“Erroneous Autonomy” – Solidarity in Jewish Sources
Rabbi Jack Moline, Interfaith Alliance
First and foremost, thanks to the leadership of IPRCS for this invitation, to Cardinal Wuerl for his eloquent framing of our issues and to my long-time friend Fr. Clete Kiley for suggesting me for this opportunity. And many thanks to President Trumka for hosting us.
It is hard to know where to start this conversation from a Biblical perspective because, ironically, the human beings whose teachings best exemplify a sense of communal responsibility are those who stand in contradistinction to the communal standards of their day. From Abraham to Moses to Deborah to every single one of the prophets, the appeal to individual conscience appears to give a certain amount of credence to the libertarian claim that the community is best served by radical autonomy.
So please let me begin by making two general statements. I will not spend any time at all defending them, but I’d welcome discussion later if appropriate.
The first is this: the entire idea of rights, so central to this beloved country, is entirely unknown in the Bible and in the foundational teachings of what has become Judaism. Rather than declaring the expectations that an individual might have of God, of community or of life in general, our tradition emphasizes the responsibilities that each individual and the whole of the Jewish people have to God, to other human beings and to ourselves. While proclaiming the autonomy of every individual to choose his or her own path with every step in life, that autonomy is considered a fact rather than a right. The proper way to exercise that autonomy is, to borrow a phrase, to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. A just and merciful society will result in the guarantees that we Americans associate with unalienable rights.
The second statement is this: the earliest experiences of what came to be called Judaism had little or nothing to do with faithfulness, fidelity or personal integrity. Instead, from the time Joseph invited his family to Egypt until the revelation at Sinai, it was the collective experience of the Israelites, including their extended period of dehumanization as slaves to Pharaoh, which forged their identity.
Parenthetically, it is worth noting that other than the two brave midwives and Moses himself, no Israelite is named, has an individual identity in the Book of Exodus until the possibility of liberation is at hand. And yet, the early rabbis who read the prehistory of the giving of the Torah ascribed to those nameless slaves a sense of communal responsibility. Pharaoh, it was said, sought to demoralize the slaves by giving a light task to the young and strong and a heavy burden to the old and weak. But the Israelites compensated – those with a lighter burden would help those with a heavier one.
Let me point out that the midrash, the interpretive teaching, is not historical in nature, rather prescriptive in nature. Community cannot be formed when the individual is focused only on himself or herself.
I dare say that this sense of communal identity pervades almost every aspect of Jewish life. Our aforementioned obligations are a deep theological statement. After all, to be obligated to another, be it God or neighbor, means that there is a value that is greater than serving the self. Patrick Henry, who was not Jewish, just to be clear, famously proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death.” That rallying cry is echoed in the delineation of certain unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence fifteen months later.
But 1500 years earlier, Rabbi Abba ben Joseph bar Chama (Rava) declared the lesson of a story about Choni, the Jewish Rip van Winkle who awoke after sleeping for 70 years and died of loneliness when nobody remembered him. The rabbi proclaimed, “O chavruta o mituta,” which means, as you all know, “Give me community or give me death.”
That focus on community is repeated twice a day when traditional Jews recite the middle paragraph of the collection of Biblical readings called the Sh’ma. Everyone is familiar with the first paragraph – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.” It has climbed up the charts more than once.
But the second paragraph, taken from Deuteronomy a few chapters later, understands the collective mandate of such love:
13 So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul—14 then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. 15 I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied. 16 Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. 17 Then the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the Lord is giving you.
Of course, the rain won’t fall on my neighbor’s farm but not on mine if I neglect my responsibilities. Deuteronomy anticipates that loophole as well later in the articulation of the code:
19 When such a person hears the words of this oath and they invoke an exemption on themselves, thinking, “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way,” they will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry.
To this point, I have said little about the nature of such a community. Is it community for community’s sake? Are we asked to set aside personal satisfaction or gratification in the name of some undefined collective mandate? Of course not. From the moment Abraham argues with God on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah, it is clear that a cadre of just ten righteous individuals in a community of hundreds or more has saving power, while the collective selfishness of the crowd that forms at Lot’s door only hastens the coming destruction. Again, I will gladly fill out this mandate to a just and merciful community during our conversation if necessary.
Perhaps I can offer a brief illustration. When the community of Israelites stood to receive the Torah, the narrative reports that they stood at the foot of the mountain. In Hebrew, the word is tachtit, which can also be read as “under.” It led Rabbi Abdimi bar Chama bar Chasda to suggest that God held the mountain over their heads and said, essentially, “Accept the Torah, or I will bury you under this mountain.” In an early display of the Jewish survival instinct, the people answered, na’aseh v’nishma, “we will do and we will hearken.”
Rabbi Abba, who I mentioned earlier, understood that a coerced agreement could not be considered binding. So he sought out another verse, this one from the Book of Esther, which is remarkable among the inclusions of the Jewish Bible in that it contains no mention of God. In a late chapter, the Jews are presented with the instructions written down by their leader Mordecai – presumably including the Torah – and without the presence of God to intimidate them, kiblu v’kiy’mu, accept and uphold their obligations as a community.
Once again, I want to make clear that these 3rd-century scholars are not historical revisionists. Rather, they are emphasizing that free-will acceptance of the obligations of religious tradition are the key to a strong and desirable society.
I want to close by acknowledging the difficulty that I faced during my years as rabbi of a congregation persuading people that this ancient and consistent emphasis of our tradition was worth embracing as a philosophy of life. When the sun goes down on Friday evening, precious few modern Jews join me in my weekly disconnection from the business of making money and serving my own needs. The constant thrum of consumerism delivers a message of placing self ahead of community. Embracing a political philosophy that maximizes radical autonomy, like libertarianism, is a logical step in a society focused overwhelmingly on rights and vaguely on responsibilities. It is the community provided by a sense of peoplehood, a shared faith and the kind of solidarity that this building represents that is an essential path to a necessary balance.