"If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?"
(Ethics of the Fathers 1:14)
“It is about ‘Us’, not ‘Me’; about ‘We’, not ‘I’”
(Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Morality, 1)
A defining feature of Rabbi Sacks’ thought is the careful balancing of personal responsibility and the common good. He is conscious of how too great an emphasis on the individual can lead to anarchy and amplifying the collective might lead to tyranny and oppression. Citing a conversation with the writer Paul Johnson, he saw in Judaism a successful example of managing the delicate balance between giving equal weight to individual and collective responsibility. Probably the clearest example of this careful balancing is in his The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations.
However, In his final book, Morality, Rabbi Sacks makes the case for the need to shift from a society focused on the ‘I’ towards one which embraces the ‘We.’ “We need to recover the sense of all-of-us-together” is the core message of the book and he argues that only a shared morality will overcome the ills of the current modern condition. As the subtitle of the book, ‘restoring the common good in divided times’, implies, the scales are tipped more heavily towards a collective mindset.
Moreover, at the conclusion of the book, Rabbi Sacks draws his ideas together around his favourite theme of covenant. In contrast to contracts, which are entered into with the primary objective of gaining an advantage, covenants represent moral obligations that are upheld through unwavering loyalty and faithfulness, irrespective of the potential for personal sacrifice. “They are about you and I coming together to form a ‘We’.”
One might get the impression from the above that covenants and the collective mindset are always and inherently good, and ‘when I embrace a world larger than the self’ things will inevitably improve. However, as we know all too well, history is littered with murderous and tyrannical regimes that engendered a deep sense of collective belonging in their citizens who were willing to transcend their selfish interest for the ‘common good.’ In this week’s essay I want to dig a bit deeper to understand a conceptual framework that supports a notion of collective responsibility but which doesn’t ignore its potential dangers.
As one of the cardinal sins of Judaism, the laws governing idolatry are understandably strict. A person who is found guilty of serving idols is sentenced to death by stoning, the harshest of the four death penalties. It is therefore surprising how if an idolator lives in a city where the majority of inhabitants serve idols and they fulfil the requirements of a ‘condemned city,’ then his death penalty is reduced to the less painful punishment of decapitation. Why would an increase and spread of idolatry lead to a reduction in the severity of the punishment?
In his explanation, the Rebbe determines that the ‘condemned city,’ discussed in this week’s parshah, is not a collective of individual idolators, but rather an entirely transformed entity which transcends the individuality of its inhabitants and which becomes a community of sin. It is not that the individual’s punishment has been changed but rather that there is no longer an individual to punish any more.
This also helps explain another peculiarity in the laws governing a ‘condemned city,’ where as a result of the majority of the city’s inhabitants serving idolatry there is a collective punishment against even the innocent dwellers of the city including the livestock and all material possessions. Why should innocent children be punished for the sins of their parents? To make legal sense of this, we must conclude that upon qualification as a ‘condemned city’ it ceases to be, legally, a group comprised of individuals, and becomes instead one unity, one entity:
“This is why the punishment for an idolatrous city is so extensive, applying even to innocent members of idol-worshipping families (unless they fled to another city), and to the property of the righteous minority. For although individually they may be blameless, they are nonetheless a part of the whole, the community which is judged as if it were a single entity.”1
How is such a degree of unity achieved? How can someone’s individuality be erased and subsumed into one collective unit?
One of the defining chapters of Tanya explains how the Jewish people possess a unique capacity for unity, an essential oneness, due to the divine origin of their souls. Their souls emanate from G‑d, the embodiment of ultimate Unity. In his book on Jewish unity, One People?: Traditon, Modernity, and Jewish Unity, Rabbi Sacks elaborates:
“The theme of peoplehood…could be taken in different directions. One of these lay in the mysticism of the group of Hasidim known as Lubavitch or Chabad. Its first leader or rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Lyady (1745-1813), had developed the mystical implications of the command ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ In the physical domain there was division; in the spirit there was unity. Jews were distinct as bodies, but they had a collective soul. ‘Your neighbour’ was, in this sense, ‘yourself’. Jews were therefore bound by a mutual love that underlay the apparently confrontational commands to rebuke the wrongdoer and hate evil. Jewish unity was a counterpart of, and embraced by, the unity of G-d.”2
It is this unity which finds its expression in the law of an idolatrous city where the singular identity of the community generates a collective accountability that is so robust that it extends its reach to encompass even the city's property.
That idolatry can manifest a sense of oneness may seem paradoxical, given that it is the antithesis of G‑d's will and unity. However, the Jewish soul possesses limitless free will, enabling a Jew to deviate from their true nature and engage in acts such as idolatry and denial of faith. Despite this grave transgression, the special character of the Jewish soul and its inherent oneness are still evident. This highlights the profound spiritual potential of the Jewish soul and its capacity for both great heights and depths.
(As we had reason to discuss previously in my essay on parshat Balak about the story of Zimri and Pinchas, ‘To be chosen is to be given the ability to choose.’ Just as G-d Himself is not bound by any of the natural laws which he established, so too a Jew when they tap into their most core and essential identity as a Jew is not bound by any restrictions, and can cross over the natural boundaries which even G-d Himself has set.)
Jewish unity is thus a potent and profound idea, and regardless of the virtue of its unifying factor, will always reflect the unity of G-d. Our task is to ensure that the communities we build channel that unity towards the common good.
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M. M. Schneerson, J. Sacks (trans.) (2000), Torah Studies: Discourses of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Kehot: Brooklyn, NY), 308.
J. Sacks (1993), One People?: Tradition, Modernity, and Jewish Unity (Littman: London), 74.
Interesting to think about squaring this with Sacks' assertion in The Home We Build Together that the bible includes "insistence on the non-negotiable dignity of the individual" due to Btzelem Elohim. Why is it that oneness in sin can override the 'non-negotiable' quality of individual dignity? Perhaps it suggests that the notion of dignity Sacks invokes is slightly different to the one we'd expect of him?