Rosh Hashanah 2025 Day 1
1. “Globalism”/Humane Globalization and “elitism”/meritocracy are under attack by left and right.
2. Jews in particular are associated with them and the attacks on them stink of antisemitism
3. They are responsible for outstanding benefits for worldwide humanity, and we should take pride in our association with them.
Anti-Globalists on the extreme right suspect the “internationalist/cosmopolitan Jew” of disloyalty to the state, and of orchestrating a grand and nefarious conspiracy to control the world in order to replace “real” Americans who rightfully belong. On the extreme left, there’s an assumption that Jews are a barely distinguishable subset of the “white Christian male” hegemony and are therefore complicit in the persecution of disadvantaged groups, of us being exploitative “colonists” who don’t respect “indigenous peoples.” A handy simplification; the radical right believes we don’t belong here and are scheming to replace them, and the radical left believes we don’t belong in Israel and wants to replace us there. From these
radical predominately white gentile perspectives, therefore, it turns out we don’t belong anywhere. What neither ideology seems to get is that all decent, well-meaning humans “belong” anywhere; everywhere.
We note in our prayers each time the shofar is sounded that RH commemorates the Creation of the world. Shimon ben Zoma (1st-2nd centuries) is known as a famous Talmudic rabbi. I think of him as a great thinker on politics and the human condition. He is best remembered in our tradition for prioritizing the ways in which the Biblical story of Creation can be interpreted to offer insights on politics and the human condition. Whenever he saw a crowd, Ben Zoma would recite 2 blessings. One of them was to recognize that each and everyone of us should realize that we are the center of the universe. In itself this isn’t really that surprising- well known Jewish maxim that “One who saves a life, it is as if he saved an entire world. (Indeed, in
an infinite universe every point is the center). It is Ben Zoma’s explanation which is intriguing: In contrast to Adam, the first person,
who had to personally create everything he had from scratch, Ben Zoma felt blessed to wake up and find himself in a bed in a domicile, have clothing, be able to go out and find food in the marketplace, etc. I don’t have to personally make or do all of it to enjoy any of it, just my part in it.”
The Creation story implies that the ultimate achievement of God’s creation was Adam; Eve, the first humans, but after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, they were forced to fend completely for themselves, “by the sweat of their brow.” Ben Zoma’s insight was that, by developing an ever expanding network of cooperative behavior, humanity could come close to rebuilding that garden. Each of us could be restored as the center of God’s universe.
Ben Zoma anticipated Milton Friedman by 1800 years. “There is not a single person in the world who can make this pencil, wood from Washington, graphite from S. America, rubber eraser from Africa, a process involving mining, steel making, and paint.” No one “did it/accomplished it” by themselves. To accomplish anything, you need a public road, or to have been taught as a child in school, or a phone system, or public utilities, or enforceable laws about private property, and so forth.
Who were the Radanim? Only the most important group of Jews that you never heard of! During the Early Middle Ages, Muslim polities of the Middle East and North Africa and Christian kingdoms of Europe often banned each other’s merchants from entering their ports. Pirates from both sides raided the ships of their rivals at will. The Radanim, or in English, Radhanites, as Jews, were able to serve as neutral go- betweens, keeping open the lines of communication and trade. By the 9th century we have what appears to be the first established network of trade spanning what becomes France and Spain in the west with China in the East. The Radanim established Jewish communities along the famous Silk Road trade route, including a thriving community with a large synagogue complex (built to accommodate 3000 worshippers!) in Kaifeng, China. This network grew out of centuries of development. Hundreds of years earlier, Jewish merchants very likely introduced paper to Europe and glass making to China. Later, they brought the numerical concept of zero from India, and appear to have been the first to use “letters of credit” so that large sums of money could be transferred over long distances without the risk of theft.
