National Scholar Updates

Angel for Shabbat--Parashat Shofetim

by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

“Justice, justice you shall pursue.”

Many have commented on the Torah’s repetition of “justice,” (tsedek).  Repeating the word is a way of emphasizing how important justice is and how careful one must be in pursuing it. It has also been suggested that one must pursue justice in a just way i.e. means do not justify ends, means must themselves be just and moral.

While the verse refers to judges, it also applies to everyone. We are all called upon to make judgments and we all need to be very careful to be just in our deliberations.

In their book, Noise, Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein point out how our decisions are impacted by many seemingly extraneous things. Although we think we are being objective, our evaluations can be skewed by how we are feeling, by the weather, by the time of day. It has been shown that judges tend to be more lenient if cases are decided early in the day or right after lunch. Doctors are more likely to prescribe opioids to patients they see late in the day.  The authors point out:

“You are not the same person at all times. As your mood varies…some features of your cognitive machinery vary with it….Among the extraneous factors that should not influence professional judgments, but do, are two prime suspects: stress and fatigue” (Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein, Noise, Little, Brown Spark, New York, 2021, p.89).

When we’re stressed or tired, our objective powers of reason are compromised. When we feel elated, self-satisfied and optimistic, we also compromise our objectivity.

In other words, we are almost always at risk of making judgments that are not fully objective.

The authors point out another threat to our ability to judge fairly: “informational cascades.” A person of assumed expertise or authority makes a statement. The next person, not wanting to disagree with the expert, goes along. And then the others also fall into line. They set aside their own judgment, and defer to the first person’s views. A “cascade” ensues in which it is difficult for anyone to stand up against the prevailing view.

The search for truth must be conducted in an open and free environment, without coercion or intimidation. People must feel free to offer their insights and opinions, and must not succumb to “informational cascade.” Discussion and dissension are to be encouraged, not stifled.

Manifestations of informational cascades are ubiquitous in our society, and it requires considerable astuteness and courage to resist the pressures. It is increasingly evident in religious and political life, where small groups of clerics/pundits seek to impose their narrow views on the public. They state what is “true” and expect the public to go along with their pronouncements. Those who don’t follow the dictates of the power group are demeaned.

If “informational cascades” are highly dangerous for society at large, they are perhaps even more pernicious for religious life. They inject a spiritual poison into religion, gradually sapping religious life of vitality, creativity, dynamism. Instead of fostering a spirit of discussion and free inquiry, there is a demand for a ruthless conformity. Instead of empowering religious people to think and analyze and debate, religious people are pressured to stop thinking independently, to refrain from analysis and debate, and to suppress any ideas that do not conform to the framework of the “authorities.”

If we are to be responsible individuals, we must insist on the freedom to think for ourselves, to evaluate ideas independently, to stand up against coercion and intimidation. We must strive for a religious life that is alive and dynamic.

We must pursue truth and justice in a true and just way.

This week’s Torah portion reminds us of the importance of not letting external factors improperly mar our judgment. “Lo takir panim”—do not show favoritism. The Torah teaches not to favor the rich because they are rich, and not to favor the poor out of pity for the poor. Judgment must be fair, based on objective facts. “Lo tikah shohad”—do not take bribes. Bribery refers not only to monetary gifts, but to any favors that could tilt your judgment on behalf of one of the parties. The Torah states that bribery “blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous.” Even people who are generally deemed to be wise and righteous can succumb to the influence of bribes.

The Torah requires us to seek mishpat tsedek, righteous judgment. This is best attained if we are aware of the factors that can impact on the clarity of our judgment—stress, tiredness, informational cascades…and more. We must strive for a justice…that is just, fair and righteous.

The Blessed One, Holy Be He, held a mountain over their heads, and said, “If you accept Torah, it is well. If not, this shall be your burial ground. R. Aba B. Jacob observed, “This constitutes a protest against the Torah.” Said Raba, “They accepted (Torah) in the days of Ahaseurus.” (BT, Shabbat 88a)

I

I speak as a religious Jew, bound to the Torah, Jewish tradition, and the people of Israel, who takes the value of personal liberty as a given. There lies the challenge.

Is there a one among us today who, after thriving in the freedom of democratic society,      does not deeply value the right to choose and express personal beliefs, to choose a lifestyle, politics, or place of residence? Now we are all committed "libertarians"—political conservatives as well as liberals. All of us accept the fundamental principle of liberty, differing only over the extent to which it should be applied.

Liberty represents the political dimension of the larger concept of autonomy. In a strict philosophic sense, autonomy means that people are capable of determining their actions based upon principles they give themselves. Since the influence of Kant, however, that metaphysical capability has been understood as a moral imperative: To act autonomously is the highest responsibility that we have as moral agents. In short, acting from our own principles gives our behavior moral character.^[1]

In a more popular sense, autonomy means the necessity of choosing for ourselves, of rejecting decisions imposed on us by external authority. Autonomy and choice are the hallmarks of modern experience, for what was once a person’s fixed destiny has become largely a matter of choice in modernity. That is, the process of modernization entails a transformation from fate to personal decision.^[2] All modern thinkers who defend traditional religion struggle to find a legitimate place for individual freedom and autonomy within their systems. Thus spokespeople for the Modern Orthodox theology^[3] consider choice to be an inescapable datum of our experience. For them it has a priori justification and its value is not subject to acceptance or rejection by the halakha.

Yet the commitment to autonomy when expressed as political liberty is at prima facie odds with Judaism’s central categories of divine authority and commitment to mitzvoth. Simply put, God has commanded and we Jews must obey. The Torah is an obligation-based system, rather than a rights-based political culture. Further still, since Sinai “the Torah no longer resides in heaven.” Classical Judaism invested human institutions (e.g., bet din, rabbinic authorities, Sanhedrin) and techniques (e.g., herem, pisqei din, sanctions and fines) with the authority to coerce Jews to obey and to punish them for disobedience. If these instruments are viewed as implementations of God’s will as realized in the halakha, wherein lies the basis for individual political freedom? Is there room for liberty in a religious Jewish polity?

If the authentic implementation of halakha ultimately denies the legitimacy of political freedom, no amount of dialectical analysis will make Orthodoxy compatible with Western political thought. On an existential level, no amount of economic affluence or participation in the mainstream of modern      society will allow a halakhic Jew to feel at ease. Modern Orthodox Jews will be condemned to lead a fractured life, torn between a principled religious commitment to obey political expressions of Torah authority and a deeply rooted freedom-consciousness.

This conflict is being played out regularly in Israel, where the use of political authority to enforce religious law is a real option. Modern religious Israelis and their political parties repeatedly agonize over how much they will support religious legislation that imposes Orthodox standards upon the Israeli populace. Such legislation would deny the rights of individuals to violate the Sabbath in public, to express themselves freely, and to be guaranteed full equality under the law. In the actual confrontation between human rights and coercive religious legislation, where can the Modern Orthodox Jew stand?^[4]

The problem is much deeper than the psychological discomfort of some religious Jews. It casts ominous clouds over the religious and political future of all Kelal Yisrael. Barring a messianic intervention changing the socio-political conditions of Jews today, it is certain that any philosophy or political arrangement that denies individual freedom will be rejected by the overwhelming majority of the Jewish people. In other words, any conception of halakha that fails to make room for liberty means that Am Yisrael will never be able to return to Jewish tradition and a belief in the authority of its Torah. In Israel such a conception means that religious Israelis have no halakhic option other than pursuing a politic that limits fundamental civil liberties through religious legislation. Thus Israel’s political arena will be the scene of an unending kulturkampf, with religious Jews battling against the free democratic structure of the State.

II

If we are to understand the halakhic attitude to political freedom we must first clarify the general concept of liberty. In his celebrated essay,^[5] Isaiah Berlin explicates two different notions of political liberty appearing in Western thought. The first, negative liberty, stresses the right of a person to act without interference from others. It is personal independence, the right to act however one likes in certain areas of his life. Deliberate interference by others within these areas constitutes a lack of political freedom, implying oppression and coercion. To quote John Stuart Mill, “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.”^[6]

English political philosophers (Hobbes, Mill, Locke) all agreed on this concept of freedom, even though they disagreed over the extent to which a state should protect these rights. They knew that unlimited political freedom produces social chaos, a primitive “state of nature” that destroys justice, security, and even freedom itself. Yet all these thinkers agreed that there is a certain domain of action that ought to be impervious to both legal and social control. The values that we cherish so dearly such as freedom of religion, of speech, the rights to property, privacy, and political expression, all emerged from this British school of thought to become the bedrock of American society and the foundation of Western democracies.

Moreover, the passionate defense of liberty always runs along the same lines. Without liberty humans cannot develop their natural faculties. People’s religious, intellectual, and moral character are all frustrated when they are overly constrained by others. Indeed, once people surrender totally to an outside authority, they are so degraded that they lose their essence, their “personhood,” becoming more akin to members of the animal world. Thus the lack of freedom is not only oppressive, it is humanly self-defeating. These philosophers debate what constitutes the human essence that pervasive authority destroys and what is a person’s minimum requirement of liberty, but all agree that freedom from absolute political authority and external interference is a fundamental value. The freedom to decide one’s own actions is as necessary to a person’s health and creativity as the air one breathes. Coercing adult humans for the sake of their own religious, rational, or moral interests is never justified.

The second concept of freedom, “positive liberty,” is not a “freedom from” outside authority but a “freedom to” be and do. It is the freedom to be one’s own master, to act from reasons that are one’s own, rather than from external causes. In a word, it is the impulse to be a rational, morally responsible subject, not merely an object.^[7] Each person, of course, is a complex personality with multiple dimensions often in conflict. Some philosophers saw the true challenge of life to be the realization of one’s ideal or “higher” self, and the liberation from one’s lower nature. The higher self is usually identified with some form of reason or rational will,^[8] while the interfering or baser human dimensions are identified with humanity’s irrational impulses, their uncontrolled desires, or their undisciplined character. A person swept along by every gust of desire is no better than a brutish animal. It is the disciplined person, acting out of rationally accepted principles, who realizes one’s humanity, one’s true self to the fullest. Freedom is thus a function of what one chooses and believes, not how one’s action is determined.

Superficially, negative and positive liberty seem to be two sides of the same coin: They appear to express the same concept with a mere change in qualitative mode. How different is acting without interference from others (negative liberty) from acting out of one’s true being (positive liberty)?

“Enormous” is the simple answer. In fact, as Berlin notes, Western thinkers developed the two concepts in divergent and ultimately antithetical directions. The British empirical philosophers seized negative liberty and developed it as actual behavior within a field without obstacles, while the political rationalists (Plato, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel) focused on positive liberty expressed more as a metaphysical notion of self-mastery. The latter were more concerned with freedom from spiritual slavery than with breaking the bonds of pervasive political authority. More important than freeing oneself from others was the task of being free from oneself.

It is here that positive liberty can conflict with the concept of negative liberty. According to the doctrine of positive liberty, realizing your empirical will or your actual preferences does not make you free. Freedom evolves, rather, from some idealized metaphysical will of what you would choose or how you would act if you were fully realized, perfectly rational or in accord with a particular philosophy’s supreme human attribute (e.g., obedience, productivity, social conscience). This leads to the paradox of one person forcing another to be free^[9]: For if I am (or think I am) more rational than you, in the name of positive liberty I can force you against your expressed will to act on my perceived rational choice. It is not my power to force you that astonishes here; it is my moral justification for coercing you. Indeed it is not coercion at all, but mere assistance in your own self-realization. According to positive liberty, my control “extends” your moral choice and freedom.

There is no need to explain here how pernicious the political application of such a conception can be. It is the basis for an Orwellian Newspeak universe, where the worst forms of repression and totalitarianism are justified in the name of freedom. Enough manipulation of the definition of humanity’s essence can transform freedom into whatever the manipulator wishes to do to you. Even well-meaning paternalism ultimately produces a coercive and repressive political structure.^[10] In the end, it is no accident that in Plato’s ideal republic an entire class of people was required to act as police officers, forcing the philosopher-king’s choices upon the irrational majority. This is what led Kant to declare that, “paternalism is the worst form of despotism imaginable.”

III

With which concept of liberty is traditional Jewish thought most at home? Certainly the positive, metaphysical concept of freedom with its notion of an individual conquering oneself, resonates throughout rabbinic literature. The dual notions of the good and evil impulses, yetser ha-tov and yetser ha-ra, in perpetual conflict provide the Jewish philosophical background for this conception. Who is the truly strong and autonomous person? One who conquers one’s own passions.^[11] Who is really free? One who sheds the bonds of nature and impulse, losing oneself in the rational pursuit of Torah.^[12]

Maimonides formulates the most conspicuous point of departure within halakhic literature for analyzing the concept of positive liberty. After asserting that a get is defective when it is obtained through coercive means by a heathen court, but valid if the coercion is at the order of a bet din, Rambam explains the apparent inconsistency:

And why is this get not null and void seeing that it is the product of duress, whether exerted by the heathens or by the Israelites? Because duress applies only to him who is compelled and pressed to do something that the Torah does not obligate him to do, for example, one who is lashed until he consents to sell something or give it away as a gift. On the other hand, he whose evil inclination induces him to violate a commandment or commit a transgression, and who is lashed until he does what he is obligated to do, or refrains from what he is forbidden to do, cannot be regarded as a victim of duress; rather he has brought duress upon himself by submitting to his evil intention. Therefore this man who refuses to divorce his wife, inasmuch as he desires to be of the Israelites, he wills to abide by all the commandments and to keep away from transgressions—it is only his evil inclination that has overwhelmed him. Once he is lashed until his inclination is weakened and he says, “I consent,” it is the same as if he had given the get voluntarily.^[13]

This passage contains ambiguities that are mirrored by textual variations. One interpretation supported by the above version implies that Rambam is making one unified argument that articulates the Jewish concept of positive liberty with all its classical elements: A Jew has an essence, or “higher will” (to obey mitzvoth), as well as a lower alien dimension (evil inclination) that impels him to transgress mitzvoth. When the evil inclination “overwhelms” his true self, the court may administer corporal punishment or other sanctions until the husband relents. The issuance of the get is valid because the husband gives it voluntarily, as a result of his ideal metaphysical will, even though he appears to be coerced and his consent is extracted under duress. The halakha of get, it appears, is oblivious to the Jew’s empirical will and actual preferences; it concerns itself only with a predetermined metaphysical will as defined by halakhic obligation. Evidently the Jewish people’s original collective acceptance of Torah obligations while standing at Sinai millennia ago eclipses all subsequent individual volition to obey or disobey. Hence the action of the court is “therapeutic,” not punitive or coercive. The court is merely administering a kind of benevolent, albeit painful treatment to assist the husband in discovering his true self.

Note that Rambam’s formulation is not restricted to the limited case of divorce. He is positing a general principle of ideal will: Individual Jews are necessarily guided by an objective will to be Jewish. This, by definition, entails the voluntary acceptance of the Torah as a normative system as well as the desire to abide by each particular commandment.

Once this view is accepted, there is little room for the right of Jews to act without interference from Torah authority and its human agencies (i.e., negative liberty). Rabbinic authorities and courts or state institutions acting as agents of rabbinic authority will always be justified in ignoring the actual wishes of Jews and employing coercive measures to induce halakhic obedience. In principle, the freedoms of speech, travel, assembly, privacy, and political expression all collapse under the weight of halakhic directives. In other words, if we postulate that every Jew today has accepted the Torah at Sinai and stands obligated to obey its halakhic canons, it seems that the concept of negative liberty has no place in an authentic halakhic political theory. Accordingly, individual Jews would have no inalienable right to basic political freedoms in a Torah society.

Should it be otherwise? If Plato, Rousseau, Hegel, and Marx all were willing to sacrifice liberty to promote the highest values of their systems, should the halakha be any less committed to establishing its ideals and enforcing obedience to mitzvoth? For the traditional Jew, a fortiori the rule of Torah should supersede all other values. Perhaps political freedom, tolerance, and individual rights are amongst those respectable Western values that are simply a product of non-belief and a lack of religious commitment. Negative liberty may be a desideratum only for a community that lacks substantive value commitments or for individuals mired in theological apathy. In a word, negative liberty may actually be “the freedom of indifference.”

