What do we value? - YK am talk 5778 - page 1 of 13
What do we value?
Good morning, gut yuntif, and Shabbat shalom. It’s my privilege to join with you all today on this journey of introspection, this opportunity to stand together in the comfort of our community, while we take the deepest of looks at ourselves. Yom Kippur is the most individually-focused of Jewish holidays; this time designated for such intense individual work is unusual in a tradition in which we pretty much don’t do anything important by ourselves. As we each take the time today to examine who we’ve been, who we are, and who we’re hoping to be in the coming year, I’d also like to take this time for some communal self-reflection, to explore the question of how we define ourselves as Jews, in this time and place. Hopefully, a better understanding of what we share, of what brings us together, will help us to better understand ourselves.
So, how do we understand ourselves, as Jews? Many religious groups define themselves by their set of core beliefs, which are usually a shared philosophy about the Divine, and/or a belief in their tradition’s sacred texts. There’s really only one absolute Jewish belief about the Divine (I’ll talk more about that later on), and since it isn’t that you have to believe in God in order to live a Jewish life, it’s not quite as universally defining a characteristic as it is for many other religions. Also, we contemporary, non-Orthodox Jews have a somewhat unique relationship to our sacred texts - we don’t take those texts literally. For us, the Torah and the Tanakh - the stories of our people - are our narrative foundation, but having been written in such a different time and place, they don’t define how we live today. Those texts’ commandments (mitzvot in Hebrew) can be difficult if not impossible to apply to our lives; some are vague and open-ended, some contradictory, some completely irrelevant, and some feel so extreme, so wrong, that it seems like pushing our buttons about important issues in our lives can’t not be be their primary function. When you add all of that up, we can’t really say that our core beliefs are embodied by any one particular text or set of texts. There’s no such thing as a Jewish catechism.
For many contemporary Jews, the answer to the question of self-definition is that we are defined by our values - which is why the question on our website that was the prompt for this talk was“Which Jewish values are important to you?”The online Oxford English dictionary defines ‘values’ as “principles or standards of behavior; one's judgement of what is important in life.” In practice, values are the intangible ideals that groupsconsider to objectively define them, on which they base who they are and what they do. Curating a list of values is particularly important to a group like us, for whom the list of the principles that we hold to be important in is not definitively collated anywhere. Asking what our most important values are is a process that every Jew, and every group of Jews, should go through periodically, because that definitive list doesn’t exist. For those of us living Jewish lives, we probably feel like we know who we are and what’s important to us - but we might find that articulating those values is something of a challenge. Which is, of course, why I asked you this question.
So, what are the values that define us, and how do we identify them? And, what do we do with them, how do they manifest in our lives? One of the values that I most strongly identify with - something that I think most of you share with me - is the importance in our tradition of asking questions, of not accepting simple explanations for, or seemingly straightforward narratives about, anything. As I’ve spoken about many times, the beginning of our most sacred text, the Torah, embodies this value, by starting off with two different, seemingly contradictory versions of the story of creation. It’s difficult to read one story in which man is created after all other living things, and then another in which man is created before them, and not ask questions like ‘Is one of these stories the correct one? and Why are both stories in the text?’ Not only are the narratives throughout the Tanakh often confusing - I challenge you to accurately stage-direct when and where Moses goes during the encounter at Mt. Sinai, for example - but some of our most fundamental instructions are rather vague. Not working on the Sabbath, for example, sounds pretty straightforward - until you need to know whether or not something like lighting a match counts as work. Rarely are our sacred texts clear in meaning or easy to follow; their fundamental nature seems to encourage us to ask questions about them - which programs us to ask questions about nearly everything in our lives. I find this to be one of the Torah’s most fundamental teachings - that we should ask questions about everything.
