A Time to Speak

Long before present day political divides, first century rabbinic society was divided into two separate houses: the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. As I mentioned over the High Holidays, their disputes ranged from matters ritual, ethical, and theological to the truly mundane. One such debate, apropos of this week’s festival of Sukkot, revolved around the question of whether a person sitting in a sukkah, but dining upon a table that extends outside of the sukkah, has fulfilled the obligation of “dwelling in the sukkah.” Shammai says no, Hillel says yes. On this, and in nearly every debate, it is the voice of the House of Hillel that prevails, a winning track record that helps explain Hillel’s dominance in the naming of institutions of Jewish campus life.

Over the past week, I have found myself returning again and again to one of the lesser-known debates between Hillel and Shammai – the curious question of whether it would have been better for humankind not to have been created. The House of Shammai argues that it would have been better had humanity not been created, while the house of Hillel holds that it is better that humanity was created. At stake, the commentators explain, is a fundamental question regarding human nature and sin. To be alive, reasons the House of Shammai, means that one is doomed to a constant tug-of-war against the gravitational pull of sin. It is a battle won by some and lost by others – a heavy burden to bear. It would be better, reasons Shammai, in agreement with the fourth chapter of this festival’s book of Ecclesiastes, never to have been born at all, for that person (or non-person) has never had to battle sin, give in to sin, or find themselves deficient in the eyes of God and humanity.

Hillel, as always, reasons otherwise. What a gift it is to be born into this world! Every second we are alive – every moment – is an opportunity, an opportunity to do good, to fulfill a mitzvah, and to heed God’s word. Were we not to have been born, our non-existence would be a denial of humanity’s right to do right, to prove our worth, and fulfill God’s will.

Bubbling beneath the debate are two very different assessments of the human condition. For Shammai, people are prone to sin, inclined toward evil, and best judged unsympathetically. For Hillel, people are good deeds waiting to happen. They should be judged generously and kindly and given the benefit of the doubt.

There are many remarkable things about this debate, not the least of which is how a two-thousand-year-old conversation mirrors the conversations we have all been having this past week. The debate is remarkable because it lasted a nearly unprecedented two and a half years. The debate is remarkable because it was so contentious that it ultimately had to be brought to a vote – a highly unusual procedural move for the legislative house of the Rabbis.

Before I reveal who won the debate, let’s call for a floor vote!
• All those who side with Shammai – that it is only a matter of time before our true and worst selves are revealed – raise your hands!
• All those who side with Hillel – that we are all good deeds in waiting and that we should all presume positive intent of each other – raise your hands!
• All those who want to delay the vote for a week, raise your hands.

I will, I promise, tell you who won the original debate, and all of us will have to wait a few more days before knowing how things will shake out in our own time. But before the reveal, I ask your permission to share a few reflections on the proceedings of the past few weeks, proceedings that were still unfolding even as I pressed print for my remarks this morning.

First and foremost, let’s all agree that none of us in this room know the whole truth as to what did or didn’t happen decades ago in a suburb of Washington, DC. We all lack the full picture and objective facts, so a bit of humility is in order on everyone’s part. The narratives that we each hold in our heart to be true are, at best, truths arrived at by way of our own experiences, our own perspectives, and perhaps our own politics. We should all do our best, as the tradition advises, to consider what we’ve seen and heard as dispassionately as we can.

Second, to all those who have asked me, or each other, how one can be damned for a lifetime for a youthful indiscretion, lack of judgment, or even crime; to all those who have emailed me articles explaining that a person’s frontal lobe and thus capacity for moral judgement is not actually developed until their twenties; to all those who have insisted that all of us are more than the worst thing we have done: I say to you that such comments, though they all have their time and place, must be preceded in both sequence and moral priority by a truth more fundamental, namely an acknowledgement that the physical and psychological traumas held by victims of rape and sexual assault are traumas that can last a lifetime. The enduring suffering of assault cannot be rinsed away with the same ease as the conscience of the perpetrators who would seek premature moral absolution for their misdeeds of yesteryear. There can be zero tolerance – zero – for even a whiff of a “boys will be boys” mentality. Our words, our role modeling, our familial, communal, and moral expectations for our boys, for our girls, for each other, and for the world must distinguish right from wrong, must make clear that any sexual act lacking consent by both parties is wrong, and must be guided by the same premise as all of Jewish ethics, namely the infinite dignity to be accorded to every human being created in the divine image.

