lulav on the festival of Sukkot, tzitzith, mezuzah. and similar precepts whose performance is completed by the physical limbs.

The invisible inward service consists of the fulfillment of the duties of the heart. This includes acknowledging the unity of God in our hearts, believing in God and God’s Torah, revering God and humbling ourselves before God, loving God, trusting in God, abstaining from what God hates, devoting our actions to God’s name, reflecting on the benefits God bestows on us and similar things, which are performed by the thoughts and sentiments of the heart, but are not associated with activities of the visible limbs of the body.

Rav Pakuda explains that the duties of the limbs cannot be performed properly unless they are accompanied by the will of the heart, longing of the soul to do them and desire of the heart to perform them. Cooperation between the body and soul is required for the complete service of God; no act can be complete without the agreement of the soul. Thus, the soul and the body must act in concert to perform the mitzvoth or the performance is not deemed whole and complete. Among other biblical sources, Rav Pakuda cites a verse in Deuteronomy[23] that one must love God with all of one’s heart, soul, and might. Indeed, as the title of the work Hovot haLevavot (Duties of the Heart) indicates, Rav Pakuda is particularly focused on devotion of the heart, as a critical and integral component of performing the mitzvoth. He cites the discussion in the Talmud[24] about how when rain was needed, the barometer for measuring who would be most successful in entreating God was not the amount of Torah the person studied. Rather, the determining factor among the sages was who had the most heart. The Talmud explains, this is based on the verse in Samuel,[25] that God seeks the heart. 

Rav Pakuda discusses the need for introspection and self-examination[26] as to a person’s service of God (i.e., performance of the mitzvoth). He also speaks about the need for a person to train oneself to do so, with all one’s might, diligence, and zealousness, until it becomes a habit. He goes on to explain that the primary purpose of the mitzvoth, which involve the body and the limbs, is to arouse a person’s attention to the feelings that must have in the heart and the mind, in furtherance thereof. In essence, it is the doing of the mitzvoth with the proper intent that nourishes the soul. Engaging in the performance of the mitzvoth with all of a person’s heart and mind and exerting oneself to the best of the one’s ability results in God opening the gates of spiritual qualities. Said another way, it enables the soul to be nourished. 

I believe the good feelings it engenders are a part of the self-reinforcing mechanism, designed to motivate a person to continue doing mitzvoth this way. Indeed, as the Mishnah in Avot[27] states, doing a mitzvah engenders doing another mitzvah.

Among the mitzvoth, is the obligation to love your neighbor like yourself.[28] Rav Pakuda presents this mitzvah in a most interesting way. He challenges a person to make a personal accounting regarding the person’s joining with people for furthering the general welfare, such as plowing or harvesting, buying and selling, and other societal matters. These are endeavors in which people should help each other, because they should love doing for their neighbors that which they would love happen to themselves and eschew doing harm to others. 

Rav Pakuda also asserts that the strengthening and rectification of the soul is through habituating it with morals and wisdom. It requires guiding it with words of wisdom, teaching it good traits and restraining from the bodily lusts. The strengthening and rectification of the body is achieved by providing it with various types of good, tasty food and drink, which are suitable to its nature, washing it with warm water, and supervising its benefits and needs constantly. However, he cautions that if a person’s thoughts are limited only to the needs of the body and all attention is focused on this object, then the person will neglect the improvement of the soul. Likewise, if a person’s attention is only directed toward rectifying the soul, then will neglect much of the needs of the body. It takes a balance. The key is for the person both to provide the body with the food it needs to function and the soul with the wisdom and moral conduct it needs. It is a potent example of the soul and body connection. Rav Pakuda also notes the verse in Ecclesiastes,[29] which states that a person should not be overly righteous so as not to bring desolation on himself, or overly wicked or a fool so as not to suffer an untimely demise. He explains that should not separate from the world nor seek to conquer the world and indulge in base desires beyond that which is appropriate for the satisfaction of religious and worldly needs. 

There is much contemporary discussion of the mind-body connection. The Jewish tradition approaches the substance of this matter from a somewhat different perspective. It recognizes that there is a soul and body connection. The mind, in this equation, is a part of the body apparatus. Thus, there is an obligation to keep not only the body, including the brain, in good health, but also the soul. 

The Bible[30] obligates a person to guard both his body and soul. Keeping both in good health and functioning properly requires a proactive approach. They are also interdependent and, therefore, there must be a coordinated healthcare program. In this respect, it is similar to treatment regimens that recognize the mind-body connection. However, many of the issues ascribed to the mind are rightly placed with the soul. 

            The brain in this construct is another organ of the body, much like the processor, memory, and other hardware in a computer. The body is the machinery it controls in order to perform a variety of tasks. In this analogy, the soul is the programmer and software that makes the computer and, by extension, the machinery of the body it controls, function. Without the software to run it, the mind and body are but a lifeless machine. The connection between the two is intimate. Each is integral to the functioning of the other.

