Sukkot 5770

Embedded deep within the foundation of Judaism exists a tension – an anxiety wrought by an unresolved question that has been with us since our very beginning. Is our faith, our Judaism, universal or particular in its orientation? To put it another way, is our greatest concern as Jews the condition of our collective and shared humanity, or are we meant to focus on the particulars of our own peoplehood?

It is a riddle that extends all the way back to the creation of the world. Ever since the very beginning, one can find the chafing presence of both impulses, the universal and the particular. Think about it: what a strange people we are to have a calendar with not just one, but two, new years. For most other people, January is both the first month of the year and the beginning of the calendar year. We Jews alone have two – one for Jews and one for all of humanity. Rosh Hashanah, the first and second of Tishrei, marks the creation of the world. Hayom harat olam, “this day the world was created.” It was in the beginning of Tishrei that the first person – Adam – was created: not the first Jew, but the first human being, the ancestor of collective humanity. The other new year, in Nisan, commemorates the birth of the Jewish people, their redemption from Egypt and the beginning of their peoplehood. It was in Nisan that the kings of Israel had their coronations and festivals. Even today we are prohibited from reciting certain mournful prayers during Nisan. More than any other month, Nisan celebrates the peoplehood of Israel.

Alternatively, you need look no further than today’s festival, the festival of Sukkot, to see that this internal debate over Judaism as a universal or particular religion extends beyond the Bible into rabbinic literature. Every festival has a set of sacrifices, a different sacrifice for each day of the festival. The order of sacrifices codified by the Torah for Sukkot asks for a staggering total of 70 bullocks to be offered by the ancient Israelites over the course of the festival. The rabbis of the Talmud (Sukkot 55b) teach that these 70 bullocks represent the 70 nations of the world. In the rabbinic mind, Sukkot is meant to turn Israel’s attention to the community of nations. Unlike the inward-looking Days of Awe, Sukkot is meant to highlight Israel’s responsibility and message to the greater world.

Strikingly, elsewhere in rabbinic literature, these same 70 sacrifices are interpreted to make a very different, if not contrary, point. The 70 sacrifices are not evenly distributed, 10 per day of the festival. Nor as you might think, does the number of sacrifices increase every day. Rather, the Torah calls for 13 bullocks on the first day, 12 on the second day, and so on, one less each day, adding up to the total of 70. The rabbis construe the descending progression as a sign of God’s unique relationship to Israel. They compare the decreasing number of sacrifices to the case of a king who orders his servants to prepare a great banquet. The celebration goes on for days, but as the final day of the festivities arrives, the king turns to his beloved companion and says, “make for me a small meal – so that I may enjoy your company alone.” The point of this midrash seems to be the intimate relationship between God and Israel, and our singular status as God’s chosen people.

It is not an altogether theoretical question. This week I met with the heads of two social service organizations, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) – an international relief organization – and Avodah, a post-college Jewish Service Corps. Both organizations, in very different ways, understand their mission to extend within the Jewish community and beyond it. The JDC helps Jews around the world from Venezuela and Iran to Israel and the FSU, but also engages in a small percentage of projects that serve non-Jews. Avodah volunteers engage in work in the non-Jewish world, the very point being that Jewish service means service to the outside world. Is it good or bad that the mission of Jewish organizations is directed beyond the borders of the Jewish world? Does it make you feel proud or concerned to know that your Jewish philanthropic dollar may go to serve a non-Jew?

Are we inward or outward looking? It is a fascinating question, one that has always been with us, but has really come to the forefront over the last few hundred years, as Jews have become full participants in contemporary culture and society. For the first time, Jews have been concerned not only with their own condition, but with their role within the broader community. One of the most famous responses to this question was penned by Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, who in 1836 at the age of 28 years old, wrote a slim volume entitled The Nineteen Letters. Hirsch was a dynamic and charismatic speaker, teacher, and leader, who eventually went on to become the founder of Modern Orthodoxy. The letters document a fictional correspondence between Naftali, a young rabbi, and Benjamin, a youthful intellectual. Naftali seeks to explain to Benjamin how a modern Jew may remain steadfast in his or her commitments to both Judaism and modern society, in other words, to explain how one can embrace a very particularistic notion of Jewish identity and also embrace all the universalism of Enlightenment Europe.