An interesting problem arises from this reading of Rambam. May rabbinic courts coerce one who has converted out of Judaism? In the eyes of the halakha, the convert is a sinning Jew and is still obligated by mitzvoth, i.e., his ideal will still wishes to follow the halakha, even though his empirical will indicates he does not “desire to be of the Israelites, to abide by all the commandments and keep away from transgression.” If we are concerned with his metaphysical will only, it follows that the court may indeed “coerce” the issuance of the get. Yet to totally ignore the fact that the convert has opted out of Judaism flies in the face of the real situation with which the halakha is dealing. Indeed, according to one opinion such a person cannot be legally lashed. His source?—the very same law of Rambam with a slight textual variation:

But we have found in the Maharit Zahalon who has questioned this (and maintains) that we do not coerce a convert to divorce even though he is one about whom the law rules (for other reasons) that he is to be coerced, and he bases his opinion on that which Maimonides has written: “And why is this get not null and void seeing that it is given under duress? Therefore this man who refuses to divorce his wife, in as much as he desires to be of the Israelites and he desires to abide by all the commandments, and to keep away from transgression, it is only his inclination that has overwhelmed him. Once he is lashed until his inclination is weakened and he says, “I consent,” it is the same as if he has given the get voluntarily.” According to this a convert who has transgressed every commandment indifferently and angers his Creator through serious transgression (and is coerced), is thereby consenting under duress; he is just like someone forced to give a present. And even after he is lashed and has divorced, his soul will not rest and he will be full of anger toward those who brought him to do this. Even though he performed a mitzvah, the soul of every evildoer is evil, “For the wicked boasts of his heart’s desire.” And so, he is completely forced to do this; therefore, how do we coerce even if the law decreed that for other reasons he should be coerced to divorce?^[14]

The text before the Or Sameah and the Maharit Zahalon contains the additional conjunction, and: ‘I. . . inasmuch as he desires to be of the Israelites and he desires (“ve-rotseh hu”) to abide by all the commandments. . . .” This implies that Rambam is concerned not exclusively with an ideal will, but also with a Jew’s actual will to obey mitzvoth and the evidence for realistically presuming that empirical desire. Under this interpretation, Rambam is making two connected arguments. First he asserts the principle of the ideal will: A Jew acts in accordance with his will when he does mitzvoth. But how does the Rambam know this? Evidently it flows not from the immutable historical event at Sinai, but from a second, more empirical assumption: Each Jew actually “wants to be of the Israelites.” This consent to communal membership provides the warrant for claiming that the Jew really desires to abide by all the commandments, a desire deeper than any temporary inclination to disobey. Thus the application of lashes is justified only because by opting for membership in Kelal Yisrael, the individual has told the Jewish community that he really wants to fulfill mitzvoth.

This thesis also need not be restricted to the sole instance of get. It establishes the general principle of empirical will: One’s actual consent, or presumption of consent, to obey mitzvoth is necessary to justify coercive legal action. Thus the Maharit maintains that in the case of the convert, who demonstrates that he does not want to be a member of the Jewish people, the presumption that he wants to do mitzvoth dissolves and with it disappears any rationale for coercion. Although disagreeing with the Maharit in the case of the convert, the Or Sameah also requires some realistic warrant for the assumption that a Jew actually wants to obey mitzvoth, maintaining that when we know in advance that lashing or other sanctions will not induce some actual expression of acceptance of mitzvoth, coercion has no halakhic justification whatsoever.^[15]

Of course both interpretations support “coercion”—but for very different reasons. In the first reading, only the ideal will is relevant. That objective will always express      preference to be a part of the Jewish people and this membership connotes acceptance of Torah obligations. Here the very concept of Jewish identity means being a party to the covenantal agreement at Sinai; therefore wanting “to be of the Israelites” conceptually entails acceptance of mitzvoth. An “unobligated Jew” is a contradiction, as misconceived as a “married bachelor”—and as difficult to find.

According to the Maharit’s reading of Rambam, the will to be Jewish is contingent, yet it serves as a sufficient basis for presuming that a Jew has an empirical desire to obey mitzvoth. The Maharit could assert this because throughout our history Jewish self-perception had always testified to that linkage. Before the Enlightenment, there was a broad general consensus among Jews that obligation to Torah law constituted their identity. All medieval Jews saw themselves as commanded people, even if they failed to be systematically observant. Only through conversion could they escape the “yoke of the commandments.” The case of the convert is illuminating precisely because it was the rare exception to the cultural norm. It shows how far a Jew had to travel to shed the identity of “commandedness.”

In our post-Emancipation Jewish communities of Israel and the Diaspora, however, what was unthinkable for Maimonides and unknown for the Maharit—the unobligated Jew—has become the sociological norm. In the words of one Orthodox rabbinic authority, “in our day the observant are called separatists and it is the sinners who go the way of the land.”^[16] Regrettably, contemporary Jewry has no consensus regarding what it means to be a Jew and a lack of observance pervades Jewish life. Now there are wholly secular, nationalistic, and ethnic formulations of Jewish identity for which acceptance of the Torah and traditional mitzvoth are largely irrelevant. These formulations may be heretical and even conducive to long-term assimilation, yet we cannot deny that today most Jews define their own Jewish identity independent of theological belief and halakhic commitment. These Jews do not seek assimilation. On the contrary, they often exhibit unflagging dedication to the Jewish people at great personal sacrifice. As Rav Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook observed of the nonobservant majority of the Jews of his day, “they go astray, nevertheless many of them are loyal to their nation and are proud to be called Jews, even though they know not why. . . .”^[17] They “wish to be of the Israelites,” but do not wish to be obligated by the commandments—at least not the mitzvoth as defined by Orthodox tradition.

This radical shift in Jewish self-perception has posed a challenge for all post-Enlightenment Orthodox leaders and posekim. Unwilling to dismiss it as a mere chimera or product of heresy, several prominent religious authorities have given halakhic status to the fact that modern Jews act and think of themselves in non-traditional categories. This consideration has been materially relevant to reformulating the answers to a variety of halakhic questions regarding punishment for Sabbath desecration, eligibility for a minyan, conversion to Judaism, and contemporary definition of an apostate, to name but a few. Consider the opinion of R. Jacob Ettlinger in 1874, regarding heretics and Sabbath violators:

But I do not know how to consider Jewish sinners in our time, unless to apply to them the rule of “one who says it is permitted,” which means that they are only close to being sinners. For because of our sins the sore has spread greatly, to such an extent that for most of them the desecration of the Sabbath has become a permissible act. There are those among them who offer Sabbath prayers and sanctify the day and then violate the Sabbath.^[18]

Or the position of Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann at the turn of the twentieth century:

In our time one is not called a public desecrator of the Sabbath, because most people are such. Were the majority of Israel innocent, and a few audaciously violated the law, they would thereby deny the Torah, boldly commit an abomination, and separate themselves from Israel as a whole. But since most Jews have breached the fence, their failing turns to their advantage. The individual thinks that it is not such a major offense, and one need not commit it only in private.^[19]

Even Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the most fervent Orthodox leaders in rejecting any non-Orthodox ideology or institution, acknowledged that a mere general intention to join the non-observant Jewish community without any commitment to Sabbath observance was no necessary impediment to valid Orthodox conversion with its attendant Jewish identity.^[20]

Most important is the position taken by the Hazon Ish,^[21] one of the great fathers of twentieth-century ultra-Orthodoxy. Noting the pervasive lack of faith in modern times, he formulates a new halakhic approach to Jews who are non-observant in fact and in principle:

It seems to me that the law of throwing (the heretic) into a pit (to be left to die) applies only to those periods when the Blessed Lord’s Providence is apparent, such as when miracles took place, or the Heavenly Voice functioned, or the righteous men of the generation lived under a generalized Divine Guidance visible to all. At such times, those who commit heresy are acting with deliberate perversity, allowing their evil impulse to lead them into passion and lawlessness. It was at periods such as these that the destruction of the wicked was a salutary measure to save humanity, for all know that were the generation to be led astray, world catastrophes, such as plagues, wars, and famines would result. But when Divine Providence is concealed, when the masses have lost their faith, throwing (heretics) into a pit is no longer an act against lawlessness. On the contrary, it is an act which would simply widen the breach; for they would consider it an act of moral corruption and violence, God forbid. And since our entire purpose is to remedy the situation, the law does not apply to a period when no remedy would result. Rather, we must bring them back through the bonds of love and enlighten them to the best of our abilities.”^[22]

Not only does the law mandating killing the heretic not apply today, but even the commandment to admonish lapsed Jews cannot be implemented since today we do not know how to reproach effectively. In fact, because we cannot offer effective reproach, the entire halakhic category of the heretic becomes inoperative.^[23] Both the Hazon Ish and Rav Kook consider nonobservant Jews today to be pawns of the intellectual forces of the day:

Yes, my dear friend, I understand well the sadness of your heart. But if you should concur with the majority of scholars that it is seemly at this time to utterly reject those children who have swerved from the parts of Torah and faith because of the tumultuous current of the age, I must explicitly and emphatically declare that this is not the method that God desires. Just as the (Ba ‘ale) Tosafot in Tractate Sanhedrin (26b) maintain that it is logical not to invalidate one suspected of sexual immorality from giving testimony because it is considered an ones—since his instincts overwhelmed him—and the (Ba‘ale] Tosafot in Tractate Gittin (41b) maintain that since a maidservant enticed him to immorality he is considered as having acted against his will, in a similar fashion (is to be judged) the “evil maidservant” of the current age…who entices many of our youngsters with all of her wiles to commit adultery with her. They act completely against their will and far be it from us to judge a transgression which one is forced to commit (ones) in the same manner as we judge a premeditated, willful transgression.^[24]

The Hazon Ish and Rav Kook struggled painfully with the obvious fact that most of Kelal Yisrael of their day lacked a principled commitment to Torah and mitzvoth. Rather than reject the nonobservant by invoking biblical and talmudic categories mandating reproach, herem, or corporal punishment, they believed that changed sociological and intellectual conditions demanded a new understanding of halakhic categories and a pragmatic course of action.

But what of the classic approach of coercion? It appears that when these modern rabbinic authorities are understood in conjunction with each other, the halakhic imperative to coerce the sinner also disappears. The Maharit establishes the principle of empirical will: Coercion is justified only when we can reasonably assume the Jew accepts the obligation of mitzvoth. But the Hazon Ish and Rav Kook now assert that the Torah considers contemporary nonobservant Jews, being “coerced” by modern culture, to be in a category of individuals who lack this sense of obligation. For technical reasons they escape the reproach and punishment accorded to heretics as they have not willfully rejected the halakha. Yet as coerced parties they do not willfully express, nor can we presume that they would express, any acceptance of mitzvoth. In the absence of such acceptance, coercion provides no halakhic solution.^[25]

IV

If the previous analysis is correct, we see that there are two models within halakha for dealing with Jews who consistently violate Jewish law, even those whose lifestyle bespeaks a lack of commitment to mitzvoth. Biblical and talmudic literature often emphasize correction through coercion, since prior assent to the halakha is assumed. Late Rabbinic literature delineates the halakhic option of a non-coercive approach, applicable prior to assent, which focuses on education and moral suasion and tolerates behavior that conflicts with the halakha. Once the legitimacy of both approaches is established, a question facing halakhically committed Jews is one of techne, of means: Which approach will be the most effective instrument for bringing Jews today to a greater appreciation of Torah and mitzvoth? In the words of the Hazon Ish, which halakhic policy is likely to “remedy the situation,” and which will “widen the breach?”

On the pragmatic level, experience indicates that the non-coercive approach yields the best religious results. No one familiar with contemporary Israeli society can deny that coercive religious legislation—even the specter of such legislation—has caused deep alienation from and disrespect for Torah and its political spokesmen. Non-religious Jews in Israel harbor a well-founded suspicion that the dati community seeks no limitation on its political power, and that the objective of its politics is to manipulate the non-religious for its own ideological benefit, never treating them with the respect due all human beings. It is ironic that at a time in Israeli society when fewer and fewer citizens hold philosophies that in principle reject the theological and ethical ideas of Torah, nearly all non-dati persons evidence a palpable disgust for the coercive policies of religious political leaders. Quite simply, Israelis are more anti-clerical than anti-religious. This is doubly tragic, for with the withering of socialist-Zionist ideology many Israelis yearn for a value structure that Torah has to offer. Yet they find dat repugnant because the image of religious leadership is one whose face sneers at non-religious Jews and whose hands clutch at the throats of their civil liberties. In the prophetic words of the Hazon Ish, the policy of pushing restrictive religious legislation is viewed as an “act of moral corruption and violence.”^[26]

Nevertheless, Judaism values action—the doing of mitzvoth—not only attitude and relationship. If there are Jews who cannot do mitzvoth out of conviction and love of God, is not their obedience caused by threat of legal punishment preferable to their free disobedience? Indeed, the Rabbis claim repeatedly that “a man should always immerse himself in Torah and commandments even if his motive is impure; for from acting from impure motive, he will come to act with pure motive.” If this dictum is a principle of empirical prediction rather than dogmatic axiom, Israeli experience contradicts it, for it has produced the opposite results. Coercive legislation has induced only animosity and the denigration of Torah, not a voluntary attraction to mitzvoth. Even on a strictly behavioral level, the coercive policy has failed. All the restrictive Sabbath legislation has not made even one Israeli a Sabbath observer according to halakhic standards—one might just be someone who does not ride buses on Friday evening, someone who watches home videos instead of frequenting the theater.^[27]

Examining each talmudic context of this dictum, in truth we see that it is intended as prudent advice for an individual to continue to voluntarily participate in mitzvoth, even when he lacks immediate religious motivation. There is no hint whatsoever in the sources of any outside authority that would constrict personal freedom or choice.^[28] This is not surprising as the halakha usually adopts prudent and reasonable means to realize its end values. If the Torah’s goals are idealistic, its methods to achieve them are pragmatic. To quote Rav Kook, “Know that good sense is a fundamental value in our law. We are therefore obligated always to achieve the central purpose of good sense.”^[29]

Hazal were keen students of human behavior. They knew that a person can, by the power of his own will, condition himself to experience new-found love, joy, and religious meaning in any halakhically required act even when he is in the throes of spiritual malaise. Hazal had the “good sense” to know, however, that when any person or authority imposes laws on another, denying one free choice in the name of a doctrine to which one does not subscribe, no constructive religious motivation or character would result. Understood as council to continue voluntary assumption of mitzvoth however lacking in kavanna,“mitokh shelo lishma, ba lishma” modern Israeli experience does not falsify the rabbinic claim. It points, rather, to the lack of wisdom of authoritarian religious politics.

V

Clearly, classical Judaism posits a metaphysical and moral ideal of human experience. It maintains that a human realizes its highest being when relating to the Divine Will and obeying God’s commandments. Philosophically, the Torah is committed to this conception of positive, substantive liberty. Yet in practice, the option exists to pursue a policy of tolerance: one that poses no coercive interference to Jews following their own will, so long as that individual liberty does not diminish the rights and religious opportunity of others. In other words, it is a policy that allows for political freedom and fundamental human rights. Paradoxically, this policy also holds the most hope of encouraging positive religious attitudes, given the historical and intellectual conditions of Am Yisrael today.

Adopting such a “libertarian” policy that allows for freedom and individual difference does not imply axiological agnosticism or lack of commitment to the ideal of obligatory mitzvoth for the Jewish people. Nor does it lessen the religious obligation for all Jews to be responsible for one another, including the promotion of halakhic observance. The policy shifts the thrust of religious politics from an authoritarian approach to one stressing education, tolerance, and identification with the whole of the Jewish people. The political approach utilizing coercive law has the illusory quality of a “quick-fix.” Yet in purely practical terms, attempting to deny a Jew the liberty to violate religious law is not an option in the Diaspora and does not work in Israel, as we have seen. The quick-fix is a fantasy, nurtured by a longing to retreat to the ghetto of the past that is much too narrow to house the majority of the Jewish people today. As fantasy, it is a flight from any serious religious responsibility toward Kelal Yisrael.

Religious Jews should be resolute in their conviction that halakhic behavior is the ideal for every Jew. When one confuses legal tolerance with pluralistic value equivalence one departs from both the halakha and religious Jewish thought. Because of this belief in the validity of mitzvoth, religious Jews both in the Diaspora and in Israel have a responsibility to be uncompromisingly active in promoting religious and educational opportunities where every Jew can study, assess, and personally decide on their acceptance of Torah. This educational approach implies a difficult and long-term program of “openness” by the religious community toward all Jews rather than a posture of social isolation. It means developing honest relationships with non-religious Jews, sharing experiences where we all treat each other with full dignity and where we can nurture voluntary religious growth. It also requires utilizing personal, institutional, and even state resources toward these ends.^[30]

Without a serious commitment to a program of religious opportunity and Jewish education, any society of Jews where civil liberties and human rights are legally guaranteed can easily yield a “freedom of indifference” and evolve into a society where pockets of religious commitment are lost in the dominant cultural quest for hedone. The resulting culture glorifying youth, sex, and wealth is far from anyone’s ideal vision of the Jewish people. It strikes fear in the hearts of all past and present Jewish thinkers—be they religious, secular Zionist, or merely cultural. In addition to threatening authentic Jewish moral and religious standards, elevating these hedonistic values to ideals would spell the end to all Jewish culture as a distinctive and enduring phenomenon.

VI

The pragmatic argument for adopting a policy of political freedom in a Jewish society is compelling. Its attractiveness for halakhic Jews lies in its ability to synthesize Judaism’s conception of religious action as the ideal of human experience (positive liberty) with a commitment to tolerance, autonomy, and human dignity (negative liberty).