            The Rambam explains[31] that the soul animates the person and controls what the person feels and contemplates. It governs:

1. Nutrition: The complex system in the body, which ingests food, digests it, processes into a form that can be assimilated, transported and stored within the body, so as to be available to provide the energy, when and where needed, to power the body and its functions. This includes maintenance, growth, and reproduction. It must also distinguish between what is useful to the body and what is not and then discards the waste.
2. Sensation: The complex system of the five senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch and the processing of that sensory input.
3. Imagination: The power to recall impressions of various incidents after they are no longer perceptible by the senses, associate and disassociate them from other memories and develop new ideas that are not just recreations of previous perceptions of the senses. It can imagine things that don’t exist in reality.
4. Simulation: The power that attracts or repels a person from something else. It can inspire a person to seek, flee from, appreciate, or reject something. Anger, desire, fear, courage, cruelty, mercy, hate, love, and other emotional states are a part of the simulative power of the soul. It expresses itself in actions of the organs and limbs of body it controls, such as the motions of the hands, feet, and eyes, as well as, the internal processes of the organs, which fuel fear, courage, or other emotional states.
5. Conceptualization: The power to think and contemplate. It enables a person to acquire knowledge and distinguish between positive and negative activities. This includes both in the abstract realm of the spiritual and the applied realm of vocational activities, such as carpentry, agriculture, medicine, and seafaring. It also includes the power of discernment to enable a person to determine when one is suited to performing a particular activity or it is proper to do so. 

The Rambam notes that soul craves knowledge. It is the faculty, which God endowed us with, in order to comprehend knowledge. It has the ability to understand metaphysical concepts and recognize God and the majesty of God’s creations. The soul does not decompose upon death like the body. It is from God and it is eternal.[32]

If the soul has so much control over the body and, by extension our life, then where does the breakdown occur that enables a person to sin? Isn’t this so counter to the soul’s spiritual essence as to make it virtually impossible to happen? Yet as the Talmud[33] reports no person dies without sin. Why then do good people commit sins? 

The Rambam answers this question.[34] The actual performance of the mitzvoth or rebellion against the dictates of the Torah is effectuated by the soul’s sensory and simulative controls noted above. This is because they direct the actions of the body, which engages in virtuous or sinful actions. But the origin of these impulses lies elsewhere. It is in the conceptual facility of the soul that the problem begins. It can be as simple as belief in a defective idea instead of a true one. Often though, the problem is a much more subtle one. This is because a person has positive virtues and correspondingly negative ones. Intellectually, a person might make errors because of a lack complete and coherent knowledge, a misunderstanding, or a lack of clarity. In this sense, the concept of merely virtue signaling without concomitant good actions is a corrosive influence. Better to do good deeds and eschew the impotent signaling. What’s the point of talking about virtue and not actually acting virtuous by doing good deeds? It’s obnoxious and self-defeating.

The Rambam explains[35] that a healthy soul can be recognized by its good deeds and kind conduct. Illness of the soul is manifested by evil conduct, damaging actions, and reproachable deeds. The Rambam analogizes the symptoms of soul sickness to physical maladies. He notes that sometimes an ill person will suffer from confused senses. What is bitter might taste sweet and vice versa. Sometimes they might find unhealthy activities pleasurable and vice versa. They may even ingest harmful substances that a healthy person would shun. An unhealthy soul might similarly believe that wicked, undesirable, or unworthy actions are good and vice versa. He goes on to say that the wicked will seek motives that are in fact evil and yet because of their infirmity will characterize them as good. In essence, they seek pretexts to justify wrongful conduct and rationalize it. 

It appears that the Rambam, in the twelfth century, is describing what today might be described as the symptoms of virtue signaling disorder syndrome. He even notes that those who suffer from this condition typically don’t appreciate they have a problem and consider themselves healthy. The Rambam offers that left untreated, the illness of the soul just gets worse. Bad conduct doesn’t satisfy the soul; it merely increases its appetite. A soul doctor is required to diagnose and heal the spiritual ailments, much like a medical doctor is required to diagnose and treat physical illness. However, because of the integration of the soul and body, a combination of remedies is required, in order to cure a problem.[36]

The soul constitutes the center of a person’s consciousness, intellect, emotions, perception, and understanding. It is the soul that directs whether a person feels happy or sad or loves or hates something. The senses are also controlled by the soul. The soul is the source of a person’s imaginative facility, contemplative ability, and appreciation of metaphysical ideas. The Rambam speaks of how soul health is dependent on our moral conduct and taking the middle path. Improving our moral qualities heals the soul. Both the body (including the mind) and the soul must be healthy. If the body is not healthy then the soul suffers, as well. It is not able properly to apprehend the knowledge of God while unwell.[37] In essence, medicine treats the body and Torah the soul. A person can actively treat the soul by doing what is right and proper. The Rambam describes[38] the golden mean, which provides equilibrium among all sorts of excesses dictated by our inborn character traits, including extremes of even the virtuous ones. The key though is treating both as a part of a coordinated treatment plan.

In describing the soul, the Rambam uses terminology that is reminiscent of a discussion of quantum and wave theory. The soul is said to have form but not substance, akin to electromagnetic energy. This is unlike the body, which has both form and substance. The soul is invisible. Yet, it has observable effects, which manifest themselves in the actions of the body. 

The Torah provides a holistic approach to life that includes soul health to achieve enlightenment and nobility. The master training program, embodied in the Torah system of mitzvoth God beneficently bestowed upon us, includes hukkim. In this regard, it is important to appreciate the depth and full extent of what are considered the hukkim.

