The explanation is found in Mishnah Brachot: "A man must recite a benediction for evil, just as he recites a benediction for good. For it is said: And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. [Deut. 6:5] 'With all your heart'--with your two wills, with your will to good and your will to evil."
The letter vet is repeated to represent the dual promptings of our hearts--the one toward good, the other toward evil. The rabbinic exegesis is striking because it does not tell us to expunge the prompting toward evil. This is not possible. Instead we are told that we are to love God with the prompting toward evil as well as with the prompting toward good.
If we are to love God we must accept responsibility for that in us which would do evil. Of course, we deny that any of our actions would weigh heavily enough on the scales to qualify as evil. When we think of evil, images of Auschwitz come to mind. But evil is seldom so dramatic or cataclysmic.
The evil we do is prosaic and, for the most part, goes unnoticed. I refer to the ordinary evil we commit with our tongues; lashon hara has become the lingua franca of our age. Politicians disparage their opponents with impunity; journalists delight in embarrassing public figures by exhuming their private sexual lives; television talk shows exult in exploiting the wounds of the psychologically distressed.
But if verbal dehumanization continues unchecked, it becomes prelude to much worse. To verbally dehumanize others is to push them outside the parameters of the human family. Once we do that we cease to care about them and their suffering. Black women in need of public assistance become "welfare queens." Women seeking respect and legitimate rights are called "feminazis." And, unfortunately, we Jews are also culpable. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir called Palestinians "vermin." After a terrorist attack it is not uncommon for Jewish leaders to characterize Palestinians as "animals." And many see a direct connection between the verbal abuse heaped on Prime Minister Rabin and his murder.
The most pressing issue facing the Jewish community today is that Jews do not talk to each other with respect, caring, and spiritual intelligence. Before we offer solutions to others, we must restore civility and respect among ourselves.
We cannot be a light unto the nations if we do not first light the way for each other.
I accept that dare. There is such an agenda. The overwhelming majority of American Jews advocate continuation of the welfare state. Jews have consistently voted for liberal candidates who have supported the federally-funded safety net for the poor. This has been the lament of the Jewish neo-conservatives, who admit ruefully that "Jews make money like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans."
Indeed, Jews are the only group of haves in America who vote consistently with the have-nots. Concern for the poor and the stranger is a core value of Judaism. We were commanded in the Bible to open our hearts to the oppressed and to remember that we were once slaves in the land of Egypt. Our tradition has bred into us the principle that the entire community has a responsibility to care for the poor. In talmudic times, and thereafter, individuals were taxed so that the community could provide wayfarers with lodgings, medical care, and other services. Maimonides ruled that the highest degree of charity is to help the poor become self-sufficient. But he insisted that at no point could we engage in the experiment of letting the poor go hungry on the assumption that to do so would force them to find work. The Talmud judges a community which does not protect the unfortunate as "a castaway city," an unworthy place that has removed itself from God.
The Jewish majority keeps voting for the safety net for another reason. From long historical experience, we know that when the poor become desperate, they turn to violence, often directed against Jews, who have been made the scapegoat. Jews do not expect such things to happen in the United States, but we are never totally sure.
The major thrust of our domestic agenda must be to oppose the dismantling of the welfare state. Yes, changes are necessary and urgent, but the call to "mend" the system should not be a smoke screen for the unstated objective of lowering taxes so that the rich may get richer. Our principles and historical experience command us to take a stand against this hurtful and hard-hearted assault on the have-nots.
We Jews are a bit over two percent of the American population--and this percentage is inexorably declining as a result of a low-replacement birth rate and a sky-high rate of intermarriage. How can anyone take seriously "our" agenda? It's true that we are an affluent community containing a disproportion of wealthy activists who buy "access" to politicians in office. But what exactly does this "access" buy us? On only one issue--the survival of the State of Israel--does it have any noteworthy effect. That is because this is an issue that politicians respect as a legitimate Jewish interest--a respect made all the easier in that it rarely conflicts with all the other interests that politicians must also respect.