The previous argument that makes room for liberty—and its concomitant of tolerance—is casuistic, the classic method of argumentation of law in general and halakha in specific. How effective this argument can be in securing a permanent acceptance of personal liberty within Jewish law remains to be seen. By definition, casuistic arguments apply to specific cases and are embedded in particular empirical assumptions. Hence their conclusions are contingent and inevitably limited in scope. On this basis liberty seems to be an unstable value not only within the Western political tradition,^[31] but also in halakha. Liberty within the halakhic system is further imperiled because the argument depends on the lamentable historical conditions, i.e., the absence of national consensus, agnosticism, and widespread rejection of mitzvoth and Torah. Thus the casuistic argument helps us only “to muddle through,” in Professor Stone’s phrase. Liberty flows from religious failure, rather than from a spiritual or political ideal. In short, “because of our sins” we are allowed to be free.

Whether or not the casuistic argument can serve as a secure foundation for liberty in Jewish society, we cannot deny that it is spiritually unsatisfying and philosophically inadequate. Liberty should be an inspiring value that emerges from principle, not a concession to circumstance. Is there a principle within Judaism that can illuminate political freedom as such a value? The concept of Tzelem Elohim has been explored as the foundation for the ethics of human respect and dignity elsewhere,^[32] but within this concept also are fertile seeds for a conceptual breakthrough that transforms freedom into a principled ideal within Jewish thought and law. R. Meir Simcha HaCohen identified Tzelem Elohim with human freedom.^[33] This does not go far enough, for we have seen that Jewish sources and Enlightenment rationalists and romantics alike understand freedom as positive liberty that can easily lead to totalitarian politics. Further development is required for the concept of Tzelem Elohim to lay the foundations of negative liberty.

Human beings created beTzelem Elohim are the crowning glory of God’s creation. A contemporary rabbinic thinker has observed that Tzelem Elohim has two constituent components.^[34] First, human beings are differentiated from beasts because God gave them the unique metaphysical gift of free choice. Second, God’s ideal for creation is for each person to employ this gift by freely choosing the good. Both are necessary and neither is sufficient for the divine plan to be complete. Unbounded free will can opt for evil and return creation to darkness and chaos (tohu ve-vohu). Involuntary human behavior undermines God’s plan for the universe by transforming human action into determined behavior akin to that of lower animal species. In a word, absence of freedom robs a person of his unique humanity. Therefore, preserving individual freedom (i.e., negative liberty) and promoting choice for the good (positive liberty) are both requisites for realizing Tzelem Elohim.

As Isaiah Berlin never tired of telling us, freedom and order must exist in tension with each other. Neither condition can be realized absolutely; only in the messianic era will both values concurrently blossom into full expression. In our unredeemed world, therefore, we need to adopt a dialectical political policy. On religious grounds this policy should seek to maximize Tzelem Elohim by restricting individual liberty only when allowing individual choice would undermine the liberty, dignity, and equality of another. The rationale for limiting liberty is neither spiritual rectitude nor religious ideal, but functional and social. In principle, restricting personal freedom and coercing behavior for any ideological or halakhic end robs such behavior of its unique spiritual character, and as such it is devoid of religious value. 

Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5 instructs us that human diversity testifies to the greatness of God: “The supreme King of kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He, stamped all people with the seal of Adam the first, and not one of them is similar to another.” As the Mishna indicates, from Tzelem Elohim flows the uniqueness of each human person. Difference in human opinion^[35] and behavior should therefore be celebrated as religious values. Though the Mishna is old, the recognition of diversity—and the tolerance required for it to flourish—is a modern religious insight. Previously, religious cultures prized uniformity, but the bold claim of the Mishna is that the empirical pluralism of modernity is a religious value that reflects God’s glory, not religious failure. The right and freedom to be different illuminate God’s infinitude and each person’s sacred uniqueness. Hence, to flatten out differences by coercing toward uniformity is a spiritual sin and tantamount to rebelling against God’s plan for creation.

It is precisely here that Judaism must differ from other philosophies espousing objective values and substantive positive liberty. For Plato, philosophical truth and the rational ordering of society were ends in themselves. For Marx, productive labor represented the highest human value. Because of their absolute commitments to these values, any means to optimize them were justified. In the political systems of these thinkers individual human beings were regarded as mere instruments toward realizing these goals. Indeed, it is hard to find even a hint of considerations of individuality in these philosophies. Ultimately, a person’s real hopes, desires, choices, and values—one’s empirical will—were robbed of any worth and one’s identity was reduced to a perishable part of a well-running rational organization. Accorded no intrinsic value of “personhood” or “humanness,” the individual was crushed under the weight of a rational totalitarian politic.

Because Judaism posits that every person is created in the image of God, it insists on the unique spiritual integrity of each human being and can never lose sight of a person’s immeasurable value. Judaism’s ideals are intrinsically spiritual: the love of God and humanity’s honest testimony to God’s Presence. The goals of Torah, therefore, cannot be merely external behavior in conformity with religious law. Halakha and mitzvoth are only means—perhaps indispensable means—of a system designed to realize these goals for every Jew.

Here the contradictory nature of the coercive approach is apparent. Today, when no prior voluntary assent to Torah and mitzvoth exists, imposing halakhic standards entails forcing a person against one’s will. In as much as free will is necessary for one’s religious and spiritual development, “imposing” the love of God on a person in contemporary circumstances is a sterile, self-contradictory policy. On a collective level also, Am Yisrael is charged with being a “holy people,” whose behavior and values testify to God’s sovereignty. But if religious observance is merely a result of political decision, human legislation, and police enforcement, our observance testifies only to the fear of governmental punishment, and speaks nothing of divine acknowledgement. Such observance corrupts the halakhic meaning of edut. In classic rabbinic parlance, it is edut sheker—false testimony.

The above is fundamental to those who understand the Torah’s concept of humanity created in the image of God as ensuring      the dignity and worth of every individual. The divine character of every human being demands that each person be considered an end-in-oneself. One may never be used merely as a means within some larger system, and must never be dominated completely by any form of coercive political or legal authority.

God created neither robots nor slaves to acknowledge God. God acted out of hessed, endowing each person with free will, reason, and a spiritual character. At Sinai God offered the Torah to the Jewish people, and they voluntarily accepted with complete understanding and freedom.^[36] The proper religious approach for Jews today is one that fulfills the commandment of imitatio dei,^[37] emulating that divine standard: one that preserves the dignity and liberty of each person, touching one’s spiritual character while simultaneously bringing one to Sinai in order to freely accept the Torah.

It is true that the conceptualization of Tzelem Elohim that celebrates freedom, tolerance, and human diversity as religious ideals constitutes a break with the past. Previously, attempts to pressure toward both religious observance and communal uniformity were normative values in Jewish life. Yet, this conceptual change need not be viewed negatively. The evolution of authentic moral ideals can be understood as part of God’s plan for Jewish history and the flowering of ultimate Torah values.^[38] We have gone as a people from sacrifices to prayer, from polygamy to monogamy, and from monarchy to democracy as part of the positive evolution of Jewish values. Unlike the Western philosophic proponents of positive liberty who moved from freedom to coercion in their political vision, the dynamic of Jewish thought must move from coercion to freedom. The talmudic ideal dramatized in Shabbat 88a points to a necessary logical relation, and resolves the freedom/ obligation paradox that has long bedeviled political thinkers: The validity of legal obligation grows out of voluntary acceptance, not the reverse. Only with prior free acceptance of Torah do mitzvoth and the system of halakhic responsibility make moral sense.

As the talmudic passage indicates, movement from an authority-based understanding of observance to the voluntary acceptance of mitzvoth is also an evolution toward the Jewish people’s fuller acceptance of Torah and effective testimony to God. Out of the power of Tzelem Elohim a new world awaits us—one with broad horizons and exciting challenges that nurture hope for a future heading closer to our messianic dream. It is a society where the Jewish people express the image of God fully, bear witness to the gift of freedom and acknowledge Torah out of the noblest human spirit reflecting God.

Of course there is no absolute certainty that Jews, both in Israel and the Diaspora, will emerge from a politically free society to voluntarily return to religious values. This lack of a priori certainty is the price we pay for treating each other as dignified human beings, as moral creatures who quest after spiritual achievement. Yet religious Jews have good reason to believe that modern Jews will ultimately resist the allure of radical secularism. Just as in biblical times when Jews voluntarily accepted God’s Torah, the Jewish people today can choose similarly when it is brought to Sinai with love and understanding. The Torah promises this, for God offers each new generation of the Jewish people the opportunity to renew the covenant: “Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath; but with him that stands here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here this day.”^[39]

Religious Jews today believe in the God of Israel and the truth of God’s Torah. Are we to believe any less in the eternal spiritual capacity of Am Yisrael to accept, with integrity freedom and conviction, partnership with the Divine?

Notes

Freedom and Redemption

            At the Pesaḥ seder, toward the end of the Maggid section of the Haggadah, after we have recounted and, ideally, experienced for ourselves the Exodus as if we ourselves had departed from Egypt (perhaps one of the most difficult assignments in Judaism), we raise the second cup of wine and declare the following:

Therefore it is our duty to thank, praise, laud, glorify, exalt, honor, bless, raise high, and acclaim the One who has performed all these miracles for our ancestors and for us; who has brought us out from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from grief to celebration; from darkness to great light and from enslavement to redemption; and so we shall sing a new song before God. Halleluya![1]

The responsibility of Jews to be grateful to God is not only for facts of creation and our lives, but also for our liberation. Yet why the need to provide two versions of what would appear to be the same idea: from slavery to freedom and from enslavement to redemption? Why both formulations? Are freedom and redemption the same thing?

Let My People Go

“Let My people go!” In this manner, Moses relayed God’s demand of Pharaoh. The Egyptians enslaved the Hebrews, and Moses sought to secure their freedom. In this we see that liberation from slavery and tyranny and “God’s identity as the liberator of slaves” rests at the foundation, the very birth, of the Jewish nation.[2] The Exodus from Egypt transformed what had been a family, and then a tribe, into a nation. This account of liberation underlies not only Jewish history, but has often served as a symbol, an example, a rallying point for enslaved and oppressed people the world over, most notably for African Americans in the struggle for civil rights in the United States. And this example remains shockingly relevant in our own days, with tens of millions of people the world over enslaved.[3]

In daily prayers, Jews recall the Exodus from Egypt, and once a year bring considerably greater focus to the event. The weeklong Pesaḥ holiday commemorates this departure and journey. Indeed, the prayer book refers to the holiday as zeman ḥerutenu, the “season of our freedom.” During the Passover Seder, Jews recite the text of the Haggadah, seeking not only to retell the story, but to experience it for themselves: “Generation by generation, each person must see himself as if he himself had come out of Egypt....’”[4] Indeed, from the very beginning of the Haggadah, the theme of freedom is raised: “This year we are slaves; next year, may we be free people.” The language used here is the vernacular Aramaic, the common language of the people for whom the Haggadah was first written.

Let My People Go, and…?

“Let My people go!” In this manner, Moses relayed God’s demand of Pharaoh. And we repeat it here—because this is not the complete statement. Twice, in Exodus 7:16 and 7:26, the Torah tells us that God told Moses to tell Pharaoh “Send out My people, and they will serve Me.” V’ya′avduni, and they will serve Me—the same root letters as in the Hebrew word for servant or slave: ′ayin, bet, and dalet. As Rabbi Ezra Bick asks, “Is that merely a trading of one master for another, more exalted perhaps, but essentially the same?”[5] Did the Hebrews go from servitude to freedom, or from one servitude to another servitude? Or, is it possible to conceive of servitude to God as a kind of freedom, as redemption even? In reliving the Exodus, the Hagaddah tells us why we must, in each generation, see ourselves as if we had been liberated from Egypt: “It was not only our ancestors whom the Holy One redeemed; God redeemed us too along with them, as it is said: ‘God took us out of there, to bring us to the land God promised our ancestors and to give it to us.’”[6]

The Exodus is not limited to the physical liberation from Egypt. The physical liberation is intended to result in service to God and some sort of redemption. Indeed, at the Passover Seder one learns that freedom is not a simple idea, but rather a nuanced concept. A central part of the Haggadah is the elaboration of four different dimensions of freedom and redemption, of God leading the people to freedom: (1) “and I removed you” (v’hotseiti); (2) “and I rescued you” (v’hitsalti); (3) “and I redeemed you” (v’ga′alti); and (4) “and I took you” (v’lakaḥti). There are various, overlapping explanations of these four—as stages in a single process, as a journey, as types (including physical and spiritual), as increasing closeness to God—but the point is that freedom is not a single thing. And perhaps also that freedom and redemption might not quite be the same thing.

Two Types of Liberty

To understand the notion of serving God as an act of freedom rather than one of slavery, as well as a possible means of distinguishing between freedom and redemption, we might first turn to a classic text by a renowned thinker, a Jew, though not one hailing from a traditional, religious community: “Two Concepts of Liberty” by Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997). In this landmark essay, first published in 1958, Berlin articulates a distinction between what he names “Positive Liberty” and “Negative Liberty.”[7] In brief, Negative Liberty refers to the absence of restrictions. The less others interfere in my life, the freer I am. Some describe Negative Liberty as freedom from, in contrast with what Berlin termed “Positive Liberty.” This latter type of freedom concerns the ability of a human to make something of his or her life and has been termed freedom to.

How do most of us commonly understand freedom? We generally characterize freedom as the absence of restrictions. If I am free, I can do absolutely anything I want. It makes sense to us, seems self-evident, to say I am most free when I am least restricted, and vice versa, that when I am most restricted, I am least free. And this sense of freedom accords with Berlin’s Negative Liberty.

Proponents of Positive Liberty might argue, however, that a person could have all the Negative Liberty one could want, an absence of any and all external restrictions, but illness or poverty or debt or depression or lack of education or something else might yet prevent this individual from acting freely, from functioning as the master of one’s own life. Some would therefore posit that by providing universal health care or subsidized education or, at an even more basic level, safe sanitation and water systems, or by otherwise helping put in place the foundations for productive living, a government can help people be free, become freer—even if in providing such foundations a government must violate the Negative Liberty of its citizens.

In a sense, Negative Liberty proposes no end goals, no aim for living freely; such is left to each individual. Positive Liberty, by contrast, implies at least some sort of ability to act in the world, to do something with one’s life, whether as an individual or as part of a community. To many, it further implies some sort of goal, some destiny even—the fulfillment of which is an achievement of living freely. Or, in other words, Negative Liberty is solely concerned with removing external constraints from living freely, whereas Positive Liberty addresses the means of living freely, and possibly the ends as well.

Perhaps one might fairly describe Berlin’s Positive Liberty as noble and ennobling, but is it freedom? The question is difficult—mostly because, as we have noted, both positions make some sense intuitively. We think of freedom as the absence of restrictions, as not being imprisoned by others. This often seems to us what freedom really is. And yet, if we consider someone who, while free from restrictions, nonetheless does not have the capacity—the foundations, the resources, the security—to build a life, we do not necessarily think of such a person as living a truly free life.

A Free Person in Servitude?

What might be the consequences of unlimited Negative Liberty? If a person is totally free, is he or she free at all? To have no restrictions, no limitations, is this not an invitation for anarchy and chaos? Indeed, one might suppose that an anarchic freedom without limits would quickly become chaotic, violent, and far from free—as per Hobbes and his notion of life outside of society being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

With no anchors or standards, the completely free person risks becoming a slave to desire and to whim. Unencumbered by morality, by societal taboos and customs, by laws, a person is free to follow desire and seek pleasure without end. I am speaking philosophically here—to make a point about freedom—and I do not at all mean to suggest that nonreligious individuals must be or even often are slaves to their whims and desires. None of us lives absolutely freely, and empirical evidence unambiguously demonstrates that living an ostensibly religious life provides no guarantee against living by whim or even immorally. Indeed, the thirteenth-century giant, Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (1194–1270; also known as Nachmanides and as the Ramban), found a need to coin the term naval b’reshut ha-Torah: “a scoundrel with the permission of the Torah.” By this he meant, for example, someone who ate only kosher food, but to gluttonous excess. Although some might find it difficult to understand, it is possible to not break a single law of the Torah and yet not be a mentsch, a decent and kind human being. And likewise, to live a secular life is not at all determinative of living by whim or immorally. The point, rather, is that our commonsense notions of freedom reveal something of a paradox, or at least an irony: that although fewer restrictions means greater freedom, at some point freedom can become excessive and chaotic, undermining itself. Again, this is a philosophical point—that, in principle, an individual living under a regime of pure Negative Liberty, an apparently free individual, could live for all practical purposes as a servant, at least to his or her desires or appetites.

A Free Servant?

We still find ourselves with the inverse conundrum: even if we might agree intuitively that an ostensibly free person can be enslaved to his or her passions, how can we say that someone who is avowedly a servant can be free?

And the Torah and Talmud make pretty clear that Jews are servants.

To begin, we find as one of the key themes of Rosh haShanah, the Jewish New Year the notion of kabbalat ′ol malkhut shamayim, the “acceptance of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven,” or the “receiving of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.” The phrase is also associated with the recitation of the Shema, Judaism’s central statement of faith: “Listen, Israel, Ha-Shem (The Lord) is our God, Ha-Shem (The Lord) is One.”[8] The statement is meant to be recited twice daily and even a third time before going to sleep at night. The second line of the prayer refers to God’s Kingdom, providing a clear link to this “yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.” We also speak of ′ol ha-mitzvot, the “yoke of the mitzvot.” Like oxen, we are yoked in our servitude of God and in the performance of God’s commandments. A yoke achieves its basic function in constraining free movement. It would seem therefore that restriction functions as something of a basic theological principle in Judaism.

