The Greater Good

This past year, I had the opportunity to visit the Menachem Begin Museum in Jerusalem. In learning of Begin’s legacy, I was fascinated to discover that when asked to identify his greatest achievement, Begin did not mention the signing of the Camp David Peace Accords, the bombing of the Osirak-Iraqi nuclear reactor, his early life surviving the Soviet Gulag or even his being elected as Prime Minister. Rather, he reflected: “After my death I hope that I shall be remembered, above all, as someone who prevented civil war.”

In Begin’s mind, his enduring legacy was to be found not in the moments he dug in his feet, but in the instances when he insisted on suppressing his personal politics for a principle greater than himself, which for Begin was a unified Israel. Remember, in pre-state Israel, Begin’s Irgun often stood at odds with Ben Gurion’s Haganah, which Begin believed to be far too cooperative with the British. Yet even in the darkest hours, when Irgun-niks were being turned over to the British by the Haganah, a time referred to as “the hunting season,” Begin gave orders to his men to restrain themselves – Jews should never shed Jewish blood – ki yehudim anachnu, because we are Jews. In 1948, at the dawn of Israel’s independence, when Ben Gurion declared a state, there was genuine concern that Begin would launch a counter-revolution. Nobody believed Begin would submit to Ben Gurion’s authority, and yet it was exactly at that moment that the Irgun emerged from the underground with Begin declaring allegiance to the new government – what Begin called “our government.”

Most famously, a month later, in June of 1948, Begin informed those who had been his Zionist adversaries that arms were to be offloaded on the beach near Kfar Vitkin, north of Tel Aviv. Begin clashed with members of his own Irgun who wanted to keep the arms for themselves, but Begin insisted on the authority of the new Jewish government. He went aboard the ship, the Altalena, in an effort to cool the rising tempers. At that moment, the Palmach fired on the ship in the mistaken belief that Begin and his Irgun comrades were unloading the arms. Standing on the burning deck under fire, coated black from the acrid smoke, Begin yelled frantically to his men, “Don’t shoot back! Don’t open fire. No civil war.” Begin wept openly that night on the radio in a raspy voice affirming “long live the people of Israel.” In his autobiography, Begin would later reflect: “There are times when the choice is between tears or blood. Sometimes, as the rebellion against our [British] oppressors taught us, it is necessary for blood to prevail over tears; sometimes, as the Altalena taught us, it is necessary for tears to prevail over blood.” Decades would pass and there would be countless moments of victory and defeat in Begin’s career. But the moments which he remembered most, the ones he wanted to be remembered for, were this and perhaps other excruciatingly difficult moments, when he insisted that one principle rise above all others, above his own feelings – in order to serve the greater need of the hour.

Historians, but really all of us, tend to be disinclined to remember such moments, times when we have chosen tears over blood. We are conditioned to believe that heroism comes by way of unflinching adherence to principle, represented by the Gandhis, Martin Luther Kings and Rabbi Akivas of this world who exemplify King’s statement that “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”

And yet, this year, on this Yom Kippur, I am of the opinion that ours is an era calling for a different kind of heroism, a heroism that is sorely lacking in our discourse, from the world at large to the quiet of our homes. A heroism that Begin understood well – based on the conviction that sometimes, there is a good greater than one’s own, sometimes there is a principle at hand beyond one’s self-interest, and sometimes, to paraphrase Begin, you and I must shed tears today, in order that more tears and more blood will not be shed in the years to come.

When we arrive at synagogue on Yom Kippur, we are called upon to look both inward and outward in hope of identifying the fractures and fissures of our lives that are in desperate need of repair. If I had to identify the pathology of our present cultural moment, it would be our collective inability to draw on what Begin and countless other unsung historical figures understood, that at the critical moment one’s own truth must, on occasion, give way for a greater good. It is not in vogue; it doesn’t make headlines and it runs absolutely counter to our pervading combative culture of incivility. But if you look at the story lines, here in America, in the Middle East, within Israel, in our own families, then you will see that in each instance, the defect is one and the same. We have allowed petty self-interest to impede our ability to strive towards the greater good that beckons us.