It is respectfully submitted that there are no real mishpatim, which could be expected to be enacted as a matter of course by those professing to be rational. Consider the vagaries of human nature and the ability of some segment of the society to rationalize and glorify what others perceive as undoubtedly and absolutely abhorrent. For example, on October 7, 2023, Shabbat-Shemini Atzeret, evil Hamas invaded Israel, brutally murdered over 1,200 Israelis, Americans, Europeans, Nepalis, and others from dozens of countries. In addition, Hamas maimed many thousands more, committed sadistic and unspeakable atrocities, and kidnapped Israelis, Americans, and others, including women and children, who they viciously abused and are continuing to hold hostage. They also murderously fired more than 7,000 rockets and missiles targeting innocent civilians in Israel. Although condemned by many, the world has not universally denounced Hamas’ evil conduct. Indeed, some even sought to rationalize this miscreant behavior, finding excuses and pretexts to justify the malign actions of Hamas. Alas, this is not the only example of atrocities that are ignored, including against Christians in Darfur and Muslim Uyghurs in China. So many can’t see because their vision is obscured and moral clarity impeded by their debilitating, misplaced, and biased focus on virtue signaling ideologically driven messages.   

It’s all too reminiscent of the Midrash[39] that described God offering the Torah to other nations before granting it to the Jewish people. Each nation God offered the opportunity to receive the Torah first asked what was in it before they could accept it. When told it contained a prohibition against killing, one nation answered that murder was an essential part of their ethic. Others balked at the restrictions on adultery. Another nation refused it because it prohibited theft and that was an accepted part of their cultural tradition. The sum and substance is that what some may think are ordinary and rational rules are not so obvious to everyone. The answer, ultimately, of the people of Israel was we will do and listen. In essence, it’s the doing part that’s critical and this involves performing the entire program, not just the part we profess to understand. After all, burdened as we are with our rationalizing mind, who are we really to know?

The Beit haLevi[40] in analyzing the nature of hukkim concludes that we don’t actually know the reason for any of the 613 commandments; it’s really all just speculation. 

All of the commandments are intertwined into one seamless whole, each dependent on the other, designed to yield refinement. Overdoing or underperforming any of the commandments is to be eschewed, because the entirety of the Torah is a divinely prescribed program to achieve this result. Missing a step or adding one will only serve to disrupt the finely tuned mechanism. Thus, even well-meaning attempts to ascribe reasons justifying the performance of some of the commandments, like the mishpatim, are fraught with danger. This is because trying to rationalize the performance of some of the commandments might lead to dismissing those, like the red heifer, which don’t make rational sense. Hence, the emphasis in the Torah on the hukkim as the correct approach to the commandments. 

It is suggested that the distinction between hukkim and mishpatim is not in the requirement of unquestioning performance, which effectively is applicable to both categories; but, rather, in the observable or hidden results of doing them. As Maimonides[41] notes, every commandment serves a useful purpose. In some cases, the usefulness is evident and in others not so much. 

Thus, a good physical exercise routine and diet can have positive and measurable effects on our physical health. We can also see the wonderful and most beneficial effects following the mishpatim has on how society functions. However, there are no observable conditions we can measure to determine the positive effect the red heifer protocol is having on our soul. Perhaps, that goes to the essence of the descriptive category of mishpatim as distinguished from hukkim. We can readily observe the visible difference fulfilling the mishpatim makes on relations among people. This should inspire us faithfully to follow the complete formula. After all, the overt parts can be seen to work in practice.

 Establishing good patterns of behavior through good training helps assure when the real test occurs that we acquit ourselves well. 

It is also important to think before acting, in order to fashion the appropriate response to a particular circumstance. An automatic, conditioned response is not always the answer. In life, it is sometimes difficult to recognize what is positive or negative in a particular situation. 

The Torah contains all sorts of rules that are designed to control our behavior. If a person wishes to eat the eggs in a nest, the mother bird must first be sent away, before the person may collect the eggs.[42] When besieging a city, it is commanded not to cut down the fruit trees.[43] The Bible also commands that the mother animal not be slaughtered on the same day as its young.[44]

The Bible permits eating only certain species of animals, with certain defined characteristics[45] and only certain specified fowl,[46] provided they are first to ritually slaughter.[47] In addition, among other things, the suet must also first be removed,[48] as well as the blood,[49] and the meat cannot be eaten with milk.[50] As to sea life, only certain fish with specified characteristics[51] are permitted to be eaten, not any others. These are but a few head notes of the many volumes of halakhic materials containing extensive detailed rules and regulations governing food and its consumption. 

We don’t know the particular reasons for each commandment. However, there is a pattern in terms of human behavior that they share in common; they serve to regulate it. Satisfaction is delayed and limited. A person is prohibited from just grabbing the limb of a live animal and chowing down on it.[52] This is a part of the balance prescribed by the Torah. It is an entire system in balance, which must be studied, mastered, and performed in order to function properly. Frankly, it is a life’s journey. 

The treatment of the body and soul requires a coordinated approach. Modern medicine has developed expertise in dealing with the body and the mind. Notwithstanding the understanding that there is a mind-body connection, it has been slow to develop integrated treatment regimens that deal with both as an integrated whole. It is frankly deficient in recognizing there is also a soul and body (and mind) connection. It is viewed as a vestige of ancient wisdom that has been eclipsed by modern medical practice, aimed curing the physical manifestations of disease. Investigating and dealing with the spiritual component of the equation as a part of a holistic treatment of the person is often viewed as an anachronistic practice. Modern wisdom in the form of medical science is viewed as the optimum approach. Healing the soul is viewed either as a psychological problem, better left to mental health experts or as a matter of ancient wisdom, better left to the person’s rabbi or other source of religious inspiration. 