One of the most commonly cited Jewish values is the emphasis on life, on what we do while living in this world, instead of focusing on what might happen to us after we die. In the Torah, this is a commandment, found in Deuteronomy 30:19, when God says to the Israelites “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse — therefore, choose life!” One of our members cited that verse as the Jewish value that they find most resonant in their life, at a moment when they’re wrestling with health issues. I believe that this value is so fundamental to who we are as a people that it’s embedded in our personalities. Jews often have a tendency to focus on, demand, and argue about the best of everything; I think that this is at least partly based on our recognition that we can only definitively know what we experience in this world - which makes us not want to waste our limited time here with anything mediocre (like bad pizza). We actually see it as our responsibility to notice and experience the wonderful things that we encounter in the world around us. As one of our members wrote on our website, “God works hard to ensure our planet and our heavens are in order for others to see, animals to live, bees to make honey, etc. Taking a moment from our busy lives helps us appreciate what we have.” I imagine that some of you are very familiar with the “choose life” Torah verse, while others might not know it as well. However, I’m guessing that many more of you can easily summon in your mind the song lyric “To Life,” as sung by Tevya; that many more of you are currently wearing, or at some point have worn, a “חי” (chai) charm as jewelry - חיbeing the two-letter word for life; or that at some point in your life you’ve said the phrase ‘לחיים’ (l’chayyim) - meaning ‘to life’ - as a toast over a drink. The value of life is so important in Judaism, that it manifests in countless moments in our day-to-day lives.
Life is actually so important in Judaism, that the Talmud tells us that nearly all of the Torah’s mitzvot can be transgressed, if a life would be put at risk by observing them. To phrase this in modern parlance, imagine that someone pointed a gun at your head, and said “Break this rule, or I shoot.” Well, according to tractate Sanhedrin 74a, you can break 610 of the Torah’s 613 commandments under these circumstances. As someone who wrote on our website said, “Life comes before anything else. When the subject of us offering our thoughts first came up, I did not have to think twice. What could be more important?” The three of the 613 mitzvot that you can’t break are prohibitions: the prohibition against premeditated murder, against sexual immorality (primarily rape), and against idolatry. These three unbreakable prohibitions express some of our most deeply held values. Murder and rape are both understood to be ways of physically imposing your will, permanently, on another person; we understand the idea of saying that your life is more valuable than someone else’s to be God’s decision - not ours. The prohibition against idolatry expresses the one core Jewish belief about God that I alluded to earlier: whatever you treat as Divine - whatever you pray to, express ultimate gratitude to, or ask for Divine assistance from - whatever that is for you, it cannot be tangible, and it cannot be another tradition’s deity. You don’t have to have an active relationship with the Divine in order to live a Jewish life; but if you do, that relationship can’t be with something physical, and it can’t be with a different ‘god.’ To Jews, God can’t be contained in any particular place, thing, body, or idea. That’s our most fundamental theological value.
The value that is probably most frequently expressed in prayer and in everyday speech is the value of shalom - wholeness and peace. Not only is shalom one of the most commonly repeated words in Jewish prayers, and used in the name of several of our most important prayers - it’s also the word we use to say hello and goodbye, and it's part of the way that we say “How are you?” in modern Hebrew (Israelis literally ask ‘How’s your shalom?’ when they greet each other). Shalom isn’t the peace of quiet and stillness, but rather the peace of feeling whole or complete. We learn this from the root of the word - the letters shin, lamed, and mem - which literally means ‘complete.’ Praying for and working towards wholeness - as opposed to brokenness - is a significant part of our lives, and a very highly held Jewish value. Repairing what’s broken in the world also has another name, which most of the folks who answered this question on our website talked about - Tikkun Olam.
Although it has had other meanings in the past, for many contemporary non-Orthodox Jews, Tikkun Olam has come to mean the responsibility to care for and to help others. One of the most popular encapsulations of this idea comes from Pirke Avot 1:14, when Rabbi Hillel says“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If am only for myself, who am I? And if not now, when?” The second part of that quotation, in particular, so clearly resonates with most of the folks who wrote on our website, that most of their responses sound like deliberate variations on the same theme. I’ve selected a few of them to share with you, highlighting how meaningful this value is to so many of us.