In his classic work, Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud explained the root cause of cultures, nations or religions turning against each other, using the felicitous expression ‘the narcissism of minor differences.’ It is, he explained, owing to the utter vanity of a people or a person, who, due to their own ego and self-absorption, choose to inflate minor disagreements at the expense of potentially much greater relationships. Our passions and wrath, wrote Montaigne, focus on false and fantastical objects, never those things that are worthy of our attention. We do it all the time in counter-productive and self-destructive ways, insisting that we are acting in defense of principle. But the only thing we are really defending is our ego. We let a minor difference become an impediment eclipsing the totality of the relationship at hand. You may be familiar with the story of two of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, Mondrian and his friend and disciple Theo van Doesburg. Intellectual peers, artistic comrades, true friends, their split and separation came in 1924. Why? Because van Doesburg started to paint diagonal lines rather than the strict horizontal and vertical lines of Mondrian. Two visions – the Elementalism of van Doesburg and Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism – a difference in the angle of a line, a difference that neither man’s ego could overcome. (See A. Margalit, On Compromise)

We live in a time of cultural pugilism, where self-interest dominates the common interest, where dialogue has devolved into a contact sport. Remember, the reason the rabbis give for the destruction of the Second Temple was not geopolitics, not idolatry and not immorality, but the sin of sinat hinam, causeless hatred – the persistent human failing that allows minor differences of opinion to erupt into rancor and factionalism. As in the Dr. Seuss tale about the North-Going Zax and the South-Going Zax, we confront each other with a self-assured swagger, standing face to face, puffed up with pride, while the rest of the world builds around us as we stand unbudging in our tracks. We divide the world between us and them, fetishizing our principles and demonizing the other, while the temple around us collapses onto the idolatry of our own egos.

There is a story of two Chabadniks who are discussing the Jewish world. One says to the other, “You know, Goldstein, the whole world is divided between us and them – Chabadniks and non-Chabadniks – and there is no point speaking about them. And among us, the world is divided between Ashkenazim and Sephardim – and there is no use talking of the Sephardim. And among us Ashkenazim, there are the Zionists and the non-Zionists – and there is no point in talking about the non-Zionists. And among the Zionists, there are the intellectuals and the non-intellectuals – and there is no use to talking about the latter. And then among the intellectuals, there is just you and me. And Goldstein, we both know how little you know.”

At our own peril, we isolate the world into us and them, until we have nobody to speak to but ourselves. As Bill Bishop explains in his book The Big Sort, all across America, at every level, there is a dangerous clustering taking place, whereby people exist in their own feedback loop, Balkanized into like-minded communities and separated from each other. On every issue of the day, we have allowed the greater good to be sacrificed on the altars of our own egos.

Today, Yom Kippur, is the day that the healing must begin. Today we try to mend that which has been torn asunder. Today we expand the lens of our perception beyond what we would normally think possible and dream of the world we seek to create. We become bigger people and we seek to eradicate the malignancy that has metastasized throughout our culture. Today we seek to build a year of health – to see the bigger picture – the world we hope to create. Today we know the stakes are greater than any one of us.