The Silk Road became a lynchpin in the development of multinational, multiethnic civilization. Over centuries, it developed into the rules based economic cooperation that today is scornfully derided as “Globalism.” Along with new products it brought the exchange of arts and ideas, provided livelihoods and helped to establish the idea of a common humanity. Globalization over the past 20 years has dramatically improved life expectancy, reduced infant mortality, increased literacy, and raised living standards (From 1990-2019 the share of the global population living below the poverty line decreased from 38 to 9 percent). Of course it’s not perfect, and we should strive to reduce inequities and make improvements, but the era of globalization is one of considerable progress and declining inequality. As Ben Zoma understood, it is by this system that our many daily needs are met. As it expands from local to international, it reinforces the conditions it needs – maintenance of peace, freedom of choice, inspired entrepreneurial imagination, and the encouragement of understanding and acceptance of differences.
A midrash on the creation of Adam teaches that the first person was not only created from the “dust of the earth,” but from dirt divinely imported from every corner of the globe. The purpose of going to this trouble, opines the midrash, is to remind us that any decent human should feel equally welcome anywhere. There are no indigenous people. All of us are from everywhere and everywhere we choose to be is where we deserve to belong. A globalist view of the world naturally embraces the freedom of movement among people and an openness to any of us settling virtually anywhere. Immigrants provide valuable labor and additional consumers, expand research and technology, and ultimately pay taxes to, I don’t know, support our cratering social security. Why would we purposefully limit ourselves? Why place contrived restrictions on who has a right to be where? I feel obliged to mention, just as we are offended by a “blood & soil” nationalism that privileges “legacy Americans” over new Americans, we should be wary of the demand of Palestinian nationalism that insists on sovereignty rights to a territory on the grounds that they lost a war they started/their grandparents were refugees from it. – It would be off-topic to dwell on this issue here. Among nationalisms, which are always suspect, Zionism deserves special consideration due to the uniquely enduring and lethal nature of antisemitism. Suffice to say, just imagine a thought experiment: if Jewish groups launched decades of violence against every place we’ve been refugees from in an effort to carve out independent Jewish states, or “bi-national” states, or whatever in all these various countries. What would be the result of that? Going global is an expression of twin human superpowers: One is the ability to survive, often thrive, just about anywhere, within a dramatically larger range than almost any other creature. We can make boots and coats and build shelters. We can digest an incredible array of plants and other animals, and preserve & store supplies as needed. We can dream of one day inhabiting the stars. The other is our unparalleled ability to network. From the moment our most ancient ancestors discovered that no one takes down a woolly mammoth alone, it takes a team of mutually accountable hunters working together, we’ve understood the imperative of building ever enlarging networks. Unlike anthills and beehives, our collaboration doesn’t require the nullification of the individual self. Indeed, striving and growing with others is what endows us with a sense of self. The largest troop of primates ever documented was a horde of mandrills in Gabon, numbering a bit over 1000 members. From a human perspective, cute, but that’s pretty unimpressive actually. We can organize ourselves into countries of hundreds of millions, China and India each have populations of over a billion. Globalist trade harnesses the cooperation of virtually the entire planet. That’s the world we humans have made, a literal “Tikkun Olam.” We should be proud to have taken an important part in making it. We should join Ben Zoma in reciting a blessing of gratitude over it. And let us say, Amen.
Rosh Hashanah Day 2
The RH theme this year is “Globalism” and “Elitism.” Yesterday, I
spoke about how, though antisemites tar Jews as “globalists,”
Globalization is actually a good thing and we should be proud to
have it as a Jewish value. Today we’ll talk about “Elitism,” –
“Elitist,” like “globalist” is coded for “Jew” by antisemites. It’s a
disparaging term, an elitist is a member of an exclusionary group
that holds power based on inherited status, wealth, or privilege.
I’m using the term only because its detractors use it to target an
ideology that, when unrestrained by other ethical considerations,
can lead to an entrenched, self-perpetuating elite. That ideology,
more neutrally, is called, “meritocracy.” Given appropriate
guardrails, merit, like Globalization, is more just and promises
greater abundance, then its right and leftwing alternatives.
Even critics would agree, Globalization’s handmaiden is
meritocracy. Rewarding merit, from whatever its source, is
precisely what Globalization’s nemesis, economic protectionism,
whether it emanates from the right or the left, cannot abide.