This is due in part to the feeling that healing of the soul is not a matter of science, but rather a matter of metaphysics. After all, the soul can’t be seen. What can’t be directly or even indirectly observed is viewed as being outside the purview of medical science. Its diagnosis and treatment is not covered in medical textbooks and is not a part of a doctor’s traditional training. While the suffering endured by a soul may result in physical (including mental) manifestations, it is not a problem medical experts have been trained to handle. For an individual of faith, there is little choice but to seek separate medical treatment for the physical manifestations of illness from a medical professional and treatment for spiritual ailments from a spiritual expert. The concept of an integrated treatment plan that deals with both is foreign to Western medicine. 

The Talmud[53] reports an exchange between the Roman emperor Antoninos[54] and Rabbi Yehudah haNasi on the subject of the body and the soul that provides a conceptual insight into this matter. Antoninus poses the issue of how the body and soul can ultimately be judged by the heavenly court. He avers that the body can argue it was the soul that sinned. Furthermore, it is not present at the time of heavenly judgment, because by then it is dead and buried. The soul can argue that it was the body that sinned. Rabbi Yehudah haNasi responds with a parable. He asks Antoninus to consider the case of two guards stationed to protect the fruits in an orchard. One of the guards is lame and the other is blind. Neither can steal the fruits of the orchard on their own. However, the guards, acting in concert, can together steal the fruit. The lame person said to the blind that he should place the lame one on his shoulders. Acting jointly, in this manner, the lame person was provided with mobility and the blind person with a means of sight, sufficient to reach and steal the fruit. In this manner, they managed to pick the fruit and each ate the bounty they illicitly obtained together. Sometime later, the owner of the field came by, noticed the fruits of the orchard were gone and asked the two guards what had happened. The lame man answered he had no legs and therefore, he could not be guilty of the theft. The blind person also pleaded he had no sight and could not have seen his way to steal the fruits. The owner placed the lame guard on the shoulders of the blind one and judged them as one. Rabbi Yehudah haNasi then responded to Antoninus’ line of reasoning directly. He asserted that God casts the soul back into the body and judges them as one. 

 It is the body and soul, which together face the evil inclination and life. They should be treated as a whole. The good we do affects our soul and helps determine how we think. Virtue signaling serves no useful purpose. It is no substitute for actually doing good deeds, and it can lull us into falsely assuming otherwise. 

In a very real sense, we are what we do, and that affects the way we think. We are also not just the sum total of what we think or what we feel. We are also what we can become. Our charge should be, I do good deeds, therefore, I am. May we be blessed to follow the Torah program in its entirety and become the best versions of ourselves.

