If I Am Not For Myself...

This week’s Torah portion is VaYeshev. After years of wandering, and toiling for his father-in-law, Jacob is finally ready to settle down, and we have the opportunity to meet his offspring in earnest. We meet Joseph, a seventeen-year-old with a precarious place in the family. Within the first few verses of the parsha, we learn that he is a tattle-tale, and that in spite of his poor dynamic with his siblings, he is his father’s favorite. Joseph is sent on an errand to find his brothers, who were scheduled to be herding sheep in Shechem. Yet when he arrives in Shechem, they are nowhere to be found. He happens upon a mysterious man and inquires whether the stranger knows his brother’s whereabouts. The man replies, Nas’u mi-zeh, which could literally be translated as “they have departed from this.” In fact, many commentors on the Torah opine that the man is not only reporting to Joseph that his brothers have left Shechem; they have left behind all sense of brotherhood they might have felt toward Joseph. How did that feel for Joseph? How does it feel for us, when those whom we have trusted, relied upon, expected to be our refuge in times of trouble abandon us, are absent when we need them most? A number of my Jewish friends have shared painful stories of how friends, neighbors, co-workers, family members whom they considered to be allies have disappointed them in their responses, or lack thereof, following the atrocities of October 7. In many cases, it is not merely that expected outpourings of empathy and solidarity were not forthcoming, but that the pendulum has swung entirely in the opposite direction—our presumed allies may even be expressing that they understand Hamas’ actions, and seeking to justify them. Let me be clear—as I have said many times publicly, I believe it is appropriate to empathize with the people of Gaza and the horrific conditions under which they live, the result of years of mismanagement by Hamas authorities who use these civilians as pawns in their ongoing terrorist campaign. I believe it is appropriate to be vehemently against the corrupt Netanyahu government, and against the dangerous and misguided settler activity in the West bank that further exacerbates an already volatile situation. But it is possible to hold any or all of these sentiments and still find empathy for Israelis—and/or for the angst currently experienced by worldwide Jewry. Yet many of our “friends” are choosing not to allocate the space in their hearts and minds to do so. In some ways, we’ve moved beyond the phenomenon about which author Dara Horn warned: people don’t love dead Jews; they’re completely apathetic about it. In Pirke Avot, Rabbi Hillel teaches: Im ein ani li, mi li? U’cheshe’ani l’atzmi, mah ani? V’im lo achshav, eimatai? If you didn’t catch the Hebrew, I’ll break it down phrase-by-phrase as I elaborate. Im ein ani li, mi li? If I am not for myself, who will be for me? Through the silence of our neighbors, we are seeing that if nobody will align themselves with us, it is up to us to stand up and advocate for ourselves. We must be the ones to educate others about the atrocities of October 7. We must be the ones who impress upon the world community that it is important that Israel survive as a Jewish homeland and as a democratic state. We must be the ones who insist that in the next 75 years (and beyond) or Israel’s existence, she must live up to the promises enshrined in her Declaration of Independence including, but not limited to the vision that “it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.” And we must be the ones who stand up and demand that our lives, and the lives of our brothers and sisters in Israel, matter. On November 5, Paul Kessler attended a pro-Israel rally in Thousand Oaks, California. Participants clashed with a group of pro-Palestinian marchers. Kessler somehow lost his balance during the altercation, and fell and hit his head on the pavement. he later died of his injuries, and the incident was ruled a homicide. To my knowledge, this was the first (and thus far, only) death directly linked to demonstrations over the Israel/ Hamas conflict. I have heard not a word of empathy about the incident from anyone outside the Jewish community. Nor does the worldwide community seem to be empathetic to the fact that Israelis are still held in inhumane conditions in Gaza, that those hostages released have experienced horrific trauma that will haunt them for the remainder of their days, that the women attacked and murdered on October 7 were sexually assaulted in the most violent, deranged, and grotesque manner. We are left to be the voices of the victims of these crimes, to keep their names and their images within the public consciousness. U’che’she’ani l’atzmi, mah ani? Hillel goes on to ask: But if I am only for myself, what am I? I don’t think any of us want to spend our remaining days on this planet clinging to fear and mistrust. I don’t think we want to isolate ourselves in silos, or return to shtetl life, or otherwise separate ourselves from the rest of the world. So we have to find ways to hold others’ pain and grief along with our own. Most of us are familiar with the statement of Rev. Martin Niemholler, a Lutheran pastor who spoke in 1946 about his complicity with the Nazi rise to power in Germany. He said, “First they came for the socialist, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” Niemholler’s point, which has reverberated for over 75 years, is clear: we cannot rail against some forms of hatred, and turn a blind eye or deaf ear toward other. Many of the same nefarious forces that have contributed to the alarming rise in antisemitism