In Pirkei Avot 6:3, Rabbi Neḥunya ben haKanna explains that “One who takes on himself the yoke of Torah will be spared the yoke of government and the yoke of worldly responsibilities, but one who throws off [from himself] the yoke of Torah will bear the yoke of government and the yoke of worldly responsibilities.”[9] In addition to the yokes of the mitzvoth and the Kingdom of Heaven, we have here the yoke of Torah, the yoke of kingship, and the yoke of the way of the land. One interpretation, perhaps the more straightforward interpretation of this teaching, has it that one who accepts the yoke of Torah will merit not being burdened by the difficulties of government and of earning a livelihood. An alternative interpretation would be that the yoke of Torah provides a spiritual or emotional freedom from government and livelihood, though not necessarily a practical or political freedom. In this sense, accepting the yoke of Torah frees us by helping us understand what is truly important.

In any case, whether the yoke of Torah, the yoke of mitzvoth, or the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven—surely, this does not sound like liberty!

Furthermore, religiously observant Jews consider themselves ′ovdei Ha-Shem, “servants of God.” And the book of Deuteronomy characterizes Judaism’s greatest prophet, Moses, as an ′eved Ha-Shem, which can be translated as either “a slave of God” or “a servant of God” (Deut. 35:4). Nowhere does the Bible describe prophets or Jews in general as “free individuals.” In the times of the Temples in Jerusalem, the carrying out of animal sacrifices was known as the ′avodah, the “service.” In the understanding of the rabbis, prayer replaced sacrifice as the central means of service to God, and they called prayer ′avodat ha-lev, the “service of the heart.” Many Jews pray three times each day and thereby undertake this service of the heart. Such Jews offer up their prayers to God, just as their ancestors offered up animal and agricultural sacrifices to God. How can people who engage in such service, or servitude—and within Judaism this is an obligatory, not a voluntary servitude—be considered truly free? And given all of the other, many religious obligations—including prohibitions on performing certain activities on the Sabbath, as well as various dietary and relationship prohibitions, and also positive obligations to do certain things, such as honoring one’s parents and enjoying the Sabbath— it might seem that we cannot but conclude that any ritually observant Jewish life is lacking in freedom, that it is even perhaps a sort of subjugation or enslavement.

*****

Having cited the evidence of our servitude, can we find an argument establishing our freedom in such servitude? There are, indeed, a few different possibilities.

1. Structure. As we have already suggested, perhaps the most basic argument or claim is this: if the complete lack of restrictions leads to anarchy, any meaningful freedom requires some degree of structure. To take the claim further, one might say that structure not only allows for freedom but that some structural frameworks can facilitate or cultivate freedom—and some frameworks more than others.

Let us take the Jewish Sabbath as an example. Who is freer? The Jew who adheres to the Sabbath laws, including the prohibitions on such activities as driving, watching television, talking on the telephone, and spending money? Or, the Jew who has no Sabbath? And what about the Jew who observes something of a Sabbath, but makes exceptions when some other demands arise?

To start, although there might not be evidence from surveys, experience suggests that the majority of those who keep the Sabbath generally experience it as freeing, especially in our days of a wired world, where many people feel naked without a charged cell phone in their hands. Instead of being enslaved to the car, the television, the telephone, and money, a person is free of these demands, perhaps even compulsions. A person is free to learn, to socialize, to spend quality time with one’s family. It is time set aside, and not to be eclipsed by so many other competitors for one’s attention. Furthermore, this mandated structure affects the experience of the entire week, building a rhythm, and creating a sanctuary in time, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel described it.[10] Without the Sabbath, every day can be the same. Meaningful time spent with one’s spouse or children or other relatives or friends can be put off indefinitely when there is no day of rest set in the calendar. This is not to say that living a meaningful life of freedom is impossible without the Sabbath, just that this structure can help generate meaningful freedom.

This principle could be applied well beyond the Sabbath to the broad and intricate structural framework of the mitzvoth, and of Jewish law—the halakha—which really means not “Law” but rather “Way” or “Path.” Ideally, Jewish law does not merely enumerate dos and don’ts, but instead provides a pathway through life.

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo takes such ideas one step further, arguing that the halakhic framework can engender creativity. In arguing that Judaism can provide a structure and community within which an individual can exercise great freedom, Rabbi Cardozo offers a fascinating analogy, comparing the musical genius of Beethoven and Bach. Which one, he wonders, was the greater composer?

Bach was totally traditional in his approach to music. He adhered strictly to the rules of composing music as understood in his days. Nowhere in all his compositions do we find deviation from these rules. But what is most surprising is that Bach’s musical output is not only unprecedented but, above all, astonishingly creative. . . . What we discover is that the self-imposed restrictions of Bach to keep to the traditional rules of composition forced him to become the author of such outstandingly innovative music that nobody after him was ever able to follow in his footsteps. It was within the “confinement of the law” that Bach burst out with unprecedented creativity. . . . Beethoven (in his later years) broke with all the accepted rules of composition. He was one of the founders of a whole new world of musical options. But it was his rejection of the conventional musical laws which made him less of a musical genius. To work within constraints and then to be utterly novel is the ultimate sign of unprecedented greatness.[11]

Rabbi Cardozo’s understanding of Bach and Beethoven shows how freedom can be found within the law and not simply in its absence. Although Bach might have seemed less innovative, the fact is that he worked within a stricter framework and nonetheless exhibited great creativity. Bach found freedom within structure, within a set of rules, and Rabbi Cardozo counts this as a more masterful achievement than that of Beethoven, whose innovation took place with fewer rules and limits. Likewise, the argument continues, within the framework of Jewish law, the halakha, there is the potential for greater creativity, innovation, and even freedom than in a system without such constraints.

In this regard, the Talmud offers a telling play on words. Exodus 32:16 tells us about the first set of tablets Moses brought with him down Mount Sinai: “The tablets, they are the work of God, and the writing, it is the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.” In Pirkei Avot 6:2, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi comments on the verse, considering the word “engraved,” ḥarut in the Hebrew: “Read not ḥarut (‘engraved’) but ḥerut (‘freedom’), for the only person who is truly free is one who occupies himself with Torah study.”[12] That is, the very word we use to describe Passover as zeman ḥerutenu, the time of our freedom, appears to share a linguistic root with the word for engraving, for carving something into stone! To carve something into stone, or into one’s body, indicates a kind of permanence, a binding or sorts, the seeming antithesis of freedom. Rabbi Levi is teaching that such an engraving or binding actually generates freedom. To generalize, one might say that structure and limits can and do allow freedom to flourish.

Indeed, as John Locke—long an inspiration for generations of libertarians and others championing Negative Liberty—himself wrote, “the end of Law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of Laws, where there is no Law, there is no Freedom.”[13]

2. Purpose. Considering the themes of Passover, one might again ask whether or not redemption is the same thing as liberation? Did God liberate the Jews or redeem them? And can one be redeemed without becoming free? Both terms clearly indicate removal from a situation of servitude or imprisonment. To what alternative situation, though? Liberation does not really point to any future state, it is fundamentally about shedding restrictions. To redeem someone, by contrast, suggests a reason—redeemed for or to what purpose? For example, we speak of redeeming captives or, to use a more prosaic example, redeeming coupons. We may be freeing up a little bit of money with our coupon, but redemption is not in this case liberation. In the context of the Exodus, the purpose of redemption was to serve God. On the face of it, this would seem to prove contradictory to freedom, yet in this situation, at least, redemption required freedom as a precondition, meaning that it is not contradictory.

3. A Different Kind of Master. While we can conceive of the service of God as voluntary, certainly the Egyptian bondage of the Jews was not. Relatedly, Rabbi Bick, who raised for us the question about trading one master for another, points out what he takes to be a critical difference between servitude of God and servitude of Pharaoh or another human being: “A slave is totally dependent on his master. The basis of his life and his destiny is in the hands of his owner. Since the master is one who has needs of his own, who needs to acquire power to achieve his goals, the slave becomes an instrument in achieving the ends of the master.” A servant of God, by contrast, has a very different relationship with his or her master:

God has no needs that we can fill. The individual does not become an instrument for achieving the ends of God by being dependent on Him. The dependence on God is total, absolute. Everything we have, everything we want, everything we can possibly achieve, must come from Him. Avoda, service of God, is the recognition of total dependence. The dependence is so total, so absolute, precisely because God has everything, and THEREFORE, HE NEEDS NOTHING FROM US.[14]

That is, although earthly masters provide some sustenance to their servants or slaves, they also expect and demand and extract something, labor or otherwise, in return. Although God might command us, God needs nothing from us, and this fact cannot but alter the entire dynamic of servitude. Now, not everyone agrees on this theological point, that God needs nothing from human beings, but given this axiom, Rabbi Bick’s logic does seem to follow—at least that there might be a difference between serving a master who needs things and extracts them and serving a master who requires nothing. In this sense, a person is not simply exchanging one master for another, though one might question whether Rabbi Bick is describing freedom in servitude or just a different kind of servitude.

4. Communal Freedom. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–1993, also known as the Rav), the intellectual leader of Modern Orthodox Judaism in the twentieth century, presents yet another twist on the Exodus and the notion of Passover’s freedom. The Paschal sacrifice was critical to the Exodus itself and to the observance of Passover through to the times of the Temples in Jerusalem. One thing distinguishing the sacrifice of the lamb is that it cannot be brought by an individual. Rather, it is brought by a ḥavura, a group of people. This joining together was integral to the experience of freedom. The Passover sacrifice figured as the centerpiece of a meal devoted to solidarity and community and mutual responsibility.[15] One must note, however, that although we might find sensible the notion of achieving at least Positive Liberty in community and in cooperation, there always remains the danger that communal “freedom” transmogrifies into a kind of fascism, and a substantial loss of freedom. This becomes amplified yet further should the members of one community come to see the freedom of other communities as threatening, as incompatible with their own freedom, in which case war or subjugation can come to be seen as a means of securing the liberty of one’s own group at the expense of the liberty of another group or other groups.

5. Human Nature and the Natural World. Finally, the late Israeli scientist and thinker Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994), someone with at least libertarian leanings, offers a different understanding—a challenging and possibly problematic understanding—to reconcile servitude and freedom:

The claim that a man who accepts the authority of the Halakhah is in bondage is only too familiar. . . . If the world possesses constant regularity, man is subordinate to the entire system of natural reality, which includes not only his body but his soul. He is subject to it both physiologically and psychologically. Under these circumstances, what is man’s freedom? Willing acceptance of a way of life which does not derive from human nature implies the emancipation of man from the bondage of raw nature.

Leibowitz is arguing here that to live and act in accord with the natural world and with human nature is to live in a kind of servitude, to the way things are “naturally.” Only if one goes beyond human nature and beyond the natural world does she or he become free: “The only way man can break the bonds of nature is by cleaving to God; by acting in compliance with the divine will rather than in accordance with the human will.” Human will and desire remain part of the natural world. “The true meaning of the Talmudic adage ‘None but he who busies himself with the Torah is free’ is that he is free from the bondage of nature because he lives a life which is contrary to nature, both nature in general and human nature in particular.” In this way Leibowitz seeks to square the circle of servitude under God as freedom.[16]

6. Choice and Rationality. Returning to the question of whether or not the Hebrews merely swapped one master for another, perhaps the answer is yes and no. Or rather, swapped, but not merely swapped—that the Hebrews left one master to serve the Master, but to serve in freedom. Or maybe to serve freely, out of their own volition?

After all, although we discussed the imagery of the restraining yokes—of Torah, of mitzvoth, of the Kingdom of Heaven—we never described their wearing as involuntary. Perhaps there is no contradiction over freedom and servitude when someone accepts willingly such servitude. And neither did we say that it is impossible for someone to remove these yokes. One might reasonably argue that if you believe an infinite and omnipotent God commanded you and wishes you to place such yokes upon yourself it would be folly to refuse, yet one nonetheless remains free to do so.

Also, and in line with the thinking of Leibowitz, it is worth noting that although faith and reason are often contrasted, this is not necessarily the case in thought and practice. Submission to God need not be an abandonment of rationality. Rather, doing so can be and can be experienced by the adherent as a rational choice, perhaps in response to intellectual arguments or as a conscious commitment to a community and its traditions.

*****

            In the end, in Judaism we seem to find praise for both freedom and, if not slavery, then servitude.

Rabbi Soloveitchik writes of “the awareness of a compulsory covenant, submission and acceptance of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.” And the individual seeking God “encounters the Inscrutable Will. This Will reveals itself to man, and instead of telling him the secrets of creation, it demands unlimited discipline and absolute submission.”[17] Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein (1933–2015), Rabbi Soloveitchik’s son-in-law and a leader of Modern Orthodox Judaism in his own right, writes that “A Jew’s life is defined by being commanded. . . . Judaism is built on the notion of nullifying your will before God’s, of defining your existence as being called and commanded.”[18] Like Rabbi Lichtenstein, Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (1949–2007, known as Rav Shagar, from his initials) characterized such an orientation as central to Jewish religious observance: “As Shagar says, accepting the yoke of Heaven is ‘that act around which the life of a Jew is organized.’”[19]

Taken together, the yokes and the servitude and the commandments, it might be fair to characterize traditional Judaism as fundamentally endorsing human submission to the divine will. Indeed, when God first offered the Torah to the Jews, the response was na′aseh v’nishmah, we will do and we will listen (Ex. 24:7). That is, the Jews agreed to submit to observance of the Torah and only then to learn and understand just what they had committed themselves to do. There is also, of course, the account of the Akeidah, of Abraham’s bringing his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God. Now, there are a plethora of interpretations of this story, some of which argue that Abraham made a mistake, that he should have challenged the command, just as he challenged God’s plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Nonetheless, Abraham’s action is most frequently understood as a model of submission to the will of God.

And yet, to be clear, these very same thinkers who wrote eloquently about submission to God and God’s will, elaborated their thought in quite nuanced ways, seeking to integrate individual autonomy with submission to God. In one sermon, “Shagar argues that this act of submission is actually a necessary step in enabling freedom, rather than its own form of enslavement.”[20] Indeed, Rav Shagar appears to understand accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven as part of process of creating oneself. And Rabbi Soloveitchik and Rabbi Lichtenstein likewise see it, perhaps in tension with personal autonomy, as part of creating a full personality and living a complete life.[21]

Between Servitude and Freedom

The fifth teaching in the fourth chapter of the talmudic tractate Gittin, concerning the laws of divorce and related matters, presents us with an unusual case: what do we do with someone who is half-free and half-slave? One wonders how an individual could end up in such a position. The Talmud explains how: an individual falls into servitude to two masters, and at some point one of the masters frees the individual while the other does not. The first suggestion is that the individual alternate days, one free, one as a slave, and so on. Yet is this a tenable arrangement? The second opinion insists it is not. The male individual in this scenario has a biblical obligation to procreate—but this remains impossible to him: as he is half-slave he cannot marry a free woman, yet because he is half-free he cannot marry an enslaved woman. The conclusion is that the second master must emancipate him.

This sugya reveals a genuine tension between servitude and freedom. In the end, this servitude must give way to freedom—at least within the human realm. The liberation of this half-servant from this servitude makes possible fulfilling a commandment of God. It’s a sort of redemption, becoming free to serve God.

Even more than a redemption. Fascinatingly, the reasoning for the conclusion that the half-servant must be freed relies upon the notion or imperative of tikkun ′olam, as do other teachings elsewhere in this chapter of the Talmud. Tikkun ′olam can be translated roughly as the fixing or repair of the world. In the context of this piece of Talmud, the very existence of a half-free and half-slave man who cannot fulfill his obligation to have children means there is something wrong in the world, something that needs to be repaired. Increasing freedom thereby helps repair what is wrong in the world, making it a better place.

For more than 800 years, Moses Maimonides has been a towering figure in Judaism. Not only did he become the leader of world Jewry in a tumultuous era, but his religious works, including the monumental Mishneh Torah and the Introduction to the Mishnah, remain avidly studied today. His Guide of the Perplexed, seeking to integrate classic Greek thought with Hebraic monotheism, has exerted an enduring influence on Western philosophy. And yet, Maimonides’ extensive writings are both important and relevant for another, rapidly growing field of knowledge: namely, positive psychology. Why? Many people are seeking to gain a greater sense of spirituality in their lives by applying its seemingly contemporary insights. In this article, I’d like to highlight Maimonides’ teachings related to this important new specialty, what its originators have called “the study of character strengths and virtues.”

The Science of Positive Psychology

The mental health field today is rightfully accepting “character strengths and virtues” as vital to understanding human nature. This development is long overdue; more than a century ago, the founding American psychologist William James urged that the new science of psychology explore the heights of human attainment, including altruism and transcendental experience, rather than focus on laboratory studies involving the sensory sensations of average people. Unfortunately, James’ declaration was largely ignored for nearly a half-century, until Abraham Maslow in the 1950s and 1960s co-founded the field of humanistic psychology. Maslow’s 25-year emphasis on studying emotionally healthy and high-achieving persons—those whom he termed self-actualizing—had great impact on academia and popular culture, but lessened significantly after his death in 1970.