Yesterday, I recounted a blessing the 1st century Jewish sage,
Ben Zoma, would recite over the benefits of human networking
productivity, which ultimately becomes ways in which all
humanity, globally, works together. In that same Talmudic story,
we learn that that blessing was one of 2 that Ben Zoma would say
whenever he saw a crowd of people. The other blessing he would
recite was an acknowledgment that every human being is a
vessel of impenetrable secrets. In a context of a crowd, Ben
Zoma’s blessing recognizes that we can never really know
another person’s soul. Regardless, life with others demands that
we make judgments, however limited and faulty about them.
Perhaps a religion that’s solely concerned with the individual’s
relationship to God can afford to not judge one another, but our
tradition places our relationship with God in the context of
community, and there’s no community without its members
making judgments. The objective is to be as fair as possible in
forming our judgments. That is why we must prioritize not who a
person is, but the difference they make. Who they may be inside,
we can’t really get at, but what they do matters and that is subject
to the judgment of others.
Rewarding and penalizing on the basis of what we do, as
opposed to who we are, is the essence of meritocracy. It’s
important to recognize a limitation of merit is that it recognizes
real world impact, not potential. Since potential can be and often
is stymied by racism, sexism, or favoritism of various sorts,
unfettered meritocracy over time may end in the injustice of
deserving individuals finding themselves unfairly thwarted or
locked out of success, whereas others might be disproportionately
advantaged by nature, nurture or sheer luck. The key is to strike
the right balance between rewarding on the basis of merit while
simultaneously adjusting for the fact that everyone does not share
the same starting point or obstacles along the way. In the context
of modern politics, merit is contested on the extremes of both
sides by the claim that group status is more salient than individual
achievement. On the alt-right, it finds expression in the ambition
to secure and perpetrate the dominance of white Christians and
on the radical left by the need to bolster and protect groups
perceived as being historically disadvantaged or especially
vulnerable. Merit, by definition, is focused on the individual,
whereas its political rivals lament its failure to flatter their favored
groups. Herein lies a conundrum.
We human beings ceaselessly find ways to organize ourselves
into groups. What happens to “merit” should we begin to notice
that some collections or categories, that is “groups,” of us accrue
significantly better or worse outcomes in a meritocratic system?
It’s undeniably cringeworthy to admit it, but meritocracy has been
good for the Jews. By two standard measures of success,
educational achievement and economic prosperity, Jews, over
many decades, way out of proportion to our numbers in the US,
dramatically have outperformed other groups. Perhaps most
notably we outperform (cringe!) white Gentiles. I can’t account for
this, I refuse to venture a guess, and I admit to a profound sense
of relief that various East Asian groups perform as well or better
than we do, thank God for that.
An irritating problem with this is your annoying friend or relative
who never tires of sending you an email about all those Jewish
noble prize winners there are (“in the sciences!”). A scary problem
with it is antisemitism. Provided we stick to evaluating individuals
on a meritocratic scale, no worries! But as we drift further into
assigning more weight to whatever social group those individuals
are part of, disproportionate success demands an explanation.
The antisemite has one ready: Jewish conspiracy! “We make it to
the top because we secretly control the levers of power, or we’ve
managed to fool white Christians into a social order that magically
lifts us on top” and so on.
Look, group comparisons that reveal unequal outcomes,
particularly when certain minorities outperform the socially
dominant group, are always going to collapse into conspiracy
theory, racism, dubious claims about cultural superiority, or
spacious complaints about how the “system is rigged,” or
whatever. By remaining steadfast in our commitment to
meritocracy, and insisting that we be measured by what we do or
don’t do, our individual merits, we may avoid all this ugliness.
Never mind that adjudicating on the basis of merit is fair by
definition anyway, and is certainly better for society as a whole
than the alternatives of crony capitalism or the soft bigotry of low
expectations.
And committed to meritocracy we are, at least according to our
Jewish tradition, and we extend this mindset all the way to our
spiritual endeavors. We are all familiar with the observation that
Jewish culture prioritizes actions, called “mitzvot” over acceptance
– called “faith” in Christianity and “submission” in Islam. To
paraphrase Abraham Joshua Heschel, “The Jew is asked to take
not a leap of faith, but a leap of action.” Throughout the Talmud
and Midrash, we are exhorted to try and struggle, perhaps most
famously, even if we never “complete the task,” if there’s an
element of blind faith, it’s the conviction that hard work and effort
will somehow prove to be enough.