One person wrote “The most important Jewish value to me is the Jewish commitment to making the world a better place, including through acts of charity and acts in support of social justice and in ways both small and large… Most significant to me is that we as Jews don’t do these things because of the promise of some reward, whether in this life or the next; we do these things just because doing them is the right thing to do.” Another shared an idea of the preeminent Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, who said that what we need in the world is ‘A cohesion of mutual responsibility and mutual influence. We are not required to blur the boundaries among the factions, circles, and parties, but, rather to share the test of mutual responsibility.’ The person went on to say, “In other words, being a mentsch.” Someone else described one of their most important Jewish values as being “Doing the right thing in your personal and professional life.” A physician, this person said “Every day I meet new people, and try in my brief moments to get to know them not just as a patient but to know them as a person. I try to make them feel as comfortable as possible in a scary time.” Someone who converted to Judaism said “Many years ago, I came to the conclusion that the meaning of life comes from being here for each other. This has always been important to me… When I came to Judaism, these beliefs seemed to fit into the concept of tikun olam, because a big part of repairing the world is making it better for humans, and all living things, who inhabit it.” Another writer says, “The Jewish values I cherish most include Tikkum Olam, as well as the importance of family and education.” This person writes that when gathered together with their family for holiday meals both growing up, and as an adult with their own family, “We would speak of ways that we hoped to see the world heal, and overcome persecution, inequity and suffering…. I learned growing up that it is our duty as Jews (as a culture and a people who have suffered throughout history) to stand up to injustice and suffering and to speak out and try to work towards change. I have made this an important part of my own Jewish identity. I believe we are at a time in our history when we each can make a difference by practicing in our own ways the values of Tikkum Olam.”
To me, Tikkun Olam ultimately comes down to helping other people who need help, particularly those who are are underprivileged, disenfranchised, or simply not in a position to be able to help themselves. I think of this as the ultimate Jewish moral value, coming from the most frequently repeated moral instruction in all of the Hebrew Bible. No less than 36 times throughout the Torah, we are told to not oppress or mistreat the גר(ger) - the stranger or alien. The New Oxford American Dictionary’s definition of stranger is ‘a person entirely unaccustomed to a feeling, experience, or situation.’ My own definition is someone who lives in a place that is not where they come from, nor where they feel at home, nor where they are treated like an equal. You might be interested in knowing that there’s disagreement in the Talmud as to how often this commandment appears; in Bava Metzia 59b, Rabbi Eliezer says that he’s unsure whether it’s said 36 times or 46 times. Repeating a word or idea is how the Torah - which doesn’t use punctuation - conveys importance, so no matter how frequently this commandment is given, it’s clearly important.
Often, this commandment is accompanied by the explanatory phrase “Because you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Mitzrayim in Hebrew).” This second phrase clarifies for me how we’re supposed to understand the first one, and also how we should put it into practice. The Torah does not provide a great deal of detail about our ancestors’ lives when they were living in Egypt for over 400 years, but what is certain is that they lived in bondage - they were not free to live their lives in the manner of their own choosing. They were not treated as equals by the other people who lived where they lived, and they were not able to determine the course of their daily existence on their own. By the time the Pharaoh of the Moses story came to power (if not earlier), they were full-blown slaves, doing the physical labor that was forced upon them by their Egyptian masters. The memory of what escaping from that kind of bondage may have felt like is rekindled annually at Passover. The real challenge of that holiday is to maintain that memory throughout the rest of the year, to go about our lives while remembering that experience, and to do everything we can both so that we do not return to living under those circumstances, and also so that no one else has to live that way. This is not just about Passover, of course - that our ancestors were strangers who became enslaved in the land of Mitzrayim is our people’s foundational story. It is therefore our responsibility to fight for anyone who is not free. In terms of how we interact with and treat others, this is our most fundamental value. It is the lesson of the story of who we are as a people.
While the High Holidays are technically about individual self-assessment and behavioral adjustment, the changes that we seek to enact in ourselves for the coming year - both as individuals, and as a community - need to be based on and embody this most basic Jewish value. As the inheritors of this story of disenfranchisement and bondage - as the people who are repeatedly told to not mistreat the stranger - it is our communal responsibility to fight against, and to not be passive about, allowing other groups of people to experience the same fate as our ancestors. When we observe other groups living a life in which they are not treated fairly, or as equals, or are not empowered to live a life of self-determination, we as a people cannot allow that to stand.
The same principle, of course, applies to the lives of our own people. As one of our web site respondents wrote, “The history of Judaism is filled with prejudicial behavior against us. I never hold a grudge - I just never forget.” At this moment, when anti-Semitism is on the rise in the world around us, when Nazi slogans associated with the extermination of our people are being chanted in public by organized groups, we must stand up and fight for our own enfranchisement. We must speak out, we must educate others, we must come together and work together as a unified Jewish community, and we must be willing to represent Judaism and the Jewish people with pride, dignity, and strength. We must work together to eradicate the forces of anti-Semitism, the forces that would seek to return us to bondage. To paraphrase Rabbi Hillel, if we are not for ourselves, who will be for us?