 About a decade ago, Martin Seligman and his American colleagues launched the field of positive psychology, drawing partly upon growth-oriented conceptions of personality—but stressing empirical research to validate their viewpoint. Since then, positive psychology has grown tremendously around the world, with courses offered at more than 200 American universities, several new academic journals established, including The Journal of Happiness Studies and The Journal of Positive Psychology, and popular books such as Seligman’s Authentic Happiness and Happier by Israeli psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar gaining wide media attention.

 Central to such works has been a focus on such topics as hope and optimism, flourishing, gratitude and wisdom, love of learning, friendship and harmonious marriage, the mind-body relationship, courage, resilience, and happiness. Though the leaders of positive psychology are generally secularists from both Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds, they have recently—and astutely—turned their attention to the writings of history’s great religious thinkers for insights into character-building and the attainment of life-meaning and direction.

In this regard, a major figure in Judaism is highly relevant: Moses Maimonides. Though he lived long ago, Maimonides can be viewed as a pioneer in this domain—as both a brilliant rabbinic thinker and esteemed physician. Throughout his voluminous writings, Maimonides highlighted the importance of emotional and physical wellness for leading an upright, spiritual life. Let me highlight five aspects of Maimonides’ teachings that are especially relevant to positive psychology today.

1. Human beings are creatures of habit.

The notion that habit plays a key role in molding personality was first advanced by William James in the 1890s. He famously described habit as “the enormous fly-wheel of society”—propelling our lives in ways that lie outside our conscious awareness. Consistent with this longstanding view, positive psychology today has affirmed the utility of making habitual various forms of character-building activity, such as daily writing in a gratitude journal to “count one’s blessings” or maintaining a diary to strengthen “learned optimism.”   

Maimonides repeatedly stressed the importance of habit in fostering ethical and altruistic behavior. It’s fascinating to note that he specifically highlighted the importance of repetition in building positive habits. For example, in his influential formulation on charity, he observed that performing many small acts over time is more conductive to building character than if we perform one tremendous act with the same philanthropic value. Why? Because we are inwardly changed by our own behavior and thereby become more compassionate.

Maimonides’ emphasis on the psychological significance of “small-act repetition” is precisely consistent with recent research in marriage and couples counseling—revealing that marriages collapse mainly due to many small acts of hurtfulness or neglect between spouses, not one huge calamitous event.        

2.  We are powerfully affected by our social milieu.

Since Alfred Bandura advanced social learning theory in the 1970s, developmental psychologists have known that in childhood our attitudes and behaviors are shaped by our social milieu: specifically, by those with power to dispense rewards and punishments, namely our parents. We imitate what they do, not what they say, in order to gain their approval and affection.

     Based on this viewpoint, positive psychology has begun to unravel how desirable behaviors of kindness, altruism, and empathy arise in certain social settings but rarely so in others.

Consistent with talmudic thought, Maimonides stressed the role of social surroundings in affecting individual behavior. Though readily acknowledging the influence of heredity, he contended that its impact on human conduct was much less than our daily social milieu. Maimonides recommended that we seek teachers, mentors, and friends in order to uplift our daily conduct—even paying for the opportunity, if necessary, to be positively influenced by moral exemplars.

Conversely, he repeatedly warned against associating with unethical companions due to their harmful impact on our character. If there are no ethical people with whom to

associate, Maimonides advised, then dwell alone in a cave rather than succumb to bad social influence.         

3. Develop good social skills.

Among the main interests of positive psychology today is the development of what are known as social competencies, or collectively, as social intelligence. Recent research in organizational psychology has shown that socially oriented traits such as conscientiousness and extroversion are predictive of workplace achievement as well as job satisfaction. Clinical studies, too, have revealed a strong relationship between mental health and the presence of friends and confidants in one’s life. Conversely, social isolation is an important indicator of depression at virtually all ages. In Maimonides’ relevant view, the cultivation of such social attributes as cheerfulness, friendliness, helpfulness, generosity, and kindness is not only ethically important, but also represents a true path for success in life. Thus, Maimonides endorsed the teachings of Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) that positive social relations are the hallmark of the sage.

4.  Avoid negative emotions, especially anger.

To maximize mental health, positive psychology is concerned with strengthening such life-enhancing emotions as optimism, gratitude, and admiration—and lessening the force of our negative emotions. This view is consistent with increasing evidence from behavioral medicine that chronic anger exerts severe strain on the body and causes premature aging and reduced longevity. Here, too, Maimonides was a pioneering thinker, for throughout his Judaic and medical writings, he repeated warned against negative emotions for their destructive effects.

For example, in the Mishneh Torah (Book II, chapter 3), Maimonides asserted that “Anger is a most evil quality. One should keep aloof from it to the opposite extreme, and train oneself not to be upset even by a thing over which it would be legitimate to be annoyed.” In the same volume, he stated that “The life of an angry person is not truly life. The sages have therefore advised that one keep far from anger until being accustomed not to take notice even of things that provoke annoyance. This is a good way.”

5.  Cultivate mindfulness.

The fields of positive psychology and behavioral medicine today are increasingly recommending mindfulness training (that is, learning to stay focused in the present moment) for its therapeutic value. The scientific evidence is clear that such training is effective not only in reducing harmful emotions like anger and fear, but also in strengthening the body—by lowering blood pressure and heart-rate, for example. In this regard, it’s fascinating to learn that Maimonides addressed this topic in his influential Guide of the Perplexed (volume 1, chapter 60): “If we pray with the motion of our lips and our face toward the wall, but simultaneously think of business; if we read the Torah with our tongue while our heart is occupied with the building of our house, and we do not think of what we are reading; if we perform the commandments only with our limbs; then we are like those who are engaged in digging the ground or hewing wood in the forest without reflecting on the nature of those acts, or by whom they are commanded, or what is their purpose.”

Indeed, Maimonides attributed so much importance to mindfulness for establishing a healthful lifestyle that he even provided specific advice on how his fellow Jews could cultivate this trait: “The first thing you must do is turn your thoughts away from everything while you say the Shema or other daily prayers. Do not content yourself with being pious when you read merely the first verse of Shema or the first paragraph of the Amidah prayer. When you have successfully practiced this for many years, try when reading or listening to the Torah to have all your heart and thoughts occupied with understanding what you read or hear… After some time, when you have mastered this, accustom yourself to have your mind free from all other thoughts when you read any portion of the other books of the prophets, or when you say any blessing…direct your mind exclusively to what you are doing.” 

Maimonides’ career as a rabbinic scholar, communal leader, and physician spanned decades. His legacy has been profound and enduring. His psychological insights can enrich the new scientific specialty known as positive psychology with its important emphasis on fostering individual character strengths and virtues. In this regard, Maimonides’ teachings also provide specific ways to advance Jewish spirituality in everyday life.

‘The Disciples of the Wise Increase Peace in the World’:

The Use of Traditional Scholarship to Build Bridges and Mend Rifts[*]

Introduction

At the end of five different tractates of the Talmud, we find the following teaching:

Rabbi Eleazar said in the name of Rabbi Hanina: The disciples of the wise increase peace in the world, as it says, And all your children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children [banayikh] (Isa. 54:13). Read not banayikh [“your children”] but bonayikh [“your builders”] (Berakhot 64a, cf. Yevamot 122b, Nazir 66b, Keritot 28b, Tamid 32b).

Genuine Torah scholars are supposed to be builders of society, and increase peace in the world. When rabbis and scholars are seeking heaven and communal unity, their Torah scholarship is the ideal tool to unite diverse people.

The Talmud celebrates the diversity of the Jewish people by coining a blessing:

Rabbi Hamnuna further said: If one sees a crowd of Israelites, he should say: Blessed is He who discerns secrets (Berakhot 58a).

Rather than considering conformity a blessing, the Talmud idealizes diversity as something for which God deserves praise. We seek Jewish unity, but not conformity.[1]

Command of a multiplicity of opinions, the hallmark of a Torah scholar, can be used to teach the many legitimate avenues into Torah. The sixteenth-century commentator Rabbi Samuel Eidels (Maharsha) explains that God revealed the Torah in the presence of 600,000 Israelites because the Torah can be interpreted in 600,000 different ways![2] Although the cliché “two Jews, three opinions” may be true, a more telling adage would be, “one learned Jew, dozens of opinions.” When Torah scholars learn sources in their depth, they realize that every single point is debated by the greatest rabbinic minds. The dazzling range of possibilities teaches uncertainty, and also that people can hold significantly different opinions and still be unified under the roof of the Torah.

We live in an age of terrible fragmentation. Whereas debates are hardwired into Jewish tradition, rifts are detrimental to the Jewish community. Often, rifts arise when each side adopts a partial truth from within tradition to the near-exclusion of another partial truth held by the other side. Good Torah scholarship, in its attempt to navigate the two halves, offers an opportunity to build bridges and mend these rifts.

In this essay, we will briefly survey a few areas pertaining to (1) relations between Orthodox Jews; (2) relations between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews; and (3) relations between Jews and non-Jews. The guiding principle is that a faithful commitment to Torah and unity coupled with the range of opinions from within tradition offers models to build bridges and mend rifts without demanding conformity.

Within Orthodoxy

Religious Authority of Midrash

Jewish tradition venerates earlier rabbinic scholarship, and places a premium on the Talmud and other midrashic collections. Simultaneously, the peshat school from the post-talmudic Geonim down to the present has established that the biblical text remains at the center of inquiry, and non-legal rabbinic teachings are not binding. The scholarly pursuit of truth in Torah is imperative.[3]

          Many within the Orthodox world adopt only half of that truth at the expense of the other. One side dogmatically adopts talmudic and midrashic teachings as literal, and insists that this position is required as part of having faith in the teachings of the Sages. Another group dismisses the talmudic traditions as being far removed from biblical text and reality. The first group accuses the second of denigration of the Sages, whereas the second group accuses the first of being fundamentalists who ignore science and scholarship.

          The truth is, this rift has been around for a long time. Rambam lamented this very imbalance in the twelfth century in his introduction to Perek Helek in tractate Sanhedrin. He divided Jews into three categories:

The first group is the largest one…They understand the teachings of the sages only in their literal sense, in spite of the fact that some of their teachings when taken literally, seem so fantastic and irrational that if one were to repeat them literally, even to the uneducated, let alone sophisticated scholars, their amazement would prompt them to ask how anyone in the world could believe such things true, much less edifying. The members of this group are poor in knowledge. One can only regret their folly. Their very effort to honor and to exalt the sages in accordance with their own meager understanding actually humiliates them. As God lives, this group destroys the glory of the Torah of God and says the opposite of what it intended. For He said in His perfect Torah, “The nation is a wise and understanding people” (Deut. 4:6)…

Such individuals are pious, but foolish. They misunderstand the intent of the Sages, and draw false conclusions in the name of religion.

Misguided as this first group is, at least it is preferable to the second group, which also takes the words of the Sages literally but rejects their teachings as a result:

The second group is also a numerous one. It, too, consists of persons who, having read or heard the words of the sages, understand them according to their simple literal sense and believe that the sages intended nothing else than what may be learned from their literal interpretation. Inevitably, they ultimately declare the sages to be fools, hold them up to contempt, and slander what does not deserve to be slandered…. The members of this group are so pretentiously stupid that they can never attain genuine wisdom…. This is an accursed group, because they attempt to refute men of established greatness whose wisdom has been demonstrated to competent men of science....

The first group is reverent to the Sages, whereas the second group is open to science and scholarship and therefore rejects the Sages and their teachings. Both groups fail because of their fundamental misunderstanding of the Sages.

          Rambam then celebrates that rare ideal scholar, who combines those two half-truths into the whole truth:

There is a third group. Its members are so few in number that it is hardly appropriate to call them a group…. This group consists of men to whom the greatness of our sages is clear…. They know that the sages did not speak nonsense, and it is clear to them that the words of the sages contain both an obvious and a hidden meaning. Thus, whenever the sages spoke of things that seem impossible, they were employing the style of riddle and parable which is the method of truly great thinkers....[4]

          In addition to Rambam’s insistence on the fact that the Sages did not always mean their words literally, we must add that the greatest peshat commentators, from Rabbi Saadiah Gaon to Rashi to Ibn Ezra to Ramban to Abarbanel and so many others, venerated the Sages without being bound by all of their non-legal comments. These rabbinic thinkers combine reverence for the Sages with a commitment to scholarship and integrity to the text of the Torah.[5]

Openness to Non-Orthodox and Non-Jewish Scholarship[6]

Jewish tradition’s commitment to truth should lead us to accept the truth from whoever says it. Rambam lived by this axiom,[7] and many great rabbinic figures before and after him similarly espoused this principle.[8] On the other hand, it is difficult to distinguish between knowledge and theory. Scholarship invariably is accompanied by conscious and unconscious biases of scholars, some of which may stray from traditional Jewish thought and belief.

This tension is expressed poignantly in an anecdote cited by Rabbi Joseph ibn Aknin (c. 1150-c. 1220). After noting the works of several rabbinic predecessors who utilized Christian and Muslim writings in their commentaries, he quotes a story related by Shemuel Ha-Nagid:

Rabbi Mazliah b. Albazek the rabbinic judge of Saklia told [Shemuel Ha-Nagid] when he came from Baghdad… that one day in [Rabbi Hai Gaon’s] yeshiva they studied the verse, “let my head not refuse such choice oil” (Ps. 141:5), and those present debated its meaning. Rabbi Hai of blessed memory told Rabbi Mazliah to go to the Catholic Patriarch and ask him what he knew about this verse, and this upset [Rabbi Mazliah]. When [Rabbi Hai] saw that Rabbi Mazliah was upset, he rebuked him, “Our saintly predecessors who are our guides solicited information on language and interpretation from many religious communities—and even of shepherds, as is well known!”[9]

All scholarship is valuable, but all scholars are necessarily biased. There is no easy solution to this dilemma, and rabbinic scholars continue to espouse different approaches for the proper balance in this issue.[10]

Sins of Biblical Heroes

In recent years, particularly in Israel, there has been a raging debate regarding the sins of biblical heroes. One side insists that even ostensibly egregious sins, such as David and Bathsheba-Uriah (2 Samuel 11), Solomon and idolatry (1 Kings 11), and others should not be taken at face value. On the contrary, numerous rabbinic sources insist that these biblical figures did not violate cardinal sins as the plain sense of the text suggests.

Others maintain that the biblical texts speak for themselves. The Bible exposes the flaws of its greatest heroes, teaching that nobody is above the law, and nobody is perfect. There also are many rabbinic sources in support of this position.

          In this instance, each side of the debate represents a half-truth. One group properly teaches a deep sense of awe and reverence for our heroes, whereas the other group correctly insists that nobody is above the Torah, and even the greatest figures are vulnerable to sin. Both of these messages emerge from the biblical texts and rabbinic tradition. However, people who adopt only one or the other half-truth cannot even engage with one another. The first group accuses the other of irreverence, whereas the second group protests that the first ignores the biblical text and its commentaries, and also justifies the immorality of religious leaders in the name of tradition.

          Responsible rabbis and educators carefully weigh those two half-truths into a balanced picture more in tune with the biblical texts and rabbinic tradition, teaching that nobody is above the Torah, while maintaining proper awe and reverence for our heroes.[11]

Orthodox and Non-Orthodox Jews

Judaism includes the basic tenets of belief in one God, divine revelation of the Torah, and a concept of divine providence and reward-punishment. Although there have been debates over the precise definitions and contours of Jewish belief, these core beliefs are universally accepted as part of our tradition.[12]

          The question for believing Jews today is: How should we relate to the overwhelming majority of Jews, who likely do not fully believe in classical Jewish beliefs? Two medieval models shed light on this question.

          Rambam insists that proper belief is essential. Whether one intentionally rejects Jewish beliefs, or whether one simply is mistaken or uninformed, non-belief leads to exclusion from the community of believers:

When a person affirms all these Principles, and clarifies his faith in them, he becomes part of the Jewish People. It is a mitzvah to love him, have mercy on him, and show him all the love and brotherhood that God has instructed us to show our fellow Jews. Even if he has transgressed out of desire and the overpowering influence of his base nature, he will be punished accordingly but he will have a share in the World to Come. But one who denies any of these Principles has excluded himself from the Jewish People and denied the essence [of Judaism]. He is called a heretic, an epikoros, and “one who has cut off the seedlings.” It is a mitzvah to hate and destroy such a person, as it says (Ps. 139:21), “Those who hate You, God, I shall hate” (Introduction to Perek Helek).