Notes

Conversation Guide: Building Support for Israel and Combating Antisemitism

With Non-Jewish Friends, Neighbors and Colleagues

What they need to know

1. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is terrible but it would end immediately if Hamas surrendered and released the hostages. Hamas deliberately uses the civilian population of Gaza, 2.4 million people, as human shields. Hamas exploits civilian suffering for propaganda against Israel. Hamas command centres, weapons storage and rocket launchers are located in the midst of schools, hospitals, UNRWA aid offices and homes. Resources that flowed into Gaza for years, such as building supplies and raw materials, were devoted to war-making as the top priority. Hamas built a huge tunnel system, more extensive than the London Underground, to conceal its terror apparatus and shelter its leadership. Hamas built no bomb shelters or civilian infrastructure for the civilian population. Why is Gaza dependent on imported food, water and energy? It is critical for the people of Gaza, not just Israel, that Hamas no longer control Gaza.
2. News media focus heavily on civilian suffering in coverage of the Gaza war. News media almost exclusively show photos and video of the destruction in Gaza. They report incident by incident on deaths and show grieving family members. That is truly tragic. On the other hand, few stories portray the war from the perspective of Israel. We don’t hear how families of Israeli hostages are coping with their uncertain fate. We don’t hear from the families of Israeli soldiers killed or wounded in Gaza. We don’t hear about the more than 200,000 Israelis evacuated from border areas near Gaza and in the north under threat from Hezbollah who have no idea when they can go home.
3. It’s not only up to Israel to minimize civilian casualties and suffering. If Hamas surrendered and released the hostages, the war would end and there would be no more civilian suffering. If Egypt opened its Gaza border to Palestinian refugees, they would be able to escape the war. Israel, for its part, tries to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza while fighting a war that it must win. Israel must value the lives of its soldiers equally with those of civilians in Gaza. Nevertheless, Israel urges civilians to evacuate from areas of intense conflict. It gives warnings when possible. But civilian casualties are inevitable given the dense, urban environment of the war and the deliberate strategy of Hamas to put civilians in danger and exploit their suffering. 
4. Hamas is a terrorist, radical Islamist organization. Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip since since 2007, when it ousted the Palestinian Authority from power. It broke a ceasefire when it launched a horrific, murderous attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. That attack took place early on a Saturday morning, the Jewish Sabbath and a holy day, Simchat Torah. In the attack, 3,000 terrorists killed 1,200 people, mainly civilians, committed systematic sexual violence, mutilated victims and took 253 hostages into Gaza. Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, is a proxy for the Islamic Republic of Iran, which arms and funds it. 
5. The avowed goal of Hamas is to eliminate Israel and establish an Islamist regime in all of Israel-Palestine. All Jews would be expelled or killed, according to the Hamas Charter. For years after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and up to the present, Hamas and other terror groups launched thousands of rockets into Israeli towns and nearby kibbutzim. Hamas built tunnels under the border to infiltrate into Israel and perpetrate attacks. Hamas has always firmly opposed a “two-state solution” and a peaceful, negotiated end to the conflict. Hamas has promised to repeat the October 7^th attack again and again.
6. Israel’s war aims are legitimate. They are: to destroy Hamas as the ruling power in Gaza; to rescue/recover the remaining 130 hostages (of whom perhaps fewer than 100 remain alive); and to prevent attacks like that of October 2023 from ever occurring again. The war, painful as it is on all sides, must go on until those aims are achieved.
7. Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. Israel is the only country in which the Jewish people have sovereignty and control their own destiny. The Holocaust demonstrated what happens when Jews do not have a country. Jews are the indigenous people of Israel, dating back more than 3,000 years. King David established Jerusalem as the capital of Israel 1,000 years before the rise of Christianity and 1,600 years before the rise of Islam. Jewish communities continued to exist in Israel throughout the centuries after the Roman conquest and expulsions. For 2,000 years Jews constantly prayed for the return to Israel and Jerusalem. In the 19^th century, political Zionism arose as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and more Jews came to live in and work the land. In 1948, modern Israel was founded after an affirmative vote of the United Nations. Israel today is a Middle Eastern country; a majority of Israelis originate from countries in the Middle East and north Africa, not Europe. 
8. It is false to call Israel an “apartheid state.” Palestinian citizens of Israel, also known as Arab Israelis, have full civil and political rights. They now number 2.1 million out of Israel’s 10 million population. Overwhelmingly, they do not want to live in a Palestinian state. 
9. It is false to say that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is the root cause of the war. Hamas is determined to wipe out all of Israel inside and outside its 1948 borders. Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that controls the West Bank both reject Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. An independent Palestinian state could have been in place as early as 1948 but local Arab leaders and the Arab League rejected the 1947 partition plan and attacked the new State of Israel. Successive governments of Israel were willing to negotiate withdrawal from territories occupied in the 1967 war. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. Both Hamas and the PLO have greeted repeated peace-making efforts going back to the Oslo Accords of 1993-1995 with repeated waves of terror attacks. Palestinian terror attacks, culminating in the atrocities of October 7, are the cause of the war.
10. Jews are currently experiencing an unprecedented wave of antisemitism and anti-Israel actions. Stimulated by the October 7 Hamas attack and the ongoing war in Gaza, increasingly aggressive pro-Palestine demonstrations have targeted Jewish institutions, neighbourhoods and individuals across the country. University campuses have become hostile zones for Jewish students. Jewish-owned businesses have been vandalized and fire-bombed. Jewish students are harassed on campuses. Pro-Palestine demonstrators chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Jews understand that as a call for the elimination of Israel and the extermination of every Israeli. Demonstrators praise the Hamas attack of October 7 as an appropriate response to Israeli occupation. They call Israel an “apartheid state” and a “colonial oppressor.” Jews who support Israel are said to be complicit in these “crimes.” They call the war in Gaza “genocide.” Those who falsely and grotesquely accuse Israel of genocide are themselves the advocates of genocide. The police law-enforcement response to pro-Palestine demonstrations has been uneven, varying from state to state, which emboldens the demonstrators.
11. Anti-Israel and antisemitic attacks threaten the values of tolerance and mutual respect that sustain our social fabric. Imagine if Jews were to demonstrate against the Hamas attack at mosques or in Muslim neighbourhoods or at Muslim-owned businesses. If intimidating, hateful demonstrations are accepted as the norm, other groups may adopt such tactics. Demonstrators who literally and figuratively trample norms of democratic life would not hesitate to trample the institutions of democracy. 