The Talmud famously imagines what it is like to have left this
world and to face ultimate judgment at heaven’s gate. According
to our sages, the entrance interview consists of a series of
questions. The very first question we’ll be asked is, “Did you
pursue your business affairs with “Emunah,” which is understood
to mean “with integrity and dependability” but literally means “with
confidence” – confidence that how we conduct our affairs, and not
relying on who we happen to be, is what gets us into heaven.
(Btw, the Talmud lists half a dozen required for entry questions,
regrettably “Did you show up in shul for RH YK” is not one of
them).
Astonishingly, in regards to merit, our rabbis rebelled against the
Bible itself. Deeply uncomfortable with the plain sense of the
biblical text that God chose Abraham arbitrarily, “just because,”
they emphasized that Abraham actually had to “earn” God’s favor,
through the passing of tests, or smashing his father’s idols, etc.
the principle “test” among them being the Sacrifice of Isaac, which
we just read. But the Bible has more of this: Moses gets
appointed without explanation, so we invent a story about him
being a doting shepherd. David is chosen to rule because God
“peered into his heart,” an entire chapter before he has a chance
to prove himself by defeating Goliath. We, the Jewish people, are
so embarrassed by God’s impropriety in designating us “God’s
chosen people” for no apparent reason, that we’ve churned out
libraries of books seeking to explain it away.
So committed are we to merit that we insisted on inventing this
holiday. We say on RH God has opened 3 books: one for
completely wicked people, one for completely righteous people,
and one for those in the middle (i.e. virtually all of us). The
completely righteous people are immediately inscribed and sealed
for life; the completely wicked people are immediately inscribed
and sealed for death. Those in the middle (pretty much everyone)
have their judgment suspended until Yom Kippur. If they merit it,
they are written for life; if not, they are written for death.” (RH16b)
regarding the judgment process that occurs on the High Holidays.
Maimonides explains what this “merit” consists of.
Teshuvah/Repentance. (Hil.Tesh. 3:3). Teshuvah is the Jewish
ticket price to enter the spiritual elite. What is teshuvah, after all?
Reflection & acknowledgement, followed by self-criticism & regret,
followed by change and the resolve to do better. That’s the
opposite of being judged on the basis of who you are in a social
hierarchy, or what you’re “owed” by historical circumstances.
There’s a Jewish resistance to jettisoning standards equally
available to all, in favor of a focus on who you are, who you know,
or any other special regard one might feel race, gender, or
nationality are entitled. That resistance is called “merit.” It’s the
basis of teshuvah, and teshuvah is the basis of Rosh Hashanah.
RHYK Yom Kippur sermons for 2025
Kol Nidre:
Kol Nidre, which we just completed, is thought of as the prayer
that garners the most participation of any other act of jewish
worship. That’s odd, not the least because it isn’t a prayer. The
whole thing doesn’t even mention God, or voice a petition to God,
or praise or express gratitude to God. So what is it?
We don’t know much about the origins of Kol Nidre. It dates from
around the 8th century and was likely composed in Babylonia
(present day Iraq). It seems to have been met with rabbinic
opposition from its very beginning. Over the centuries, rabbis
have tried alternatively to abolish it or rewrite it, to no avail. The
last major attempt to end its recitation was in the mid-19th century
by the early Reform rabbis, whose own adherents stubbornly
demanded it be reinstated. It was also a centerpiece of antisemitic
propaganda; as early as a public condemnation in Paris in the
year 1240, followed by attacks on it throughout the Middle Ages
and early modern periods, and as recently as being featured in a
children’s textbook in Nazi, Germany.
Despite all this, the ritual not only persists, it seems to occupy the
pinnacle of our communal spiritual expression.
The entirety of Kol Nidre is a declaration that our vows are to be
rendered non-binding, null & void.
Although not itself a prayer, this need to nullify our vows has its
roots in prayer. Ironically, it is an antidote to a kind of prayer. The
most primitive non-idolatrous prayer known to our tradition is vow
making in a moment of desperation. Think of the soldier in the
foxhole desperately vowing this or that if only they manage to
survive the battle. The Bible regards this with deadly seriousness.