are also fomenting Islamophobia, racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. Only by repudiating hate in ALL of its forms can we hope to build a society that embraces each individual for who they are, and celebrates what they believe, whom they love, and the complexities of their dreams and ideals. Where the man in our Torah portion tells Joseph that his brothers have departed from any sense of fellowship or harmony, we must run headlong toward it. I mourn for the loss of life in Israel and for Gazan civilians who have been killed or injured in this conflict. I mourn for Paul Kessler, and I mourn for 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, who was murdered in October in a hate crime perpetrated by his family’s landlord. I decry that there are Jewish students who have been abused by their fellow students and by the failures of their college administrators to provide safe environments, and I deplore the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont, and pray for their recovery. As the Instagram account Standing.Together.English has noted, empathy should not be seen as a zero-sum game. I think that’s what Rabbi Hillel understood all those years ago when he admonished us not to live our lives only for ourselves and our self-interest. V’Im lo achshav, eimatai? And if not now, when? Before I unpack what I personally believe that Rabbi Hillel was driving at with this last segment of his statement, and what I think we can take from it in modern times, I want to note that there is a group that has coopted this phrase for its own political use. The group IfNotNow seems on its surface to be well-intentioned; there is much in their platform (published in 2020) that echoes some of the sentiments I have expressed. However, I believe that they go too far in making false and inflammatory claims, such as suggesting that Israel is an apartheid state, that Gaza is occupied by Israel, or that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. I am happy to discuss these topics further and expand upon why I disagree with IfNotNow, but this is not the forum in which to do so. Rather, I read Hillel’s final statement as a broader call to activism. This is not a time to sit entrenched in apathy. This is not a time to be silent. We must take action, on our own behalf—as stated in the first part of Hillel’s statement, and on behalf of our friends and neighbors who are suffering—as expressed in the second part. It echoes one of Hillel’s other well-know teachings: Al tifrosh min ha-tzibbur, do not separate yourself from the community. Hillel lived in a time that, in many ways, was as fraught as our own. He witnessed the increasing oppression inflicted upon Israel by the Roman government and saw that Jewish life was beginning to shift. Indeed, shortly after his death the Temple would be destroyed, necessitating a tremendous shift in Jewish practice in order to ensure our people’s survival. His teaching can be seen as encouraging us to rise to the occasion and confront the challenges set before us. If you are a member of the C-U Jewish community, you’ve likely heard me or Rabbi Jody share another of Rabbi Hillel’s teachings recently as we were preparing for Chanukah. Hillel and Shammai famously had rival academies that differed on a number of ritual issues. One was how the Chanukah candles should be lit. The school of Shammai argued that we are emulating the miracle of the oil from the first Chanukah. As such, they said, we should fill our chanukiyah with eight candles on the first night, and subtract each night to show how the supply of oil dwindled over time. But Hillel’s school of thought, which ended up becoming the prevailing practice, taught that we begin with a single flame, and increase each evening of the festival. Ma’alin ba-kodesh v’ein moridin, we increase in holiness, and never decrease. Surely, this is a time when we desperately need to bring light and warmth and holiness into our world, and so Hillel’s methodology feels appropriate. But, I recently was alerted to a teaching by my teacher Rabbi David Ellenson, of blessed memory, who passed away earlier this week. Rabbi Ellenson notes that the school of Shammai justifies their position by having the flames on the chanukiyah correspond to the number of bullocks offered in sacrifice during the observance of Sukkot. In the Sukkot context, a dwindling number of bullocks is offered each day of the festival. Rabbi Ellenson writes, “The position put forth by Beit Shammai constitutes more than a ritualistic preference for the pattern established for appropriate sacrificial worship in the Temple during Sukkot. Rather, this stance reveals a philosophical position that ascribes a universalistic significance to Chanukah that is instructive for us today – the ‘bullocks of the festival’ were sacrificed during Sukkot for ‘the peace’ of all ’70 nations of the world.’ What might at first seem like the most particularistic of interpretations in a most particularistic story is, in fact, a subtle argument for the role of Chanukah in bringing peace to the world. [The school of Shammai teaches] us that even during Chanukah – when we celebrate the nationalistic victory of our ancestors over tyrants – we must focus on the responsibilities to all humankind that this miracle entails. Even as we rejoice in the triumph of the Hasmoneans, they remind us that we must be mindful of and share our blessings with the rest of the world. God needs to be realized through us, both within and beyond our community.” Let us strive to rise in holiness, but let us also strive to share our blessings—and our activism to build a better world—with others. If not now, then when?