כִּ֤י אַתָּה֙ בָּ֣א אֶל־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־ה’ אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ נֹתֵ֣ן לָ֑ךְ לֹֽא־תִלְמַ֣ד לַעֲשׂ֔וֹת כְּתוֹעֲבֹ֖ת הַגּוֹיִ֥ם הָהֵֽם׃
When you enter the land that your God ‘ה is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. (Devarim 18.9)
מֶען טָאר זִיךְ נִישְׁט מְיַאֵשׁ זַיין – Men tor zich nisht m’ya’esh zayn “It is forbidden to despair.” – Rebbe Nahman of Bratslav
Once again in this week’s parashah the Torah reminds us, a propos to the new school year, not to copy our neighbors’, but to do our own, work. On this particular week the world has brought to us Jews and the Jew-adjacent more particular horror, even enervation, as we watch the Jewish state doing just that in the worst way: imitating the abhorrent practices of realpolitik, of engaging in international arms sales and domestic economic injustice, of making war and destroying the environment, of acting like a state like all other states.
Only eighty years ago, Jews had no state of our own; we suffered the diverse and mostly helpless fortunes of the homeless wanderer. And so when the utopian socialist movement in Europe asserted that each people deserved its own home and its own flag, the Jews of Europe perceived salvation within the workings of politics. On European political-philosophical terms, the state emerged: with a statement of independent existence, an anthem, and a flag.
From a Torah perspective, perhaps this was when things began to go wrong. Religious leaders who were opposed to Zionism warned that modern nation-states do not offer friendly grounding for applied ethics. Some sociological observers of the Israeli scene look to the progression of the kibbutz for insight: the kibbutz, a utopian socialist vision for living, required the absolute equality of each member. If one member received a gift of a radio, they could not keep it in their room unless every other member of the kibbutz also had a radio; if not, they would need to keep it in a common room so that everyone could share the benefit of the radio equally.
But in the course of one hundred years, Israel, originally part of a non-aligned group of nations, leaned toward Western identification and practice. And so the once proudly socialist nation began to adopt capitalist practices; income inequality began to grow, and the discernment of status by social class to increase. Finally, the dichotomy between founding philosophy and what seemed to actually be viable caused not only the kibbutzim (270 of them at the height of the movement) to shift from rural to urban, agricultural to industrial, and equal to stratified, national structures.
All this can be justified with commonplace ideas: one must go along to get along. A state must play the game of statehood according to rules established by all the states in their collective pratices. Finally, one arrives as the argument that states cannot be expected to live according to the ethics of their people; they must act according to a different set of rules.
In our parashat hashavua, the Torah’s urging in this context is jarring: “When you enter the land that your God ‘ה is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations.” And for we who are old enough to remember when Israel’s declaration of independence seemed an inspiring possibility of a better way of life for all humans, the state of today doesn’t feel very Jewish….except in the worst way, that evoked by extremists misquoting, misunderstanding, and manipulating our tradition and making a mockery of its ethics.
As Jews not living in the State of Israel, there is not much we can do to act upon our discomfort with the clash between our sense of hows Jews behave and how the State of Israel is behaving. True, we can support organizations both in the U.S. and in Israel which work toward justice, and that is important. But we must resist the practices of other nations in another way: in the West, we are conditioned to believe that we can, and should, act to change the world. The daily headlines that assault our psyches echo it: “who is about to destroy the world and what you can do about it” is a not uncommon approach.
But in Judaism we are taught to differently:
הוא היה אומר לא עליך המלאכה לגמור. ולא אתה בן חורין ליבטל ממנה. אם למדת תורה הרבה נותנים לך שכר הרבה. ונאמן הוא בעל מלאכתך שישלם לך שכר פעולתך. ודע מתן שכרן של צדיקים לעתיד לבא:
[Rabbi Tarfon] used to say: It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it; If you have studied much Torah, you shall be given much reward. Faithful is your employer to pay you the reward of your labor; And know that the grant of reward unto the righteous is in the age to come.
In the fourth week of what is traditionally a time devoted to finding nekhemta, consolation, we must turn away from the idea that we can change the world toward a more Jewish stance: we must envision the World To Come and act toward it. The difference is crucial, because rather than spend our days castigating ourselves for not being superhuman, we are able to focus at every moment on what we can do.
You can’t do it all; you must do what you can.
If you keep at your spiritual growth, it will pay off.
There will be results for your efforts.
You might not see them – and that’s okay.
Only when we are able to cling to the difference of this Jewish path will we be able to keep taking one step at a time in the footsteps of Rebbe Nakhman of Bratslav: “Jews! don’t despair!”
It is possible to live differently.
Despair is enervating. Don’t give in; listen to a podcast instead.
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 