It is considered among the gravest of sins to vow and
subsequently not fulfill one’s vow. One story, in the Book of
Judges, goes so far as to suggest a vow made rashly and
carelessly worded could result in the obligation to sacrifice one’s
own child. The antidote is Kol Nidre, the annulment of the vows.
According to the Bible, under limited circumstances, it is possible
to formally nullify a vow so that it doesn’t have to be fulfilled. As
Jewish notions of prayer evolved, vowing was generally
discouraged and the mechanism for ritually nullifying ill
considered vows expanded. It is rare today for a religious Jew to
make vow. As you know, we have no such thing as wedding vows
or new years vows and the like. In fact, when we say anything
that could be construed as implying a commitment, many are
quick to utter, “ Blee nedder,” “but without a vow” lest any ordinary
plan be misconstrued as having triggered the ancient vow
creating process.
Even the lightest touch of a vow or oath feels contaminating and
dangerous. The deep, primal need persists to rid ourselves of any
such clinging hindrance. Feeling saddled by having “vowed”
renders us incapable of being liberated to enter our holiest day
unencumbered and pure.
The 2nd century Sage, Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta, gave a
startling teaching. Our souls do not reside with us. In the view of
this rabbi, our souls are always vouchsafed with God. In
exchange, God has vouchsafed God’s Torah with us. The rabbi
explained by way of analogy. It’s as if one farmer had a vineyard
in Judah, but lived in the Galilee, whereas another farmer had a
vineyard in the Galilee but lived in Judah. The one proposed to
the other, “Why commute back and forth all the time? You
cultivate my vineyard and I shall watch over yours.” Thus, God
has deposited the Torah with us and, in turn, we count on God to
safeguard our souls.
According to this teaching, the Jew is one who lives alienated
from his own soul, for God has it. In exchange we have
responsibility for the Torah. Though the human soul is for us an
impenetrable mystery, the Torah is ours to study, debate and
implement. Famously, we occasionally even disagree with God
about God’s Torah. After all, it is here and God is there. We know
what the Torah must mean in order for it to continue to make
sense in our world, we trust that God will make meaning of our
souls in his.
Kol Nidre is not a prayer. In it we make no request nor do we
directly address God in any way.
The Torah is focused not on the soul, but on the body. On action.
On what we do and what we do not do. The inner life goes mostly
unmentioned in the Torah. By the action of making a vow, our
bodies put our souls in jeopardy. But by invoking the Torah’s
mechanism for the annulment of vows, Kol Nidre empowers us to
alert God, “We, at a distance, have diffused any threat we may
have inadvertently posed here to our souls vouchsafed there.”
The rest is out of our hands, and we leave it in God’s.
Yom Kippur Day:
Rabbi Israel Salanter (19th century), considered to be the founder
of the Musar movement reflected, “When I was a young man, I
wanted to change the world. But I found it difficult to change the
world, so I tried to change my country. When I found I couldn’t
change my country, I began to focus on my community. However,
I discovered that I couldn’t change the community, and so as I
grew older, I attempted to change my family. Now that I’ve
become old, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, but
I’ve further come to recognize that if long ago I had begun with
myself, then I could have made an impact on my family. And, my
family and I could have made an impact on our community. And
that, in turn, could have changed the country and we could all
indeed have changed the world.”
The perspective of Torah on individual, family, community and
nation aligns exactly with Rabbi Salanter’s lesson. It starts with an
individual, Abraham, and his family, it becomes a community, Am
Yisrael, and ultimately we envision making a positive difference
for the entire world.
On RH, I tried to make the case that a 1st century rabbinic sage,
Ben Zoma, provides us with a profound insight that resonates
today: we are each of us an individual of impenetrable mystery
and at the same time we are embedded in a vast socioeconomic
network that elevates each of us- Ben Zoma thought of it as a
world in which every interconnected human can feel as though
that world was created just for them.