Aside from this one issue, the political and social action of the large Jewish organizations really consists of declamations in an echo chamber. The liberal agenda these organizations subscribe to exists independently of anything Jews say or do. By echoing this agenda, the same organizations suffer from the illusion that they are exercising influence of some kind. The truth is that if Jewish organizations simply kept mum on this agenda for a year or two, no one in the "real world" would notice.
The same is true, it goes without saying, for those much smaller Jewish groups who subscribe to a conservative agenda. Their aim, actually, is to influence the thinking of Jews, not the thinking of our political leaders. As a neo-conservative, I approve of the goal but am very skeptical of an educational effort of this kind.
The American Jewish community today is becoming more polarized. The Orthodox are growing, without benefit of political manifestos. Their birth rate is higher, their intermarriage rate lower. Though only ten percent of the nominally Jewish population, they account for at least twenty percent of synagogue-affiliated Jews who attend with some regularity; a couple of decades from now, they may account for forty percent or more.
Meanwhile the major Jewish organizations keep trying to position themselves to be on "the cutting edge" of contemporary liberalism, wrestling with issues posed by radical feminists and militant "gays." Such issues become vehicles for assimilation, not survival. All the while, the division within the Jewish community keeps growing at an alarming rate.
As the issue of "Jewish survival" in America becomes even more prominent, there has been a shift in emphasis within the Jewish community--even among Reform Jews--toward emphasizing the importance of Jewish education. But this shift in emphasis has not been paralleled by a corresponding shift in resources, or even by a consideration of what we mean by "Jewish education." A serious approach to this issue should certainly be high on any Jewish agenda. It is easily the most important issue facing the American Jewish community today.
Aha, but how shall we define that interest? There's the enduring rub.
One part of our agenda, the easy part (to define, not always to execute), is to remain vigilant on the church-state front. No element of America's basic constitutional understanding has meant more to America's Jews than the wall of separation between state and church.
Another part has to do with matters of immediate relevance to Jewish welfare--for example, the welcome this nation offers to new immigrants.
But the larger and more contentious part has to do with the health of American society. That is an item on the Jewish agenda for a variety of reasons, and those reasons must regularly be repeated lest we lose sight of them and retreat into a shriveled enclave of self-concern.
First, in so heterogeneous and interdependent a society as ours, there are no "protected" enclaves. All America's groups and communities depend on the preservation of this nation's freedoms, on its citizens' sense of responsibility, on the health of its economy, on one another's sense of well-being.
Second, a community turned wholly inward rapidly becomes a boring community, one that will offend and ultimately repel its own best and brightest.
Finally, and above all, our tradition calls us to a larger arena, to broader concerns.
In the immediate future, what are the principal items of broader concern? There is the continuing scandal of a racial problem that gnaws away at the lives of millions of our neighbors and at the nation's morale. There is the emerging problem of class, as the gap between our wealthiest citizens and our poorest continues to grow--or, as some now predict, stabilizes at roughly present levels. This disparity is so great that, even if simple equity considerations were not at issue, it is bound to generate grave social and political tensions, ripe for demagogic exploitation. Among the likely responses to the gap should be a dramatic increase in the effort to restore the power of labor unions, which will pose a special challenge to us, given, on the one hand, historic Jewish support for and involvement in American trade unionism and, on the other, our disproportionate current involvement in management.
In addition, new developments in biology and biotechnology challenge our ethical competence well beyond anything humankind has ever experienced. (Hello, Dolly.) It is inconceivable that a great faith tradition will have nothing to say about our society's response to such questions.
There is no shortage, nor will there ever be, of work for us to be doing.
Today, one in five American children live in single-parent families, one in four live in poverty, and one in ten teenage girls will become pregnant. In fact, the U.S. is number one in the percentage of children growing up in single-parent families. Our basic social institutions responsible for the upbringing and education of the young have grown increasingly dysfunctional. As a result, the ongoing interactive processes that function as the engines of psychological growth are interrupted and the cognitive, social, emotional, and moral development of our children are undermined. Four times as many Americans are in prison than in other developed countries, and the homicide rate in the United States involving women and youth is ten times as high. These statistics go beyond the working poor; they encompass the middle classes and even those at the top of our society.