What they can do

1. Condemn the atrocities that Hamas committed on October 7: a surprise attack that violated a ceasefire on the Sabbath and a Jewish holy day; the murder of 1,200 people, mostly civilians, with gruesome violence and mutilation; taking 253 hostages, including women, children, men, the sick and the elderly; systematic sexual violence against women and men; and filming and posting video and images of the attack on social media.
2. Support Israel’s just war against Hamas. Tell friends and family, colleagues and neighbours that the war must continue until Hamas is defeated or surrenders. Communicate that to news media with letters and commentary.
3. Tell the government to: continue strongly supporting Israel’s just war; condemn the use of civilians in Gaza as human shields and the exploitation of their suffering by Hamas; demand that Hamas surrender and release the hostages unconditionally; cut off funding to UNRWA, which supported and gave cover to Hamas; reject the decision of the International Court of Justice to even consider South Africa’s groundless assertion that Israel’s war in Gaza is a genocide.
4. Call out media bias against Israel in coverage of the war. Demand that news media balance reporting on civilian suffering in Gaza with reporting on: Hamas tactics that maximize civilian deaths and exploit suffering for political impact; the lack of action by other parties, such as Egypt, to alleviate suffering; Israel’s efforts to limit civilian casualties and expedite humanitarian relief; the sacrifices and losses that Israelis are enduring in the war, including the families of hostages, the experience of hostages held by Hamas, including sexual abuse and lack of medical attention, and the hardship of Israelis evacuated from border areas; Israeli soldiers killed and wounded, some of them because of efforts to avoid civilian deaths.
5. Tell Jewish friends, neighbours and colleagues that you understand their distress about the war and rising antisemitism and offer support. This is a time to communicate and tell them you care. Listen to their concerns and consider how you can help. They may have experienced anti-Israel or antisemitic harassment. They may have been intimidated at a Jewish place of worship, community centre, university or business. They may have been challenged at school or in the workplace as a Jew or as a supporter of Israel.
6. Speak out against hateful, inciteful demonstrations against Israel and Jews. When pro-Palestine demonstrators break the law, call on police to enforce the law. We should not allow trespassing on private property, intimidating behaviour, inciteful speech, and blocking access to institutions, public places and events. 
7. Join with Jewish people when there are counter-demonstrations to show support for Israel and the resolve of the Jewish community. We should not cede the streets and neighbourhoods to pro-Palestine, pro-Hamas demonstrators. We should not accept that it is okay to bully and block access to people coming and going from Jewish institutions or public events. We should not tolerate it when demonstrators shout hateful and inciteful slogans and carry signs with such messages. Join us when we go out publicly to show our resolve and tell our side of the story.
8. Stand with Jews and other religious and cultural communities when there are issues that threaten core American values. Freedom to practice religion, security, combating racism and hate, fostering tolerance and mutual respect, the rule of law and other such values are the bedrock of our civil, democratic society. We need to work together with allies issue by issue to protect the values and the way of life that we cherish.

May 1, 2024

The Holocaust, understandably, haunts the Jewish people. We can never forget the millions of Jews who were tortured and murdered by the Germans and their collaborators. Whenever a crisis erupts that threatens Jews, there is an almost visceral reaction to call up the memory of the Holocaust.

After the Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7, Jewish media was quick to report that this was the highest number of Jews murdered in a single day since the Holocaust.

In attempting to combat antisemitism in New York, a program was initiated to bring all eighth-grade students to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, where they could learn about the Holocaust. When international leaders visit Israel, a visit to Yad Vashem is almost always part of the itinerary.

The prevailing wisdom is that when people – especially young people – learn about the horrors of the Holocaust, they will become more sympathetic toward Jews and aware of the dangers of religious and racial hatred. With more knowledge about the Holocaust, it is assumed that people will be less prone to antisemitic attitudes and behaviors.

The various efforts at Holocaust education have had a positive impact on many. And yet, Holocaust education – unless handled very well – can have negative consequences. For those steeped in anti-Jewish hatred, the Holocaust may actually encourage their antisemitism. They view Jews as a despised minority group that is an easy target for hatred and violence. They see that millions of Jews were systematically slaughtered while much of the world stood aside. In the minds of rabid Jew-haters, the Holocaust is an ideal, not a disaster.

While maintaining the memory of the Holocaust is surely very important, we need also to project a positive image of Jews, Judaism, and Zionism. Much of the antisemitism we face today is directly related to anti-Zionism. We need to focus on conveying the historical connection of the Jewish people to our land going back to biblical days.

Even after being exiled from the Land of Israel several times over the millennia, in the last instance at the hands of the Romans in 70 CE, the Jewish People have continued to live in, pray for, and dream of a return to their historic homeland.

After nearly 1,900 years, the Jews gained sovereignty over their land with the establishment of the modern State of Israel. This is one of the most amazing adventures in human history. For an ancient people to return to their historic homeland and build a dynamic, democratic society is an unprecedented story of courage, faith, and persistence.

Our story is truly inspiring and full of hope, spirituality, creativity, courage, and resilience. Despite all the hurdles we have had to face – and still face – the Jews are a strong and vibrant people. We need to tell our story in a confident voice – not as propaganda, not in sound bites – in a sophisticated and intelligent way that will convey the power of the Jewish experience.

The re-emergence of a sovereign Jewish state is a remarkable historic achievement. Yet, as we know, it has not been received with love or understanding by many in the Arab world. In particular, we face those who foster the Hamas ideology that negates the Jewish right to our own land.

The goal of the haters, by their own admission, is the destruction of Israel. And while wars on the battlefield can achieve military victories for Israel, ultimate victory will come only when the ideology of hatred is defeated. Just as Israel devotes so much courage and brilliance to its physical defense, it needs to devote equal – and more – courage and brilliance to fighting the murderous ideology that has infected many beyond Hamas.

To combat this ideology of hatred, we need more than Holocaust education.

We need a powerful, positive presentation of Jewish history, Jewish connection to the land of Israel, Jewish idealism, and Jewish striving for peace and mutual understanding.

We would do well to remember the prophecy of Isaiah (42:6) who relates God’s wondrous promise to the people of Israel that they will become “a light unto the nations.” We need to focus on the light; on what we have given, are giving, and can give to the world.

Isaiah (51:3) foresaw a time like ours when the wasteland that was Israel turned into a beautiful and thriving country: “For the Lord comforts Zion; He comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.”

That is Zionism that is Judaism, that is the aspiration of the Jewish people.

If you’re a Jewish college student these days, chances are you’ve had to confront an epidemic of hostility against Jews and Israel in the wake of October 7.

How does one fight back without looking weak and reactive?