Today I’m trying to take this insight a step further. The Jewish
philosophy of individual & community can serve as a model, or
proposal, for how individual relationships can be made to extend
beyond a collection of individuals into becoming a community,
where the sum is greater than its parts. We call this type of
community an “am,” or “people,” as in “Am Yisrael,” or “people of
Israel.” Part of what I want to say is that we’ve had centuries of
distraction over the concept of a “chosen people.” I want to tweak
that formulation. It directs attention to the wrong spot. I believe it’s
not so much that the Jews are God’s chosen people. More
importantly, God chose the Jews to become a people. In theory,
any group could become “a people.” That’s what makes the idea
a potential model for humanity.
A feature of human experience, reflected in the biblical text as a
problem, is that we humans organize ourselves as couples, which
leads to families which leads to clans, tribes, nations and so forth.
The biblical issue with this is that families themselves are all too
often dysfunctional. More specifically, the family structure flows
vertically (literally naturally), across generations, but horizontally,
across siblings and to cousins, and then to more distant cousins,
not so much. According to the Bible, the world’s first sibling
relationship, Cain and Abel’s, ends in fratricide. Subsequent
sibling relationships, such as Jacob and Esau, or Joseph and his
brothers, seem to fare not much better. The biblical narrative
implies, however, that we managed to figure it out. We grow from
Abraham and Sarah to the sons of Jacob, who become the tribes
of Israel. An extended family goes down to Egypt, but a full
fledged “people,” an “Am Yisrael” emerge from Egypt.
This is different in striking aspects than how we at least imagine
nations are formed. Outside the Bible, in the real world,
something like this happens: On one side there’s a sea or
something, on the other side there’s a mountain range or
something, the people in between share a language and evolve
customs. They establish borders. Voila, they are a nation. The
mythos of the US is inspiring in its own way, but it is also peculiar.
Here we have the idea of a great diversity of disparate people all
converging on the same land in the so-called “new world.”
Cynically, we all came in order to make a buck. More
idealistically, we’ve done so to build together a multiethnic
democracy holding out the political promises of liberty, equality
and dignity for all.
The mythos of biblical Israel is fundamentally different from these.
Our national identity was formed in bondage, in a state of exile
from our ancestral homeland. Our constitution was revealed
during a period of a generation in a wilderness or desert, a place
unfit for continuous human habitation. Instead of being made up
of strangers all in search of prosperity as in the US, we have the
idea that we’re all somehow related- distant cousins, all with a
common ancestor in Jacob, Leah and Rachel, engaged in robust
debate over what our prosperity might look like.
Even today, being in Israel can feel very different than being in
America, precisely along these lines. Israelis have the same
respect for a stranger as you have for your little brother or sister-
that is, almost none at all. This can be deeply frustrating for
American Jews in Israel. We count on “respecting the stranger.”
That’s why we feel guilty cutting in line, or why we are comfortable
with a sales clerk greeting us with a cheerful “Welcome to
Macy’s!,” even though we know she’s just being paid to say that.
In Israel, it’s different. They’ll literally push you out of their way to
get a seat on the bus, just like your sibling might. But there’s a
crucial upside. They’ll also throw themselves on a bomb to protect
you, they love you, just like a sibling would.
So, we have a biblical story of being formed as a people in an
unusual way, plus an enduring cultural legacy of
brother/sisterhood. This allows broad space for disagreement. No
matter how much we argue, we have remained family. Btw, an
additional feature of our national identity is that, despite the core
idea of biological relationship, unlike similar arrangements such
as a Native American tribe, with us, a stranger with no prior
relationship whatsoever may join as a full fledged member, via a
conversion process. It’s as if we’re all siblings, with some of us
born into the family, some of us adopted by it, and sometimes all
of us annoyed by it.
Alas, the Bible tells the tale but doesn’t elaborate on the
mechanics of how it happens. How can an ever widening circle of
humans continue to see one another as siblings, or at least
distant cousins, even if the circle gets exceedingly wide and
diffuse? For that we need our rabbis.