In my judgment, the current state of children and families represents the greatest domestic problem our nation has faced since the founding of the Republic. Our top priority, therefore, must be to reverse the trend toward societal chaos by enriching the environments in which we live, learn, work, and worship. Synagogues can play an important restorative role by providing for child care facilities and parenting programs, developing curricula of caring, and organizing community service programs that enable our youth to help people in need.
On a broader scale, we need to expand national opportunities such as Head Start, community colleges, and affirmative action. Such programs can release untapped potential for human development. This cannot happen as long as the dominant priority in Washington is to reduce the federal budget without regard to its consequences for the well-being of children and families. In the final analysis, however, we need to transform the environments that shape human development, even if it means actively challenging the prevailing forms of social organizations, belief systems, and life-styles in our culture.
If we Jews remain true to our traditions and history, we must rise to confront the destructive social changes that now threaten the whole of our society as well as our most cherished religious and cultural beliefs.
But times have changed. For the first time in decades, the Jewish poor face the real possibility of being without resources to meet their basic needs. Moreover, the institutions providing services to them have sustained reductions in public aid over the past few years and face the prospect of further funding cutbacks of 20-30%. If our two federal health insurance programs, Medicaid and Medicare, are significantly cut, many of these institutions may not be able to serve this population. Given that community and private philanthropic dollars constitute about 10% or less of most of these agencies' budgets, it is highly unlikely that the Jewish community will be able to generate enough continued support to make up the difference.
Soon a new class of vulnerable individuals will be stripped of the basic assistance provided by the federally-funded Food Stamp program and Supplementary Security Income (SSI), the cash assistance program to the disabled and elderly poor. A large number of Jewish refugees and legal immigrants, many of whom have resided in the U.S. for decades, will no longer be able to obtain relief through these programs; moreover, they face possible denial of Medicaid assistance if their states elect to refuse them support. And if we are unable to persuade federal, state, and local governments not to turn their backs on those in need, many elderly people who reside in assisted housing and/or nursing homes and do not have alternative sources of income are likely to face destitution.
Reversing the diminution of public support for the most vulnerable in our society will require a concerted effort by the organized Jewish community to reorder its current priorities. Otherwise, the most pressing domestic need facing the nation as a whole and the American Jewish community in particular will go largely unattended.
Reform in ActionThe Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC) in Washington, DC represents more than one million Reform Jews and 1,800 Reform rabbis in 860-plus congregations throughout North America. These are the RAC's top legislative priorities for the current 105th session of Congress:Religious Liberties: The RAC is working to defeat efforts to limit individual religious freedom and/or to blur the boundaries between religion and government. Continuing as co-chair of the Coalition to Preserve Religious Liberty, the RAC will vehemently oppose initiatives to pass a so-called "religious equality" amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Economic Justice: The RAC supports efforts to address and ameliorate some of the most harmful provisions of the new omnibus "welfare reform" bill, which gives much of the authority over the administration of the welfare system, previously held by the federal government, to the states. Health Care: While universal health care remains its ultimate goal, the RAC supports proposals for incremental reforms that expand health care availability to uninsured and underinsured populations, particularly the nation's ten million uninsured children. Gay and Lesbian Rights: If the legislation is reintroduced, the RAC will support passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which outlaws workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Environmental Protection: The RAC supports reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Responsibility Compensation and Liability Act, and opposes initiatives decrease funding for preservation programs or eliminating enviornmental regulations. Civil Rights: The RAC opposes efforts to dismantle affirmative action programs. At the federal level, it opposes anti-affirmative action legislation. At the state level, the RAC is working to defeat initiatives such as California's Proposition 209, which bars both "discrimination" and "preferential treatment" based on race, gender, or ethnic origin in state hiring, contracts, and college admissions. |
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