So far, the Jewish community has rightfully focused on calling out the hate and demanding equal protection for Jewish students. That protection must obviously continue, but it’s not enough.

There’s an additional way to fight back against the forces of hate: through the chutzpah of success.

That thought occurred to me after spending a few days in Los Angeles with my daughter who goes to NYU. We spent quite a bit of time talking about what Jewish students have faced since Oct. 7, but we also talked about her studies and her life.

After Oct. 7, she decided early on that she would help put up posters for the Israeli hostages and attend pro-Israel events, but she wouldn’t let the anti-Israel fury disrupt her life.

One reason was a lack of respect for the protests themselves. The fact that the anti-Israel animus burst out immediately after 1200 Israelis got massacred by Hamas on Oct.7 exposed them not as seekers of justice but as haters of Jews.

Over the months, as the protests grew more hysterical, they morphed into a joyless bunch of wannabe revolutionaries who think it’s cool to hijack graduation ceremonies and block roads to airports.

Why allow such purveyors of nuisance to mess up one’s life? Why give them that power?

Indeed, my daughter (and several of her Jewish friends) chose not to give them that power. She kept her eye on her goals, continued to do the things she loves, and, yes, even got a bunch of A’s.

I say this not just as a proud father but as a proud Jew. Playing the Victim Olympics has never been a winning move for Jews. Even when our victimhood is completely justified, in the long run we’re always better off by building on our accomplishments.

This sense of accomplishment a deep expression of the Jewish ethos. Especially during the college years, Jewish students want to define themselves not by their haters but by their life dreams.

Ever since we landed on these American shores, the freedom to succeed has been the Jewish drug of choice. Jews have been admired in America not for being weak victims who need protection but for being strong contributors who value opportunity.

None of this means we shouldn’t confront antisemitism; it means we should confront it without fear and without losing our Jewish mojo.

The most successful Jewish organization in the world—Chabad— has always done just that.

For the thousands of Chabad emissaries across the world, the best way to combat darkness is to spread light. Every Friday night, across hundreds of college campuses, Chabad and other groups like Hillel fortify Jewish students not with the power of protests but with the power of their tradition.

There are occasionally cases when a Chabad emissary will target a problem directly, as when the Chabad rabbi at Harvard recently confronted a commencement speaker about a remark that he found antisemitic.

But by and large, the Chabad way is to double down on Judaism. The more antisemitism they see, the more pro-semitism they bring. They know that nurturing something positive will create a deeper Jewish identity than simply taking down a negative.

Most of us, however, prefer to take down negatives. We feel more productive when we fight a threat directly. If protesters make Jewish students feel unsafe, we’ll focus on the threats, whether through legal means or by compelling authorities to fulfill their duties to protect the students. And that is the correct thing to do: Physical safety should always come first.

But as crucial as it is, safety is not everything. It’s a starting point. The Jewish ideal has always been to aim higher. It may be hard to think that way in the midst of hostility, but it behooves us to seek the path that will help us thrive as strong and proud Jews.

It’s tempting to think that because anti-Israel protesters attract so many loud supporters, they must be winning. They’re not. Those who measure their self-worth by their worship of victimhood invariably end up alone with their screams of emptiness.

The real winners aren’t screaming on their campus squares; they’re celebrating life at a warm Shabbat table, reconnecting with their friends, their ancient tradition and their life dreams.

Some of them are even celebrating getting straight A’s.

Yom HaAtzmaut is, like any birthday, a time of moral reckoning and of revisiting our collective story. The trauma and the sense of hopelessness we experience demand an effort to reframe our story and reorient our attitude to life in Israel and, given how events in Israel have impacted Jewry worldwide, to Jewish life itself.

Two narratives, interwoven with one another, have provided the basic conceptual framework within which the vast majority of Israelis have understood Israel and the present moment. It is time for a new vision, based on humility and lovingkindness, to shape a new narrative.

The first common narrative is the narrative of disempowerment and regaining of power. Following years of exile, culminating in the events of the Holocaust, Israel was founded as a safe haven for Jews and as a promise for the flourishing of Jewish life. This also provided a means for the deep seated Jewish vision of being a light unto the nations to find concrete expression. Human activism and taking history into our hands characterize this narrative, which is understood as distinct from the alternative approach, characterized by greater historical passivity, in anticipation of divine action and a supernatural messianic redemption. The sense of empowerment unfolded progressively in Israel’s life as successive military victories showed Israel’s strength, as agricultural and technological capacities made it a wonder to the world and a startup nation and as a miraculous reality was experienced as part of the day to day life of the nation-state. Admiration for Israel characterizes the better part of its history and forms part of the narrative itself. While Israel did not have a particular teaching or example to offer the world, its very existence was a source of wonder and inspiration.

The second narrative is internal. It is a narrative of unity, or the quest for unity, within Israel and the claim that Israel as a state unites and serves the entire Jewish people. Deep fissures within Israeli society have existed throughout the State’s history, but for the most part have been held at bay. A sense of unity has kept society together, especially in times of crisis and war.

The events that have unfolded prior to and since October 7^th call into question both narratives. That day was a day of defeat and profound humiliation. By all accounts, despite an enormous show of power following that day, we have yet to emerge victorious from this war. Something has been broken in the national spirit. In parallel, the view of Israel, on the global stage, has sunk to a nadir we could have never imagined.