The Talmud, noting interesting features of our laws and certain
biblical passages, posits a concept called, “Areivut.” As in the
expression, “All Israel, Kol Yisrael, arevim zeh la zeh.” The word
“arevim” comes from the Hebrew root “eyain-resh-bet,” which
means “to be mixed together.” There’s a Talmudic debate over
whether in the phrase “All Israel is mixed together,” the emphasis
is on the mixing of our fates into a shared destiny or on the mixing
of our responsibilities such that each of us is ultimately liable for
one another. The plural form of our prayers is an artifact of this –
even if most of us as individuals didn’t do the sins we lament on
Yom Kippur, some individuals did. By praying in the plural, we
recognize that all of us share the burden wrought by those who
personally committed the act.
The Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism, explained
the point isn’t to saddle ourselves with collective guilt. In addition
to creating a context of mutual responsibility, Areivut gives us a
more complete picture of who we are as distinct individuals. He
taught, “It would not be suitable for the human to be a detached
individual, for one cannot apprehend one’s own defects. Only by
observing the behavior which one dislikes in another, are we able
to see our own defects as in a mirror.” It works in the positive just
as well, when we realize that we admire that to which we might
aspire. Areivut is a mirror for one’s humanity.
The principle of “Kol Yisrael…” is also the foundation of the
common practice of one person, such as the Chazzan, leading
services or saying Kiddush or lighting a ritual candle on behalf of
others who simply acknowledge the act by saying, “Amen.” We all
individually have the mitzvah, or commandment to do, but it
counts as if we’ve each done it because of Areivut- our personal
responsibilities have been “mixed” together as a communal
responsibility.
The rabbis likened Areivut to signing on as a pledge in a business
arrangement. If a borrower defaults, their “arev” is on the hook to
pay the balance. When the borrower succeeds, the investors
share in the rewards. The rabbis compare the challenge of the
ever widening circle of ever more distant guarantors to a person
trying to hold aloft both ends of a long, straight rope- a person can
hold only one end, a series of partners is needed to hold up the
rest. Those partners are arevim, and we are each of us an arev to
each and every other. Areivut is a type of social contract. It
conceptually binds individuals together, long after the experience
of being bound together through kinship has been left behind in a
distant, mythic past, or even if once shared ideals have become
less relevant or even controversial. I believe that Areivut is what
sets an “am” as in “Am Yisrael” apart from a “nation” (the Hebrew
term for nation is “goy.”) Through the mechanism of Areivut, we
become an “Am Yisrael.” Not so much a “chosen people,” but a
group “chosen to be a people.”
A people, or “Am,” for its own sake may offer the way but it
doesn’t on its own give the destination. Our rabbis note that, just
as we have matured from Abraham and Sarah to become a
people, an “Am Yisrael,” our relationship to God, the embodiment
of our most cherished ideals, has also evolved. At the Exodus,
God rescues us, and in the desert feeds us mannah, as a small
child might be protected and nurtured by a parent. At Sinai, God
bequeaths us the Torah, just as an adult child learns to assume
responsibility for a worldview as a substitute for blind obedience.
Ultimately, says a midrash, the roles seem to reverse, and the
child becomes like a parent, caring and advocating for the ancient
God we’ve always known. The prophetic verse, Isaiah chapter 51,
verse 4 which this is based on, in God’s voice demands , “Listen
up my people, my people….” The second word for “my people” is
spelled with an aleph instead of an aiyen, and the written text has
no vowels. This allows the pronunciation to be changed from
“Listen, my people (“Le-am”) to “Le-Aim,” “Listen, my mother….”
And what is the remainder of this verse, in which God calls us
God’s mother? It is the most famous and stirring of all the biblical
verses, for “My Torah,” says God, shall be a light unto the
nations.” But the text in this verse doesn’t use the familiar, “Or Le-
goyim,” Instead it says “Or ammim,” the destined illumination will
be not for mere “nations” but for “peoples.”
Choosing to be a people contrasts sharply with the alternatives. It
is not the “blood & soil” nationalism which privileges “legacy”
Americans and marginalizes other Americans from the embrace
of belonging. Nor is it the flavorless America of autonomous
individuals bound together only by the transactional culture of the
marketplace, or held together by the frail adhesive of political
norms. Areivut is less limiting than shared bloodlines and more
encompassing than shared ideals. It is a third way of
understanding the relationship between individuals and society.
Perhaps America should also choose to become a people.