As you may know, this fall our synagogue has extended hospitality and classroom space to Ramaz in the wake of their fire over the summer. There is a story told of the Ramaz himself, Rabbi Moshe Zevulun Margolis, who was studying one Friday afternoon right before Shabbat with his grandson-in-law, Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, when a disheveled woman knocked frantically on their door. In her hand was a bag with a chicken in it, and she explained that she believed the chicken to have an imperfection making it treif. She insisted that the rabbi check to see if it was kosher. The young Rabbi Lookstein examined the chicken and confirmed that indeed due to the nature of the blemish, the chicken was treif, not fit to eat. The crestfallen woman collected her chicken and began to leave, at which point the older rabbi asked her to wait a moment. He looked at the chicken, walked over to his bookshelf and with a dramatic flair pulled out a volume. He studied it for some time, replaced the volume, looked once more at the chicken and said, “I don’t like to overrule the young rabbi, but it seems I have found an subtlety of the law that he hadn’t considered. It is my studied opinion that indeed the chicken is kosher. The woman walked out. The door closed behind her and Rabbi Lookstein looked at his grandfather flabbergasted. He couldn’t understand what had happened; this one wasn’t close, the chicken was as treif as it comes. The Ramaz looked at his grandson and said: “Let me explain something to you. That was a poor woman. It is Friday afternoon, the shops are closed; that chicken is what she is serving her family for dinner tonight. If the chicken isn’t kosher, the family doesn’t eat. The chicken…is kosher.”

We all have principles – rules we live by. They are what make us who we are and we dare not become a caricature of Groucho Marx’s famous quip: “Those are my principles, if you don’t like them, I have others.” But in order for this world to exist and new ones to be created, we need to realize that none of us lives in a vacuum. Our own principles – religious, political and so on – exist in competition with others and sometimes, for society to exist, we have to find the greater good. The rabbis of the Talmud understood that in a legal tradition like ours, two principles would often find themselves at odds, and it would be incumbent upon us to decide between them. Most famously, pikuah nefesh, the requirement to save a life, is an imperative of such importance that even the laws of the Sabbath and Yom Kippur may – if not must – be broken in order to fulfill it. Also well known is the Talmudic discussion of how one should describe a bride on her wedding day. One rabbi, Shammai, says if she is pretty, call her pretty; if she is ugly, tell it like it is. Another rabbi, Hillel, taught that every bride is described as beautiful on her wedding day. For Hillel, truth gives way to a greater good. Not surprisingly, Hillel officiated at a lot more weddings than Shammai.

You will be surprised to discover that you actually already know the technical term for this principle at work. It is tikkun olam. I know, you think tikkun olam means social justice, repairing the world or political activism. In its contemporary usage that is what it has come to mean. But in the Talmud itself, tikkun olam refers to a very specific legal occurrence when adherence to one principle must give way towards the realization of a greater good. Two quick examples: We are told that one must always pay ransom to redeem captives – an important mitzvah, maybe the most important – but the Talmud says a community should never pay too much. Why? Owing to tikkun olam – because if we did, kidnappers would have an incentive to capture and demand ransom for even more people. Second example: it is well known that ancient Israel operated on a system of sabbatical release whereby debts were forgiven every seven years. Yet Hillel (the same rabbi who did all the weddings) did away with this institution – for the sake of tikkun olam – because the very poor who were supposed to be helped by the release of debts, were, de facto, no longer being lent money. I could give you a dozen more examples. In each case it is for reasons of tikkun olam that a law is modified or neutralized – for the sake of a greater concern. Which, if you stop to think about it, is a far more profound way to understand what it means to repair the world than merely doing a good deed. And incidentally, it is what today, Yom Kippur, is all about. After all, if the temple was destroyed for reasons of sinat hinam, causeless hatred, then wouldn’t it make sense that its repair comes by way of tikkun olam?

Today, we take a hard long look at all the institutions in which we are invested, our government, our places of work, our synagogue, but none more closely than our own families. If the holidays alert us to one thing, it is that in order for forgiveness to take place, we must see the forest from the trees, we dare not allow ourselves to latch onto any minor shortcoming at the expense of a greater relationship. Sadly, I see it all the time, families torn apart, relatives no longer speaking. More often than not at funerals, the rabbi’s office becomes a meeting place for family members who have long since stopped talking to each other. Sisters who because of a slight that nobody quite remembers can not bring themselves to speak to each other, who even at death, I have discovered, will not attend the other’s funeral. I was so struck a few weeks ago to read the story of Steve Jobs, that even when he was facing death, neither he nor his biological father was prepared to pick up the phone to call the other. Presumably a combination of pride, distrust and past hurt prevented father and son from speaking, an obstinacy that will now never be reconciled.