Almost universally, the second narrative ties to the first, as an explanation for our failure. Accordingly, the reason put forth for everything going wrong is our lack of unity. Internal weakening led to an external attack, from which we have yet to recover.

Both narratives reference the nation and its power and both put forth human/social reasons as the sole means of understanding our historical situation. As a consequence, there is a remarkable dearth of attempts to account for Israel’s condition in other terms, especially theological terms. For the most part, God is kept out of the picture. A history of Jewish introspection and attempting to account for the present moment by examination of the past is cast aside, as these narratives are accepted almost blindly.

There are many reasons why I consider these narratives inadequate to the task of accounting for the present moment and why, I believe, we must discover new narratives by means of which to make sense of this time. The magnitude of our fall from grace cannot be accounted for simply in light of divisive leadership or government policies. Too many factors came together to bring about October 7^th, including the failure of intelligence and the particular state of lack of preparedness, for us to ignore the possibility that what happened was not simply a consequence of a set of bad political choices. Theologically speaking, God allowed October 7^th to happen. We could have been protected as we were during the recent massive attack from Iran. We were not. This gives pause for reflection.

Similarly, the narrative of unity also falls short in its explanatory power. Divisions in Israel have always been there, nor has any real unity been achieved since October 7th. The notion of unity has itself been used with political convenience and no serious, let alone successful, work of healing national divisions is within sight. Again, theologically – why would God allow lack of unity to lead to these results, if no successful reversal of that reality emerges from events?

So, one wonders, surely one must learn something from this period. What are lessons we should draw from it? Amazingly, no significant insight or message for the moment comes forth from Jewish leadership in response to this question. Political leaders have no new insight to offer. Events simply affirm their previous political views. Religious leaders have been universally dumb in their response, at best echoing the unity trope, or calling for teshuva in the broadest terms. No chief rabbi, Hassidic leader, rosh yeshiva, leader of a particular denomination, or the like, has come forth with a message powerful and convincing enough to constitute the kind of lesson that would make sense of the events of October 7th and beyond.

In this situation, it is impossible to learn anything from the events of the past 7 months. How can one learn if the question is not posed and an answer is not put forth? Moreover, any attempt to learn will, of necessity, echo divisions within the people. Each group will learn lessons that affirm its position and invalidate the views of the other. We need to consider the present moment in terms other than learning historical or moral lessons.

If, as I believe, God has purposes in allowing events to unfold, these should be achieved regardless of our learning capacity and in spite of our collective limitations and fractures. Therefore, we must ask whether there is another way of approaching these events that is not learning from them. Perhaps our collective experience is more important than the lessons we draw. Perhaps our humiliation and the crushing of our ego are the purpose of events as they have unfolded. Perhaps our suffering has a purifying value, in and of itself. Perhaps it is time to own again elements of thought that we have cast aside, in the process of our empowerment. Perhaps the lesson of the purifying power of suffering in exile remains relevant and plays out in our history in ways other than empowering us to take history into our hands. Perhaps the relationship of human and divine action, and the sense of power that we take for granted must be recalibrated. Might all these not be summed up under one word – humility? Is our global humiliation not a moment for collective humility? What kind of Israel might come forth, at 76, if humility, rather than power, were the subjective goal to which we strive? How might the purpose of serving as light unto the nations, largely forgotten in past decades, be rediscovered in this light?

As I contemplated these issues, between Yom Hashoah and Yom Atzmaut , I went to pray, at the tomb of the Prophet Samuel. He was, after all, the great seer (that is what he is called in the Bible) who struggled with the balance between divine and human governance and the limits of human power, as expressed in the institution of Israel’s kingdom. As I prayed, a word came to me – lovingkindness. It was not what I had expected, and yet I think it offers a message that is crucial to the creation of a new narrative, and flows directly from the recognition of how central humility must be to our going forward.

Rather than saying we know what it is all about or that we have the power to draw lessons from events, we can acknowledge that we are overpowered by events and at a loss to comprehend them. We are also at a loss to heal our divisions. More fundamentally, we are at a loss to account for what the purpose of Israel – the State and the People – is at the present moment. And we all share in this existential situation. It applies to each and every sector in society. Each sector requires transformation. Each sector seems incapable of drawing lessons of relevance from the events of October 7^th, though indicators for such lessons are present. We are, collectively, at a loss.

Once we recognize this, there is a different way of approaching our society and the world. The surety of truth and the conviction of ideology must give way to another, more humble approach. To me, the most moving testimonies of the Holocaust, and how meaning was found in suffering, are the stories of caring for one another. Showing lovingkindness in the midst of suffering was a form of maintaining human dignity, without any presumption of understanding. The moments that have moved Israeli society most since October 7^th have, indeed, been moments in which lovingkindness was manifested.

If our narratives have failed, if our ego has been crushed, if we lack vision, if we are all in a state of collective darkness and despair –  there is still a fundamental way of being that can provide hope and keep us open to new understandings and realization. If we could only inculcate lovingkindness under all situations, both within and without, despite all divisions, recognizing our limitations and collective failure, if chesed rather than emet became our governing ethos, new horizons could  open up. With these a new narrative could emerge. It is the narrative of human efforts reaching their limit, and the acceptance of our frailty and limitation, as we await new revelations and new beginnings. The road along which we travel in this journey is paved by humility and lovingkindness.