Hirsch’s answer, still powerful today, is that it is not an either/or proposition. One does not have to choose between a particular and universal conception of Jewish identity. Hirsch coined the phrase “Israel-Mensch” as the ideal expression of a Jew. The Israel-Mensch is a Jew who serves humankind best by living as a Jew. To be an Israel-Mensch does not mean, as others argued, to be a Jew in the home and a secular citizen in the street. To be an Israel-Mensch means that you know how to apply the principles of your Jewish identity to the concerns of all of humanity. Neither Judaism nor humanity, Hirsch reasoned, is served by a Jew shedding his or her particular identity. Rather, humanity and Judaism are both enriched by the Jew who leverages his or her Jewishness towards the universal concerns of all of humankind.

The tragedy of the Jewish community today is that we have not internalized this notion of the Israel-Mensch. We find ourselves either entirely consumed with our own concerns or believing that we must shed our Jewishness, lest it interfere with the secular commitments we hold sacred. The philosopher Renan didn’t realize the truth he had hit upon when he wrote “He who is 100% British or 100% American or 100% Russian is only half a man – the universal part of his personality, equally essential to becoming human, is still unborn.” As Jews we walk a tightrope between our two identities, or more precisely, we believe that universalism and particularism are two sides of the same coin. This balancing act is perhaps best expressed at the intersection of Hillel’s two classic questions: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I?” The point is not one question or the other, but in their juxtaposition, in the breath that we take between the two.

To be part of the chosen people means that we are chosen to serve the world by means of expressing our Jewish faith. We are a chosen people, not because we are better than others, nor because we must stand on the sidelines. We are a chosen people because within us lies a unique and particular message and mission that cries out to all people. As Zwi Werblowsky, Professor Emeritus of Religion at the Hebrew University, advised, to be Jewish is to adopt a stance exhibiting a “commitment to humanity… an openness to the world and all men.” There is no greater credit to a particular religion, Judaism or other, than to place the needs of humanity at the forefront of its communal agenda. Over 100 years after Hirsch, Abraham Joshua Heschel reminded us that “no religion is an island,” we are all involved with one another. “A religious man,” Heschel wrote, “is a person who holds God and man in thought at one time, at all times, who suffers in himself harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. 289) Like the Sukkah itself, our Jewish communal institutions must be built in a way that provides shelter to the Jewish community, but always leaves open the ability to appreciate and express concern for the outside world.

My favorite story about Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch took place towards the end of his life. He was a deeply religious man, severe in his beliefs and punctilious in his observance, the father of German Orthodoxy if not Orthodoxy as a whole. The story is that at the end of his life, when already in frail health, Hirsch went to visit the Swiss Alps. Many people found this a strange and impulsive thing for such a learned rabbi to do. Wouldn’t it be more fitting for him in his the final days to turn his attention to the people and the Torah that had sustained him throughout? So his disciples asked why he was making such a trip. He responded, “I have a feeling that after I die, and I am called in before God, one of the questions that the Almighty will ask me is: So Shimshon, you lived so close to my Alps, did you ever get a chance to see them?”

As Jews, we are a community with concerns and needs unique to us that ultimately only we will protect. But there is also a bigger world in which we exist; and as Jews, we are obligated to appreciate its beauty, to serve its needs, and not be afraid of its occupying our agenda. This is what it means to be an Israel-Mensch, to serve humanity by serving Judaism, to serve Judaism by serving humanity. This is the key to our Jewish identity, the essence of who we are, and it is towards this bar that we strive, here today and every day of the Jewish year.