For Rambam, belief in the principles of Jewish belief are necessary, and sufficient, to gain afterlife. Scholars of Rambam generally explain that Rambam did not think afterlife was a reward. Rather, it is a natural consequence of one’s religious-intellectual development. Although Rambam did not invent Jewish beliefs, he did innovate this dogmatic position of Judaism being a community of believers in a set of propositions.[13]

          Professor Menachem Kellner explains that Rambam’s position was not the only rabbinic response to Jews who do not espouse Jewish beliefs. Ra’avad, Rabbi Simon b. Tzemah Duran, and Rabbi Joseph Albo maintain that if one makes a well-intentioned error based on a misunderstanding of sources, that person is wrong but not a heretic. One is a heretic only when one willfully denies a principle of faith or willfully affirms a principle denied by the Torah.[14] Kellner argues that the majority of medieval rabbinic thinkers support this latter view, rather than the exclusionary dogmatic position of Rambam.[15]

Halakhah, of course, defines Jewishness by birth and nationhood, and not by belief.  Every Jew is part of the family even if he or she is mistaken in belief. We ideally want all Jews to learn, observe, and believe in the Torah and tradition. However, we should not exclude as heretics those who fall short unless they intentionally wish to exclude themselves from the community.[16]

The approach espoused by Ra’avad, Duran, and Albo reflects a productive means of addressing today’s fragmented society from within tradition. We stand for an eternal set of beliefs and practices, and we embrace and teach all Jews as we build community together.[17]

Jews and Non-Jews

The Torah embraces universalistic values that apply to all humanity. All people are descended from one couple, so there is no room for bigotry (Sanhedrin 37a). All people are created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26).[18] There is a universal morality demanded by the Torah, codified in the Talmud as the Seven Noahide Laws. The messianic visions of the prophets foresee that all humanity will one day live in harmony by accepting God and the requisite moral life demanded by the Torah.[19]

          Simultaneously, God made a singular covenant with the people of Israel through the Torah. Israel plays a unique role as a “kingdom of priests and holy nation” (Exod. 19:6), has a separate set of laws revealed by God, and occupies a central role in the covenantal history between God and humanity.

          Many within the Jewish community focus almost exclusively on the particularistic elements of tradition, and consequently look down upon all non-Jews and non-observant Jews. Many other Jews focus almost exclusively on the universalistic vision of Judaism, ignoring Jewish belief, law, and values in favor of modern Western values. Needless to say, the respective espousing of half-truths again leads to rifts within the community.

          Tradition teaches a sensitive balance of universalism and particularism.[20] The Torah has a special vision for Jews and simultaneously embraces all of humanity in an effort to perfect society.[21]

Conclusion

          We have seen several areas where traditional scholarship can build bridges between half-truths that divide people. Within the Orthodox world, reverence toward heroes and the Sages must be balanced with fidelity to the biblical text, commitment to prophetic integrity, and commitment to truth in scholarship. In relating to non-observant or non-believing Jews, we must espouse and teach traditional belief and observance, but not exclude those who are not yet fully connected. The Torah teaches both particularistic and universalistic values, and it is critical to adopt both in a faithful religious worldview. This position enables believing Jews to sincerely love all humanity and to long for universal morality and harmony.

          It is easier to espouse a half-truth than to struggle for the whole truth. The perils of this approach are not theoretical, but an unfortunate and avoidable part of our current reality. It is up to the disciples of the wise to build the ideological basis for increasing peace in the world by upholding and promoting the eternal values of the Torah.

Notes

It is with great gratitude that I announce the publication of my new book, Psalms: A Companion Volume (New York: Kodesh Press, 2022). Copies may be ordered at https://www.amazon.com/Psalms-Companion-Hayyim-Angel/dp/1947857843/ref=sr_1_1?crid=P4H1YGIXAHJR&keywords=hayyim+angel&qid=1654697463&sprefix=ha….

I thank the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals and sponsors for making the publication of this volume possible. The book presents in-depth studies of several psalms and also identifies several central themes of Psalms. It serves as an entry point for people of diverse backgrounds.

Here is an excerpt from the Foreword to the book:

About fifteen years ago, I was chatting with my then seven-year-old nephew. At that time, my nephew was a second grader in a local Yeshiva Day School. Although we had been discussing baseball, he suddenly interjected that “it matters what the words of the Torah mean, but it does not matter what the words of the prayers mean.”

          I was thunderstruck by this innocent yet profound observation. My nephew was reflecting what his religious education silently conveyed: His school devoted significant class time to learning the meaning of the Torah’s words, yet prayer remained little more than a rote recital. (Update: my nephew, now 22, has developed a singular prayerful soul and elevates his community regularly by leading prayer services.)

          That conversation triggered a deep memory. My journey with the Book of Psalms began when I was an eighteen-year-old yeshiva student in Israel after High School. Early in my first year, I noticed that many of the rabbis as well as students seemed genuinely connected to their prayers and were in no hurry to race through the prayers and move on with their day. Whatever they were experiencing was completely foreign to me. I suddenly felt a profound void in my understanding of prayer after a lifetime of Jewish education. So I took a Book of Psalms off the shelf and began reading it with an English translation and rabbinic commentary. Given that the prayer book is replete with psalms, this seemed like the best place to begin.

          That turned out to be a life-transforming experience. I was mesmerized by the God-intoxication, the authenticity, the staggering courage and honesty, and the fiery religious passion in the psalms. Although prayer in school had been a mechanical exercise, I now was experiencing a world of genuine prayer.

          When I began teaching advanced undergraduate Bible courses at Yeshiva University in 1996, I chose to teach Psalms as my second course. Engagement with the biblical text, classical commentaries, and contemporary scholarship was a markedly different experience from my initial encounter with Psalms at age 18. In this new setting as a teacher, learning preceded prayer.

          Learning Psalms is quite unlike learning every other biblical book. Our goal remains one of Torah learning, but in Psalms that agenda must be a means to an ends, resulting in more authentic prayer. It is my hope and prayer that this companion volume will serve as a tool to enable readers of all backgrounds to understand the psalms, and through that learning to connect more to God through the experience of prayer.

The premise of economic growth has come under question, in many parts of the world today, from a variety of directions. We are aware, of course, that moral thinking in practically every known culture enjoins us not to place undue emphasis on our material concerns. But today there is more to it than that. With heightened sensitivity to the strains that industrialization often brings, including the possibility of permanent climate change, many people in the higher-income countries now question whether further economic expansion is worth the costs. In the developing world, where the advantages of rising incomes are more evident, some people question whether economic growth, and the policies that promote it, are just vehicles for exploitation by foreigners. And now that the current financial crisis has sharply depressed production and incomes in many countries, both industrialized and not, an unusually large number of citizens sense that their economies aren’t growing anyway.

A turn away from economic growth is not what anyone should want, however—and not just on narrowly economic grounds. The experience of many countries suggests that when a society experiences rising standards of living, broadly distributed across the population at large,

it is also likely to make progress along a variety of dimensions that are the very essence of what a free, open, democratic society is all about: openness of opportunity for economic and social advancement; tolerance toward recognizably distinct racial, or religious, or ethnic groups within the society, including new immigrants if the country regularly receives in-migration; a sense of fairness in the provision made for those in the society who, whether on account of limited opportunities, or lesser human endowments, or even just poor luck in the labor market, fall too far below the prevailing public standard of material well-being; genuinely contested elections that determine who controls the levers of political power; and democratic political rights and civil liberties more generally. Conversely, experience also suggests that when a society is stagnating economically—worse yet, if it is suffering a pervasive decline in living standards—it is not only likely to make little if any progress in these social, political, and (in the eighteenth-century sense) moral dimensions; all too often, it will undergo a period of rigidification and retrenchment, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

The chief reason so many societies behave in this way stems from the familiar tendency of most people to evaluate how well off they are not by considering their incomes or living standards in absolute terms but relative to some benchmark. More specifically, there is substantial evidence for two separate benchmarks by which people judge such matters. Most people are pleased when they are able to live better than they, or their families, have lived in the past. And they are pleased when they are able to live better than their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and any others with whom they regularly compare themselves.

The pervasive tendency for people to evaluate their economic situation on these relative benchmarks, rather than absolutely, explains a variety of familiar features of economic and psychological behavior that otherwise would be puzzling—for example, the fact that within any one country, at any given time, people with higher incomes are systematically happier than those with lower incomes, but there is no corresponding increase over time in how happy people are on average even though average incomes may be steadily increasing. As Adam Smith observed long ago, “all men, sooner or later, accommodate themselves to whatever becomes their permanent situation,” so that “between one permanent situation and another there [is], with regard to real happiness, no essential difference.” Hence the critics of growth who maintain that higher incomes per se will not make people happier are mostly right.

But this tendency toward a relative rather than an absolute perspective in such matters also explains why market economies, as long as they deliver rising living standards to most of a society’s population, lead more often than not to tolerance, generosity, democracy, and many of the other recognizable features of an open society. The economically self-protective instinct that underlies racial and religious discrimination, antipathy toward immigration, and lack of generosity toward the poor naturally takes a back seat to other priorities when people have the sense that they are getting ahead.

An important consequence is that many countries throughout the developing world probably will not have to wait until they reach Western levels of per capita income before they begin to liberalize socially and democratize politically. If they can manage to grow economically (alas, many parts of what we call “the developing world” are not actually developing), and if the fruits of that growth are shared among their populations, in time liberalization and even some forms of democratization are likely to follow.

The experience of the Western democracies also makes clear that the connection between rising living standards and either social attitudes or political institutions is not limited to low-income countries. In the United States, for example, eras in which economic expansion has delivered ongoing material benefits to the majority of the country’s citizens—the decade and a half following the Civil War, the decade and a half just prior to World War I, the quarter-century immediately following World War II—have mostly corresponded to eras when opportunities and freedoms have broadened, political institutions have become more democratic, and the treatment of society’s unfortunates has become more generous.

By contrast, when incomes have stagnated or declined, reaction and retreat have been the order of the day. The rise of Jim Crow laws and the widespread anti-immigrant (and anti- Catholic and anti-Semitic) agitation of the 1880s and 1890s; the extraordinary appeal of the reborn Ku Klux Klan, and the adoption of the most discriminatory immigration laws in our nation’s history (the Emergency Quota Act and then the National Origins Act) during the 1920s; and the rise of the right-wing “militia” movement, together with a new groundswell of  anti-immigrant sentiment, in the 1980s and early 1990s (before the strong economic growth of the mid and latter 1990s effectively arrested both), are all familiar examples. A major exception in U.S. experience was the depression of the 1930s, which instead led to a significant opening of American society and strengthening of American democracy—perhaps because the economic distress of that time was sufficiently widely shared that the sense of being in the same sinking ship together overwhelmed the more competitive instincts that usually prevail when people realize they are not getting ahead.

Jews have often been targets of the rise in intolerance that follows when incomes stagnate. Many of the most prominent leaders of America’s Populist movement in the 1880s and 1890s were openly anti-Semitic. Both Ignatius Donnelly, who wrote the Populist Party’s platform, and William Harvey, who wrote the leading free silver economic tract of the time, also wrote novels replete with Jewish villains. (Even Harvey’s best-selling financial tract included a cartoon with an English octopus, labeled “Rothschilds,” strangling the world.) Mary Ellen Lease, the fiery Populist orator who brought the free silver campaign to popular attention, called President Grover Cleveland an agent of Jewish bankers and British gold. In the 1920s the revived Ku Klux Klan was proudly anti-Semitic. Few Congressmen spoke openly of the religious bias inherent in the new immigration policies enacted in 1921 and 1924, but the reflection of the religious map of Europe was plainly evident in the legislation; under the new laws U.S. immigration from areas from which Jews primarily originated shrank from 700,000 per year to 20,000. Although the 1930s ultimately proved a time of broadening of American democracy, an increasingly strident anti-Semitism was clearly on the rise. Father Charles Coughlin drew 40 million listeners to his bigoted weekly rants on the radio, and Charles Lindbergh’s America First movement likewise enjoyed widespread popular support. Although the U.S. Senate confirmed Felix Frankfurter to replace Louis Brandeis on the Supreme Court in 1939, the hearing (far more so than Brandeis’s in 1916, in a different economic climate) exhibited open anti-Semitism. Even in the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht in November 1938, both the public and Congress opposed the idea of admitting 20,000 German Jewish refugee children.

The United States is hardly the only long-established Western democracy where a connection between rising living standards and the strengthening of democratic freedoms is evident. Other countries’ experience displays similar patterns. Conversely, many of the horrifying anti-democratic phenomena that so marred Europe’s twentieth-century history ensued in a setting of pervasive economic stagnation or decline. Hitler’s rise to power in the wake of the economic and political chaos of the Weimar Republic is a familiar story, but it is worth recalling that as late as 1928 the Nazi party drew only 2.8 percent of the vote in German national elections.

What made the difference, soon thereafter, was the onset of the Great Depression, which affected Germany more than any other European country. (Earlier on, what many historians consider the first major push of modern German anti-Semitism appeared during Germany’s economic stagnation in the 1870s and 1880s.) Similarly, France’s Vichy regime, which willingly collaborated with the Germans—during the war France was one of only two European countries to turn over to the Nazis Jews from territories that the Germans did not occupy—emerged out of a protracted period of French economic stagnation during which right-wing nationalist and anti- Semitic groups such as the Action Francaise, Jeunesse Patriots, and the Croix de Feu (“Cross of Fire”) worked, both behind the scenes and through street violence, to undermine French democracy. As my late colleague, the economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron, observed during the war, “even a long democratic history does not necessarily immunize a country from becoming a ‘democracy without democrats.’”

The connections between economic growth and the democratic character of society need not be one-directional. The idea that rising living standards foster tolerance and democracy does not preclude the parallel notion that these features of society enhance the ability of any economy, but especially one based primarily on private initiative and decentralized markets, to achieve superior performance over time. Different political institutions and different legal frameworks, as well as different public attitudes and private behavior, help account for why some countries enjoy more economic success than others. The evidence is especially strong that effective “rule of law,” including the protection of property rights, matters for economic growth. It does not require an advanced degree in economics to know that barring half of the population from certain jobs because they are of the “wrong” sex, or still others because they are of the “wrong” race or “wrong” religion, does not result in the most efficient allocation of an economy’s human resources.

As a result, a society may find itself in a virtuous circle in which economic growth and democratic freedoms mutually reinforce one another or, less fortunately, stuck in a vicious circle in which the stagnation of living standards blunts any movement toward democratic reform while adverse political institutions and the absence of basic freedoms retard economic improvement for most citizens. Leaving aside the periodic ups and downs of market-driven economic growth in most Western societies, the long-term experience of countries like the United States is a rough example of the former. The current plight of many countries in sub-Saharan Africa presents even sharper examples of the latter.

Especially in the wake of the financial crisis that began in 2007, many citizens of countries around the world have sensed that they are not getting ahead. But importantly, in many higher-income countries the problem dates to well before the crisis began. In the United States, for example, even before the onset of the latest downturn, most people had seen little economic improvement throughout the 2000s. In 2007, the median family income (the income of families exactly in the middle of the U.S. income distribution) was $63,700 in today’s dollars. Back in

2000 the median family income, again in today’s dollars, was $63,400. The gain—not per annum, but over the entire seven years—was less than one-half of one percent. The U.S. economy as a whole expanded solidly during these years, but the gains from that expanding production accrued very narrowly, mostly to people already at the top of the scale. The rest of the nation’s families saw little improvement. Although the precise timing differs, the populations of Italy, France, the U.K., and many other countries as well have experienced roughly similar income stagnation.

Then came the crisis. The current financial crisis and the recession that followed have constituted one of the most significant sequences of economic dislocations since World War II.

In many countries (the United States included), the real economic costs—costs in terms of reduced production, lost jobs, shrunken investment, and foregone incomes and profits—exceeded those of any prior post-war downturn. Most American families were not immune. In 2008, the U.S. median family income fell to $61,500, a lower level than in any year since 1998. We do not yet have the figure for 2009, but it seems clear that last year family incomes dropped again. Here too, the pattern is similar in many other countries that have likewise suffered in the financial crisis and then the economic downturn.

Nor do we have any solid basis for expecting a rapid recovery of incomes, either in the United States or abroad, now that the worst of the crisis has passed and many of these countries’ economies have started to turn around. Just now the greatest challenges appear to be in Europe, where the combination of current monetary institutions and the legacy of past fiscal practices present what seems to be an insurmountable bar to vigorous recovery. But near-term growth prospects in the United States are modest as well, and they, too, are vulnerable to a host of contingencies.

The majority of American families, therefore, have now gone through an entire decade—or perhaps longer—with no increase in their incomes or improvement in their living standards.

And unless the economy recovers rapidly, the situation may persist a good while longer. Past experience suggests that the consequences of this kind of prolonged stagnation—here as well as in other countries—will spill over well beyond the realm of economics and business. The collateral damage will include our race relations, our religious tolerance, our generosity toward the disadvantaged (as Adam Smith also wisely observed, “before we can feel much for others, we must in some measure be at ease ourselves; if our own misery pinches us very severely, we have no leisure to attend to that of our neighbor”), and the civility of our political discourse. No informed citizen can be unaware that the damage, in each of these areas, has already begun to occur. Given the country’s historical demographic make-up, the most frequently observed reaction in such circumstances has been a hardening of attitudes toward new and recent immigrants, and this has already begun. Other countries, presumably with differing specifics, will probably face similar experiences. The symptoms often differ from one country to the next, but the disease of economic stagnation is not a pleasant one anywhere.