Yom Kippur reminds us that time is not on our side nor does it heal all wounds. An awareness of our own mortality is meant to serve as the activating agent towards reconciliation. A few weeks ago, I attended shivah in the home of a man who had recently lost a brother, leaving the surviving siblings deeply aware that they were the only ones left of their childhood family. Having buried one brother, the remaining brothers sat down, agreed that their relationship mattered more than any differences that may have once existed, and committed themselves to the heavy lifting ahead. It is not easy to turn a cold peace into a warm one, perhaps even harder than to reconcile with those with whom sharp differences have kept us apart. But this I promise you, on none of our gravestones will it be written, “In the end... he was right.” It will or will not say: Beloved Father, Brother, Sister, Daughter, Mother – these are the things that truly matter, these are the “greater goods” of Yom Kippur. As Yehuda Amichai, the poet laureate of Israel, wrote in his poem “The Place We Are Right”:

Self-certainty is not the soil out of which we grow, nor is it the means by which our relationships will be healed. Today our pride softens and we widen our capacity for forgiveness. This is, after all, exactly what we ask of God – to abound in kindness and compassion, to not dwell on any single failure, to judge us based on the expansive arc of our lives, if not to include the lives of those who preceded us. The gates of repentance may appear as small as the eye of the needle, but in the divine mind, they can be made large enough for all the wagons and carriages of the penitent to pass through. So too, today, we must let through those people seeking reconciliation and return. 

In the late summer of 1848, the Jewish community of Vilna was hit with a cholera epidemic of particular ferocity. Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, the rabbi of Vilna and dominant figure of nineteenth century Orthodoxy, threw himself into the city’s welfare, renting hospital quarters with 500 beds, ordering his students to nurse the sick. The effects of the cholera were wrenching – unlike anything anyone had ever known – thirst, dehydration, intense pain in the limbs and stomach. Reb Yisroel, known for his punctilious observance of the law, feared that the upcoming fast of Yom Kippur would further weaken people and make them susceptible to the fatal disease. In the weeks proceeding the fast day, he went so far as to hang placards throughout Vilna urging all those who felt weak to eat on the fast day to stave off the threat. Kol Nidre arrived, then the evening prayers and the morning prayers of Yom Kippur day, and Reb Yisroel saw that his pleas on behalf of public health were not being heeded by his weakened community. It was at this point, according to the accounts, at the conclusion of shaharit, in front of his entire community, that he did the most radical act of all, he rose to the bimah, publicly made Kiddush, drank and ate, so as to encourage all those in need to follow suit. It was a move not without controversy; following the holiday he was summoned before the rabbinical court of Vilna. But Reb Yisroel’s knowledge and piety were beyond reproach. He defended his actions: “I am not lenient in regard to Yom Kippur; rather I am stringent when it comes to the laws of preservation of life.” Reb Yisroel understood full well that there are times when one principle collides against another, and knew that his leadership would be defined by making a difficult choice in hopes of serving what he understood to be the needs of the hour.

Thank God, we are not living in a time of cholera and I have no plans to eat or drink. But we are living through a time of great challenge, with a cultural epidemic eating away at us all. Not just rabbis, but each and every one of us, has the means to address the pathology of the hour; we must draw on the quiet heroism within us all to contribute towards this healing, this tikkun, of our fractured world. If we can muster the courage to love each other as much as we love ourselves, if we can allow for the stakes to be higher than our own self interest, and if we can approach the relationships dearest to us with humility and a deep desire for reconciliation – we can, each one of us and all of us together, mend this world, mend our families and mend our very souls that are desperately seeking repair.