Third, I would remind you of the infinite value our tradition places on a person’s good name. Ours is an age in which the gifts of technology and social media can be misused with instant and permanent damage to the most prized possession any of us possess – our reputations. Investigative journalists must be supported in their critically important work of turning a spotlight on those individuals who by way of their misdeeds have diminished another’s humanity. Not just public servants but all of us should vigorously and unambiguously speak out and hold people who have committed wrongful acts accountable. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Workplaces must have protocols in place whereby claims of harassment – sexual and otherwise – can be reported, investigated, and prosecuted without fear of recourse. You can be proud that this synagogue, your synagogue, is well on the way toward having such protocols, training procedures, and reporting mechanisms in place for our staff and lay leadership. These measures and so much more I believe in and am committed to establishing. But I also believe what the Talmud teaches: that one who slanders another is guilty of performing an unspeakable evil. I believe that there is a difference between being rude and stupid and being criminal. I don’t need to look to the news; there are members of our own community whose good names have been damaged, some beyond repair, by accusations that have ultimately been proven false. No mechanism, no support, no channel should be denied a person who is reporting a misdeed, small or large, committed against him or her. We must err on the side of giving victims more – not less – support, more – not fewer – lines of communication. We know, after all, that for every experience of sexual violence reported, an exponentially larger number of crimes are never shared. We must commit to establishing these channels in an immediate and ongoing manner. So too we must commit to making sure that these channels are established in a way that does not cause harm to those individuals who are not proven guilty and whose good name, no different than your own, deserves to be maintained unless proven otherwise.

I thought long and hard before sharing my thoughts today. Those of you who keep a scorecard on such things know that this is the first time I have ever broached the subject of #MeToo. It is a minefield for about eight million reasons, not the least of which is that events are unfolding in real time right before our eyes, Ultimately, I decided to speak because I believe that a synagogue should be a place where we have the courage to wrestle with the moral issues of the day even when, if not especially when, there are no easy answers. We must model the manner in which a community should have these conversations. Simply put, I began to feel that my avoidance of the subject had become a dereliction of my duty as a rabbi – as your rabbi. Besides, if there is a religious tradition that has what to say about sin, transgression, free will, reputation, culpability, the measure of true repentance, the ethics of forgiveness, and beyond, it is Judaism. To continue avoiding the subject would be a betrayal not just of my leadership responsibility, but of an incredibly rich tradition that has wise things to say about the very questions that we are all grappling with right now.

And so back to where we began: Who won the dispute between Hillel and Shammai on whether humanity should or should not have been created? You may be surprised to hear that unlike the majority of the nearly 300 other debates between the two sages, in this debate the opinion of Shammai carried the day. It would have been better for humanity not to have been created, and thus not to slip, fail, and fall short of God’s will again and again and again. None of us, as I shared on the High Holidays, are without blemish. We are all deeply imperfect, and while I hope none of us are guilty of the sort of offenses being discussed during these disorienting times, it is our struggle against sin that signals our shared human condition.

All of which brings us to the most remarkable thing about the debate between Hillel and Shammai, which is not the length of the debate, the fact of the vote, or even that Shammai won. The most remarkable thing about the debate is the coda offered at the end. It would have been better, Hillel and Shammai concur, for humanity not to have been created. But that said, the passage continues, we were created. Both sides agree that given the unfortunate fact of human existence, given the inevitability of human failing, let each person search their past and repent in full for their misdeeds. So too, the passage concludes, let each person be vigilant in their behavior moving forward. We are all capable of being more than we would otherwise believe ourselves to be, than we have proven in the past to be. In other words, our tradition teaches that more important than the unsurprising fact of human failing is the belief that each one of us must take agency and ownership of our past misdeeds, that each one of us must be committed to a life of self-reflection and self-improvement, and that we must also allow for others to change their ways. Our entry into and exit from this world may indeed be against our will, but our actions within this world are, with some effort, within our control. Most importantly, the tradition seems to be signaling that the first step in addressing the toxic culture of our time is for each one of us to make sure that we are living up to the very ideals we expect from others.

Personal agency, self-awareness, sincere contrition, continued self-correction – our public discourse is in desperate need of these and other values – values that are to be found in the literature that is our inheritance to claim. The moral conundrums of our age are unfolding in real time. We are living through history; we will look back at this time as a pivot point of self-understanding. To everything, wrote Ecclesiastes, there is a season, including a time to speak and a time to be silent. The time to speak has come. We cannot dodge any longer. Cautiously and patiently, let us model what it means to grapple with the issues of the day, leaning into our tradition, drawing from its wisdom, and letting it guide us in the uncertain days ahead.