The urgent need, therefore, is not merely to get the economy’s production increasing again, although that is a necessary first step, but to enable the majority of families once again to earn rising incomes and enjoy improving living standards. Most citizens, in the United States no less than elsewhere, have exhibited impressive patience. It is best not to try that patience too far.

If a key part of what matters for tolerance and fairness and opportunity, not to mention the strength of a society’s democratic political institutions, is that the broad cross-section of the population have a confident sense of getting ahead economically, then no society—no matter how rich it becomes or how well-formed its institutions may be—is immune from seeing its basic democratic values at risk whenever the majority of its citizens lose their sense of economic progress.

The current disillusionment with economic growth—in some quarters, even a fashionable hostility—reflects a failure to recognize these broader relationships. But that failure, and the rejection and hostility to which it gives rise, are, in turn, impediments to restoring both our economy and our society to a more beneficial (and benevolent) trajectory. Changing economic course normally requires policy action. In a democracy, making policy choices requires public support.

The familiar balancing of material positives against moral negatives when we discuss economic growth is a therefore false choice. The parallel assumption that the way we value material versus moral concerns neatly maps into whether we should eagerly embrace economic growth or temper our enthusiasm is wrong as well. Economic growth bears benefits that are both material and moral. As we take up the hard decisions that will inevitably surround any effort to restore our economy’s vitality in the aftermath of the worst financial crisis and the deepest and most protracted economic downturn in two generations, it is important that we bear these moral positives in mind.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. —Socrates, over 2,000 years ago

There is nothing new under the sun. —Kohelet

And yet, in the twenty-first century, we still worry about children and about the adults they grow up to be. How is it that Orthodox Jews, people who literally live by the Torah and the Talmud, are guilty of immoral and sometimes criminal acts that should be anathema to them? Rabbi Marc Angel asks, “How can we do better? How can we go from teaching texts or sponsoring random hessed projects, to getting students to actually internalize the message and become morally strong?”

Though I am not the ultimate authority, the challenge remains an intriguing, often daunting one. Let me begin by asserting that I believe that it is possible to create an environment where middot, derekh eretz, and moral uprightness is the norm rather than the anomaly. It is my strong belief that if we accept the premise that we are created in the image of God, then we are intrinsically good. The dilemma is how do we harness this intrinsic internal goodness in the young so that they keep it with them as they grow up? Truthfully, neither random hessed projects nor lectures about being virtuous seem to work. We have seen repeatedly that working from the outside is not effective; it hasn’t worked in the past, and it won’t work in the future. Recognizing that internal goodness is like a muscle, it follows that internal goodness must be exercised in order to be strengthened.

What form does that exercise take? How do we strengthen that muscle so that it becomes internally strong and will manifest itself in external goodness?

We must start at the earliest time possible. “Teach a child good manners during babyhood,” advised Reb Nachman of Breslav. Most children, before culture is superimposed upon them, are basically goodhearted. Nurturing that goodness and reinforcing it constantly should be our goal. It means creating and sustaining a clear, robust, and intentional environment that, in every decision, communication, conversation, or discussion, expresses a level of concern for others. If we are truly to emulate God and do His will, we must emphasize the importance of middot and character, and model that by being kind, compassionate, and just. If even God is held to ethical standards—“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?” (Bereishith 18:25)—should we not hold ourselves similarly accountable?

Everything that we learn reinforces this message. God visits Abraham after his berit milah, but Abraham leaves Him to minister to the “malakhim” who arrive on the horizon. Abraham’s desire to be gracious to them is greater even than his wish to commune with God.

That is the message educators at every level must drive home, creating environments where we model behavior that is kinder and gentler. We say “good morning” to a custodian, “please” to a secretary, “thank you” to a cafeteria worker. When we see a person struggling with a task, we ask if we can help. At our school, each class has a greeter who welcomes guests, and children rise in respect of that guest, no matter who the guest. We take children’s internal goodness and animate it, concretize it. By encouraging the inner goodness to express itself in tangible action, we reinforce the goodness that is within. The goal? To create a school environment that makes it almost impossible for a child not to externalize what is internal and internalize what is external.

We live in an age of self-absorption and self-centeredness. As educators, our job is to help children focus on others, moving away from the self-interest that characterizes a young child.  But making the process intentional and focused is certainly not easy.

We try so hard to satisfy our children’s desires, mollify their anxieties, and ameliorate their pain. “Helicopter parents” have given way to “snowplow parents,” who try to smooth the way for their children, plowing over their mistakes and challenges and focusing on their immediate gratification. And this is where I believe we begin to go wrong. In our schools today—and in our lives in general—emphasis has shifted to that which is cerebral, performance-oriented, and ritual-bound, but devoid of character development. In too many of our schools, there is such a strong emphasis on academics, on intellectual rigor, that we sometimes forget that the goal of our learning of the mitzvoth is, as the Rambam says to refine us so that we can have a positive impact on others. We end up without a sense of authenticity in terms of what a Jew is supposed to be. When we celebrate the “mitzuyanim” or those who are “better” or “stronger” or can learn more Gemara, we are not modeling moral behavior; we are rewarding acquisition of knowledge.

Rav Ezra Bisk points out that

[T]here are no mitzvoth that reflect merely the will of God, without any logic or reason or goal. The goal of all mitzvoth is always, according to the Ramban … human-oriented. The goal of God in commanding the mitzvah is not to increase His own glory, which is irrelevant to Him, not to somehow do something for the majesty of God, but is to improve and to correct, to develop the person who is observing the mitzvoth.

Educators cannot lose sight of this. The true outcome of knowing that Torah is truth—is to live by it.

In “Is there a Disconnect between Torah Learning and Torah Living?,” Aharon Hersch Fried tells the sad story of a very good student in a yeshiva high school who chose two strong fellow students to learn with for two “sedarim,” and a weaker one to learn with during the third “seder.” His magid shiur berated him for choosing to learn with and help the weaker student, saying, “You can learn a lot more with a stronger havruta.” When it comes to choosing partners for Torah learning, the Rebbe explained, the operative principle is—your life takes precedence over any considerations of helping and learning with another possibly weaker student. He concluded by saying, “There is no hessed when it comes to Torah!” Fried responds to the story by remarking,

I don’t know what the source for this attitude would be. In fact, I’ve heard that gedolim of the previous generation … taught the precise opposite. Reb Chaim told his talmidim that doing hessed in Torah will grant one the Heavenly assistance needed for success in Torah. But even if there was a basis for the other approach, should we not be worried that teaching such an “every man for himself” approach to Torah will result in an “every man for himself” approach to life, and will contribute to our developing a selfish “dog-eat-

 dog” society?!

Dr. Hayim Soloveitchik raises similar concerns in “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy”:

Zealous to continue traditional Judaism unimpaired, religious Jews seek to ground their new emerging spirituality less on a now unattainable intimacy with Him, than on an intimacy with His Will, avidly eliciting Its intricate demands and saturating their daily lives with Its exactions. Having lost the touch of His presence, they seek now solace in the pressure of His yoke.

Avidly following laws and rules without understanding the underlying rationale for them is fruitless. Should we not be teaching, “Derekh eretz kadma laTorah,” Derekh Eretz comes before the acquisition of Torah knowledge?

Derekh eretz is an element of religiosity that we often do not emphasize. If you ask the question, “How do you define a religious Jew?” chances are the response will reference Shabbat, kashruth, and dress. But if our children do not describe a religious person as a kind, compassionate, and caring person, we haven’t done our job as educators, because we need to see character and kindness as religiosity:

Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord doth require of thee: only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God. (Micah 6:8)

If you’ve completed a segment of Mishnah or Talmud but in the process mistreated a fellow human being, I would submit that God is not so happy to take that learning as an offering. If we are truly believers, we will realize that interpersonal mitzvoth must be at least as important as ritual mitzvoth between us and God. What God wants from His chosen people is not just study, but actualization of that study, gemilut hassadim, deeds of lovingkindness. “Bring no more vain oblations; it is an offering of abomination unto Me; New moon and Sabbath, the holding of convocations—I cannot endure iniquity along with the solemn assembly” (Isaiah[RA1] ). You are not devout if you don’t have character. Offerings are in vain if they are empty of virtue, compassion, and kindness.

Under this scenario, all of our schools should be designed to create an environment in which students of every age engage in acts of kindness. They should be taught to help one another. The pictures on the walls should not be only of “gedolim” but of children helping other children, people actually doing something for someone else. Schools should be places where everyone assists the child or adult who falls, in reality and metaphorically. Goodness should be an expectation, not an aberration.

In an ideal school system, good character would be the norm. If someone does something hurtful or cruel, the response would be consistently: “Something is wrong. That’s not how we act.” We would create spaces where everyone was expected to be kind, where peer pressure would not encourage others to be cruel or supercilious but rather to be thoughtful and caring. It sounds simplistic but there’s nothing superficial about helping children and young adults understand what the truly important values of Judaism are.

My ideal school system would be founded on a belief in the sanctity of each member of the school community, created in the image of God and therefore deserving of compassion and respect. Everyone—teachers, fellow students, staff, administrators—would be valued for the unique contributions they bring to the schools. From an early age, students would be taught the importance of honorable and respectful behavior toward others. From preschool to high school, students would embrace the value of being a person of integrity and honor, who treats others well. "One must behave before others as one must behave before God," we are told in Shekalim. This would be our school system’s motto.

Children emulate the behaviors they see around them. If we look askance at a child who does not treat others well, conformity and peer pressure become forces for good rather than evil. In my school (and in my hypothetical school system), students thank teachers for their lessons. We begin every program by saying “toda raba” loudly and collectively, thereby teaching children that it’s not just about them.  The famous story is told of the Baal HaTanya, who came knocking at the door of the Mezritcher Maggid. “Who is it?” asked the Maggid. “Ich. It is I,” said the Baal HaTanya. “Who?” the Maggid asked once again. And once again the answer was “Ich.” “’Ich,’ you said?” said the Maggid with a tormented sigh. “’Ich’? I have worked for 20 years to eradicate the ‘Ich’ from you, and you come brazenly to my door and say ‘Ich’?” The goal of our moral pedagogy is to remove our “Ich,” and embrace the centrality and importance of others, not ourselves.

But it’s not just about giving children opportunities to exercise the goodness muscle. You create goodness by doing good and believing in the premise. Moral education must be systemic and systematic. Educators must set the goals and the stage at the very outset, and keep coming back to them and reinforcing them. Children often do not listen to what we say because our words are drowned out by what we do. Right from the beginning, children see the difference between what they experience at school and what they experience in the world around them. So moral education cannot stop at the boundaries of the schoolyard. It must also reach into the home, helping parents understand our common language, giving them a lexicon that can be used to reinforce these principles. Derekh eretz must be extended into all aspects of students’ lives. All of the adults in a child’s life must model it and look askance at behavior that is antithetical to it. The home as well as the school and the synagogue must model, reinforce, and help children do good—with their bodies not just their words (help at a soup kitchen, visit a person in the hospital, make a shiva call) so that they understand that kindness and compassion are not theoretical—they are real, actionable, concrete.

“Torah is meant to be a living Torah, a guide for life,” writes Dr. Fried, emphasizing that we must connect learning to living. He stresses that true moral education recognizes that cognition, the understanding of morality, is not sufficient; that teaching sensitivity is important and that “understanding the role of emotion is crucial and requires teaching empathic distress, fostering intuitive judgment and seeing derekh eretz as frumkeit.” He sums up, “We must teach our children sensitivity to the feelings of others, and make them aware of the feelings of others, and immerse them in a web of communal and familial experiences that foster growth in this area.” These are the principles that would guide my ideal educational system.

True educators respect the humanity of their students, just as they expect their students to respect the humanity of others. We are reminded of this in so many places. In Mishlei Yehoshua we read, “It is better to know well than to know much.” In Pirke Avot (3:13) we read, “The crown of a good name is greater than the crown of learning.” In the Talmud (Menahot 110a) we read, “Study is worth as much as ritual sacrifice.” As moral educators, who joyously affirm the beauty, timelessness, and sanctity of Jewish life, we must follow the example of Aaron haKohen: loving others and bringing them closer to Torah.  Only through showing unconditional love for our students, respecting their tzelem Elokim and intrinsic goodness, and sharing with them our love of Torah and our commitment to derekh eretz, can the principles, guidelines, and mitzvoth of Torah become actualized throughout their lifetimes.

The Talmud records a poignant story relating to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. Although historians describe various political, sociological, and military explanations for the Roman war against the Jews, the Talmud—through the story of Kamtsa and Bar Kamtsa—points to a moral/spiritual cause of the destruction:

R. Johanan said: The destruction of Jerusalem came through Kamtsa and Bar Kamtsa in this way. A certain man had a friend Kamtsa and an enemy Bar Kamtsa. He once made a party and said to his servant, Go and bring Kamtsa. The man went and brought Bar Kamtsa. When the man [who gave the party] found him there he said, See, you tell tales about me; what are you doing here? Get out. Said the other: Since I am here, let me stay and I will pay you for whatever I eat and drink. He said, I won't. Then let me give you half the cost of the party. No, said the other. Then let me pay for the whole party. He still said, No, and he took him by the hand and put him out. Said the other, Since the rabbis were sitting there and did not stop him, this shows that they agreed with him. I will go and inform against them to the Government. He went and said to the Emperor, The Jews are rebelling against you. He said, How can I tell? He said to him: Send them an offering and see whether they will offer it [on the altar]. So he sent with him a fine calf. While on the way he [Bar Kamtsa] made a blemish on its upper lip, or as some say on the white of its eye, in a place where we [Jews] count it a blemish but they [the Romans] do not. The rabbis were inclined to offer it in order not to offend the Government. Said R. Zechariah b. Abkulas to them: People will say that blemished animals are offered on the altar. They then proposed to kill Bar Kamtsa so that he should not go and inform against them, but R. Zechariah b. Abkulas said to them, Is one who makes a blemish on consecrated animals to be put to death? R. Johanan thereupon remarked: Through the scrupulousness of R. Zechariah b. Abkulas our House has been destroyed, our Temple burnt and we ourselves exiled from our land. (Gittin 55b–56a)

The story tells of a host—apparently a wealthy man—who throws a party and wants his friend Kamtsa to be brought to it. The servant makes a mistake and brings Bar Kamtsa—a person the host despises. When the host sees Bar Kamtsa, he orders him to leave. Even though Bar Kamtsa pleads not to be humiliated by being sent away, the host is unbending. Bar Kamtsa offers to pay for whatever he eats, for half the expenses of the entire party, for the entire party—but the host unceremoniously leads Bar Kamtsa out of his home.

The story reflects a lack of peace among the Jewish community in Jerusalem. The antagonism between the host and Bar Kamtsa is palpable. The unpleasant scene at the party was witnessed by others—including “the rabbis”; obviously, “the rabbis” were included on the party’s guest list. They were part of the host’s social network. When Bar Kamtsa was ejected from the party, he did not express rage at the host. Rather, he was deeply wounded by the fact that rabbis had been silent in the face of the humiliation he had suffered: “Since the rabbis were sitting there and did not stop him, this shows that they agreed with him.” He might have understood the host’s uncouth behavior, since the host hated him. But he could not understand why the rabbis, through their silence, would go along with the host. Why didn’t they stand up and protest on behalf of Bar Kamtsa? Why didn’t they attempt to increase peace? Bar Kamtsa was so disgusted with the rabbis that he decided to stir up the Roman Emperor against the Jewish people. If the rabbinic leadership itself was corrupt, then the entire community had to suffer.

Why didn’t the rabbis speak up on behalf of Bar Kamtsa?

Apparently, the rabbis kept silent because they did not want to offend their host. If the host wanted to expel a mistakenly invited person, that was his business—not theirs. The host seems to have been a wealthy patron of the rabbis; he obviously wanted them included on his invitation list. Why should the rabbis offend their patron, in defense of an enemy of their patron? That might jeopardize their relationship with the host and could cost them future patronage.

The rabbis kept silent because they thought it socially and economically prudent for their own interests. They could not muster the courage to confront the host and try to intervene on behalf of Bar Kamtsa. By looking out for their own selfish interests, the rabbis chose to look the other way when Bar Kamtsa was publicly humiliated.

Rabbi Binyamin Lau, in his review of the rabbinical and historical sources of that period, came to the inescapable conclusion that “the rabbis were supported by the wealthy [members of the community], and consequently were unable to oppose their deeds. There is here a situation of economic pressure that enslaved the elders of the generation to the officials and the wealthy….The Torah infrastructure depended on the generosity of the rich.”

When rabbis lost the spirit of independence, they also lost their moral compass. They were beholden to the rich, and could not afford to antagonize their patrons. They remained silent even when their patrons behaved badly, even when their silence allowed their patrons to humiliate others. Bar Kamtsa was outraged by the moral cowardice of the rabbis to such an extent that he turned traitor against the entire Jewish people.

The story goes on to say that Bar Kamtsa told the Emperor that the Jews were rebelling. To verify this, the Emperor sent an offering to be sacrificed in the Temple. If the Jews offered it up, that proved they were not rebelling. If the Jews refused to offer it up, this meant that they were defying the Emperor and were rising in rebellion. Bar Kamtsa took a fine calf on behalf of the Emperor, and put a slight blemish on it. He was learned enough to know that this blemish—while of no consequence to the Romans—would disqualify the animal from being offered according to Jewish law.

When Bar Kamtsa presented the offering at the Temple, the rabbis were inclined to allow it to be offered. They fully realized that if they rejected it, this would be construed by the Emperor as a sign of disloyalty and rebellion. Since there was so much at stake, the rabbis preferred to offer a blemished animal rather than incur the Emperor’s wrath. This was a sound, prudent course of action. But one of the rabbis, Zecharyah b, Abkulas, objected. He insisted that the rabbis follow the letter of the law and not allow the offering of a blemished animal. He cited public opinion (“people will say”) that the rabbis did not adhere to the law and therefore allowed a forbidden offering. The rabbis then considered the extreme possibility of murdering Bar Kamtsa, so that this traitor would not be able to return to the Emperor to report that the offering had been refused. Again, Zecharyah b. Abkulas objected. The halakha does not allow the death penalty for one who brings a blemished offering for sacrifice in the Temple. Murdering Bar Kamtsa, thus, would be unjustified and illegal. This was “check mate.” The rabbis offered no further ideas on how to avoid antagonizing the Emperor. The offering was rejected, and Bar Kamtsa reported this to the Emperor. The result was the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and razing of the Temple. “R. Johanan thereupon remarked: Through the scrupulousness of R. Zechariah b. Abkulas our House has been destroyed, our Temple burnt and we ourselves exiled from our land.”

Rabbi Johanan casts R. Zecharyah b. Abkulas as the villain of the story. R. Zecharyah was overly scrupulous in insisting on the letter of the law, and he lost sight of the larger issues involved. He did not factor in the consequences of his halakhic ruling; or if he did, he thought it was better to suffer the consequences rather than to violate the halakha. Rabbi Johanan blames R. Zecharyah’s “scrupulousness” for the destruction of Jerusalem, the razing of the Temple, and the exile of the Jewish people. The moral of the story, according to Rabbi Johanan, is that rabbis need to have a grander vision when making halakhic decisions. It is not proper—and can be very dangerous—to rule purely on the basis of the letter of the law, without taking into consideration the larger issues and the consequences of these decisions. Technical correctness does not always make a halakhic ruling correct. On the contrary, technical correctness can lead to catastrophic results. To follow the precedent of Rabbi Zecharyah b. Abkulas is a dangerous mistake.

Yes, Rabbi Zecharyah b. Abkulas was overly scrupulous in his application of halakha, when other larger considerations should have been factored in. His narrow commitment to legal technicalities caused inexpressible suffering and destruction for the Jewish people. But is he the real villain of the story?

Rabbi Zecharyah was only one man. The other rabbis formed the majority. Why didn’t they overrule Rabbi Zecharyah? The rabbis surely realized the implications of rejecting the Emperor’s offering. They were even willing to commit murder to keep Bar Kamtsa from returning to the Emperor with a negative report. Why did the majority of the rabbis submit to Rabbi Zecharyah’s “scrupulousness”?

The story is teaching not only about the mistaken attitude of Rabbi Zecharyah b. Abkulas, but about the weakness and cowardice of the rest of the rabbis. The other rabbis were intimidated by Rabbi Zecharyah. They were afraid that people would accuse them of being laxer in halakha than Rabbi Zecharyah. They worried lest their halakhic credibility would be called into question. Rabbi Zecharyah might be perceived by the public as the “really religious” rabbi, or the “fervently religious” rabbi; the other rabbis would be perceived as compromisers, as religiously defective. They recognized that Rabbi Zecharyah, after all, had technical halakhic justification for his positions. On the other hand, they would have to be innovative and utilize meta-halakhic considerations to justify their rulings. That approach—even if ultimately correct—requires considerable confidence in one’s ability to make rulings that go beyond the letter of the law. Rabbi Zecharyah’s position was safe: it had support in the halakhic texts and traditions. The rabbis’ position was risky: it required breaking new ground, making innovative rulings based on extreme circumstances. The rabbis simply were not up to the challenge. They deferred to Rabbi Zecharyah because they lacked the courage and confidence to take responsibility for bold halakhic decision-making.

When Rabbis Do Not Increase Peace in the World

When rabbis lose sight of their core responsibility to bring peace into the world, the consequences are profoundly troubling. The public’s respect for religion and religious leadership decreases. The rabbis themselves become narrower in outlook, more authoritarian, more identified with a rabbinic/political bureaucracy than with idealistic rabbinic service. They become agents of the status quo, curriers of favor from the rich and politically well-connected.
When rabbis lack independence and moral courage, the tendencies toward conformity and extremism arise. They adopt the strictest and most fundamentalist positions, because they do not want to appear “less fervent” than the extremist rabbinic authorities.

When rabbis fear to express moral indignation so as not to jeopardize their financial or political situation, then the forces of injustice and disharmony increase. When rabbis adopt the narrow halakhic vision of Rabbi Zecharyah b. Abkulas, they invite catastrophe on the community. When the “silent majority” of rabbis allow the R. Zecharyahs to prevail, they forfeit their responsibility as religious leaders.

The contemporary Hareidization of Orthodox Judaism, both in Israel and the Diaspora, has tended to foster a narrow and extreme approach to halakha. This phenomenon has been accompanied by a widespread acquiescence on the part of Orthodox rabbis who are afraid to stand up against the growing extremism.

In the summer of 1984, I met with Rabbi Haim David Halevy, then Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv. He was a particularly independent thinker, who much regretted the narrowness and extremism that had arisen within Orthodox rabbinic circles. He lamented what he called the rabbinic “mafia” that served as a thought police, rooting out and ostracizing rabbis who did not go along with the official policies of a small group of “gedolim,” rabbinic authorities who are thought to have the ultimate power to decide halakhic policies. When honest discussion and diversity of opinion are quashed, the religious enterprise suffers.

The Orthodox rabbinic establishment in Israel, through the offices of the Chief Rabbinate, has had the sole official religious authority to determine matters relating to Jewish identity, conversion, marriage, and divorce. It has also wielded its authority in kashruth supervision and other areas of religious law relating to Jewish life in the State of Israel. This religious “monopoly” has been in place since the State of Israel was established in 1948. With so much power at their disposal, one would have expected—and might have hoped—that the rabbinate would have won a warm and respectful attitude among the population at large. The rabbis, after all, are charged with increasing peace between the people of Israel and their God; with applying halakha in a spirit of love, compassion, and understanding; with creating within the Jewish public a recognition that the rabbis are public servants working in the public’s interest.

Regrettably, these things have not transpired. Although the Chief Rabbinate began with the creative leadership of Rabbis Benzion Uziel and Yitzchak Herzog, it gradually sank into a bureaucratic mire, in which rabbis struggled to gain political power and financial reward for themselves and/or for the institutions they represent. The Chief Rabbinate is not held as the ultimate religious authority in Israel by the Hareidi population. It is not respected by the non-Orthodox public. It has scant support within the Religious Zionist camp, since the Chief Rabbinate seems more interested in pandering to Hareidi interests than in promoting a genuine Religious Zionist vision and program for the Jewish State.

Recent polls in Israel have reflected a growing backlash against the Hareidization of religious life and against the political/social/religious coercion that has been fostered by Hareidi leadership. Seventy percent of Jewish Israelis are opposed to new religious legislation. Fifty-three pecert oppose all religiously coercive legislation. Forty-two percent believe that the tension between the Hareidim and the general public is the most serious internal schism in Israeli Jewish society—nearly twice as many as those who think the most serious tension is between the political left and political right. Sixty-five percent think the tensions between Hareidim and the general public are the most serious, or second most serious, problem facing the Israeli Jewish community. An increasing number of Israelis are in favor of a complete separation of religion and State, reflecting growing frustration with the religious status quo.

America, Jews, and a Dream in Progress

excerpts of a sermon delivered by Rabbi Marc D. Angel, September 12, 2004

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words from the American Declaration of Independence reflect the deepest ideals and aspirations of the American people. America is not merely a country, vast and powerful; America is an idea, a vision of life as it could be.

When these words were first proclaimed on July 4, 1776, Congregation Shearith Israel was almost 122 years old. It was a venerable community, with an impressive history--a bastion of Jewish faith and tradition,and an integral part of the American experience.

When the British invaded New York in 1776, a large group of congregants, including our Hazan Rev. Gershom Mendes Seixas,left the city rather than live under British rule. Many joined the Revolutionary army and fought for American independence.

Some remained in New York, and conducted services in our synagogue building on Mill Street. Early in the war, British soldiers broke into the synagogue and desecrated two Torah scrolls. This was not just an attack on scrolls, but was a symbolic assault on the spiritual foundations of Judaism, the self-same foundations upon which the American republic has been built.

In our service today, we read from one of these Torah scrolls as a symbolic response to those soldiers, and to all those who would seek to undermine the eternal teachings of Torah and the principles of American democracy: we are not intimidated, we are not afraid. Generation by generation, we will continue to live by our ideals and by our faith. Generation by generation, we will lend our strength to the great American enterprise that promises hope and freedom, one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.

Our story in America is not built on historical abstractions, but on generations of Jews who have played their roles in the unfolding of this nation. It is a very personal history, ingrained in our collective memory.

We have just read from the Revolutionary Period Torah scroll, from the section known as “Kedoshim”, only a few columns from where the British soldiers damaged the scroll. Kedoshim opens with a challenge to the people of Israel to be a holy nation, to live according to the commandments of God, to have the courage and inner strength to maintain Torah ideals in a world that is not always receptive to such lofty teachings. The portion goes on to specify how we are to manifest holiness: through charity; honesty; commitment to truth and justice; through the avoidance of gossip and hatred. It culminates with the words: ve-ahavta le-re-aha kamokha, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The very principles enjoined by this passage are the spiritual foundations of the United States of America. These teachings are constant reminders of how to live a good life and build a righteous society; they also are prods to make us realize how far short we fall from these ideals, how much more work remains to be done.

On this 350th anniversary of the American Jewish community, we reflect on the courage and heroic efforts of our forebears who have maintained Judaism as a vibrant and living force in our lives. We express gratitude to America for having given us—and all citizens—the freedom to practice our faith. This very freedom has energized and strengthened America.

Within Congregation Shearith Israel, we have been blessed with men and women who have helped articulate Jewish ideals and American ideals. Their voices have blended in with the voices of fellow Americans of various religions and races, to help shape the dream and reality of America.

The American Declaration of Independence pronounced that all men are created equal. In his famous letter to the Jewish community of Newport, in August 1790, President George Washington hailed the United States for allowing its citizens freedom—not as a favor bestowed by one group on another—but in recognition of the inherent natural rights of all human beings. This country, wrote President Washington, “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

And yet, if equality and human dignity are at the core of American ideals, the fulfillment of these ideals have required—and still require—sacrifice and devotion. Reality has not always kept up with the ideals. In 1855, Shearith Israel member Uriah Phillips Levy—who rose to the rank of Commodore in the U.S. Navy—was dropped from the Navy’s active duty list. He was convinced that anti-Semitism was at the root of this demotion. He appealed the ruling and demanded justice. He asked: are people “now to learn to their sorrow and dismay that we too have sunk into the mire of religious intolerance and bigotry?... What is my case today, if you yield to this injustice, may tomorrow be that of the Roman Catholic or the Unitarian, the Presbyterian or the Methodist, the Episcopalian or the Baptist. There is but one safeguard: that is to be found in an honest, whole-hearted, inflexible support of the wise, the just, the impartial guarantee of the Constitution.” Levy won his case. He helped the United States remain true to its principles.

Shearith Israel member Moses Judah (1735-1822) believed that all men were created equal—including black men. In 1799, he was elected to the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves. During his tenure on the standing committee between 1806 and 1809, about fifty slaves were freed. Through his efforts, many other slaves achieved freedom. He exerted himself to fight injustice, to expand the American ideals of freedom and equality regardless of race or religion.

Another of our members, Maud Nathan, believed that all men were created equal—but so were all women created equal. She was a fiery, internationally renowned suffragette, who worked tirelessly to advance a vision of America that indeed recognized the equality of all its citizens—men and women. As President of the Consumers’ League of New York from 1897-1917, Maud Nathan was a pioneer in social activism, working for the improvement of working conditions of employees in New York’s department stores. Equality and human dignity were the rights of all Americans, rich and poor, men and women.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that human beings have unalienable rights, among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These words express the hope and optimism of America. They are a repudiation of the tyranny and oppression that prevailed—and still prevail—in so many lands. America is a land of opportunity, where people can live in freedom. The pursuit of happiness really signifies the pursuit of self-fulfillment, of a meaningful way of life. America’s challenge was—and still is—to create a harmonious society that allows us to fulfill our potentials.

President George Washington declared a day of national Thanksgiving for November 26, 1789. Shearith Israel held a service, at which Hazan Gershom Mendes Seixas called on this congregation “to unite, with cheerfulness and uprightness…to promote that which has a tendency to the public good.” Hazzan Seixas believed that Jews, in being faithful to Jewish tradition, would be constructive and active participants in American society.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were not reserved only for those born in America; they are the rights of all human beings everywhere. This notion underlies the idealism of the American dream, calling for a sense of responsibility for all suffering people, whether at home or abroad. American Jews have been particularly sensitive and responsive to this ideal.

On March 8,1847, Hazan Jacques Judah Lyons addressed a gathering at Shearith Israel for the purpose of raising funds for Irish famine relief. The potato crop in Ireland had failed in 1846, resulting in widespread famine. Hazan Lyons well realized that the Jewish community needed charitable dollars for its own internal needs; and yet he insisted that Jews reach out and help the people of Ireland. He said that there was one indestructible and all-powerful link between us and the Irish sufferers: “That link, my brethren, is HUMANITY! Its appeal to the heart surmounts every obstacle. Clime, color, sect are barriers which impede not its progress thither.” In assisting with Irish famine relief, the Jewish community reflected its commitment to the well-being of all suffering human beings. American Jewry grew into—and has continued to be—a great philanthropic community perhaps unmatched in history. Never have so few given so much to so many. In this, we have been true to our Jewish tradition, and true to the spirit of America.

Who articulated the hope and promise of America more eloquently than Emma Lazarus? “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” How appropriate it is that her poem is affixed to the great symbol of American freedom, the Statue of Liberty.

Alice Menken, (for many years President of our Sisterhood) did remarkable work to help immigrants, to assist young women who ran into trouble with the law, to promote reform of the American prison system. She wrote: “We must seek a balanced philosophy of life. We must live to make the world worth living in, with new ideals, less suffering, and more joy.”

Americans see ourselves as one nation, indivisible, under God, with liberty and justice for all. Yet, liberty and justice are not automatically attained. They have required—and still require—wisdom, vigilance, and active participation. America prides itself on being a nation of laws, with no one above the law. The American legal tradition has been enriched by the insights and the work of many American Jews.

In one of his essays, Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo—a devoted member of Shearith Israel--referred to a Talmudic passage which has been incorporated into our prayer book. It asks that the Almighty let His mercy prevail over strict justice. Justice Cardozo reminded us that the American system relies not only on justice—but on mercy. Mercy entails not merely an understanding of laws, but an understanding of the human predicament, of human nature, of the circumstances prevailing inhuman society. Another of our members, Federal Judge William Herlands, echoed this sentiment when he stated that Justice without Mercy—is just ice!

Our late rabbis Henry Pereira Mendes, David de Sola Pool and Louis C. Gerstein, were singularly devoted to social welfare, to religious education, to the land of Israel. They distinguished themselves for their devotion to Zionism, and played their parts in the remarkable unfolding of the State of Israel. They, along with so many American Jews, have keenly understood how much unites Israel and the United States—two beacons of democracy and idealism in a very troubled world.

These individuals—along with so many other American Jews—were exponents of the American ideals and the American dream. During the past 350 years, the American Jewish community has accomplished much and contributed valiantly to all aspects of American life. We have cherished our participation in American life. We have been free to practice our faith and teach our Torah. We have worked with Americans of other faiths and traditions to mold a better, stronger, more idealistic nation.

America today is not just a powerful and vast country. It is also an idea, a compelling idea that has a message for all people in all lands. As American Jews, we are committed to the ideals of freedom and equality, human dignity and security, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of harmony among ourselves and throughout the world. We have come far as a nation, but very much remains to be done. May God give us the strength and resolve to carry on, to work proudly as Jews to bring the American dream to many more generations of humanity.

I close with a prayer spoken by Mordecai Manuel Noah at the consecration of our second Mill Street Synagogue on April 17, 1818: “May we prove ever worthy of His blessing; may He look down from His heavenly abode, and send us peace and comfort; may He instill in our minds a love of country, of friends, and of all mankind. Be just, therefore, and fear not. That God who brought us out of the land of Egypt, who walked before us like ‘a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night,’ will never desert his people Israel.”