Erev Rosh Hashana 5764/September 26, 2003
Al Shlosha Devarim – upon which three things?

Marilyn, my children's' other mother, tells a story about a friend of hers, who was serving her first holiday meal as a Jew. Surveying the lavish table, she asked, with concern, "Did I make enough of too much?"

Is this a JEWISH thing??

The desire for abundance is an all-too human inclination. Even more to the point, it is regarded as an American propensity, even an American imperative.

There is a phrase in the mishna, found in Pirkey Avot, the second passage of the very first chapter, al shelosha devrim ha-olam omed – the world stands upon three things – al HaTorah/on Torah itself; al HaAvodah, understood as both prayer and service, and al Gemilut Hasadim / upon acts of loving kindness.

Our tradition is truly a democratic one – recording majority AND minority voices, even within its foundational texts. It was Simon the Just who offered the above triple admonition. Yet we find recorded further on in the same chapter, one Simeon ben Gamliel's version of a different three things that sustain the world: truth, judgment and peace.

What of our democracy, that other civilization in which we live? What are the quintessential American foundational building blocks? We are told that we have three innate RIGHTS, enumerated in our foundational text, and that our country is bound to sustain – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Life and liberty seem essential and clear to me.

The pursuit of happiness is murkier. It isn't just HAPPINESS, but rather the qualifying word that precedes - its PURSUIT - that is anointed and enshrined as an American birthright.

This is a concept that has very little resonance in traditional Jewish language or text. To BE happy, yes. The only phrase that comes close occurs relatively recently in the evolution of our religious civilization. It is from the unique Hasidic Rebbe, Nahman of Breslav, the only one whose followers never anointed a successor, hence there is no Breslav dynasty – mitzvah gedola lihyot besimha tamid/ it is a great mitzvah to always be happy.

Here again, we have a key word that precedes the Happiness word, not PURSUIT, of FINDING or ACHIEVING happiness, but regarding it as a MITZVAH.

Judaism offers another path, towards achieving that which sustains us, towards the qualities and values it deems essential, and that is primarily through the language of mitzvot.

This is a significant contrast to the American constitutional, cultural and civic vocabulary.

The contrast is not only in the language, though. Mitzvot didn't appear ready-made, clearly crafted in one founding document, but emerged over millennia of narrative and story-telling, law making and commentary. What sustains us is threaded through our narratives and, if you will, our affect, cultivated by so many generations of scholars, advocates and adjudicators; of questions and responses; of wanderings, expulsions, and immigration; of alternatives, layers and reforms. We're more likely to pound the table and chant … DAYENU, we have enough – or maybe, we've HAD enough – than declare, let's pursue ANYTHING!

This maybe is not such a healthy response, and perhaps not the ideal alternative to PURSUIT, or to the MORE-ness that pervades that other civilization in which we live. To grasp, to reach for, is healthy. Especially at this time of year, as we are guided to reflect on what we have done and experienced, it's necessary, and a blessing, to yearn, to stretch, to learn. It keeps us alive, sustains us, and enables us to engage in each new day, each new year.

For example, I've taken to heart (but not quite yet to schedule) the new studies discussed recently in the media about exercise. Yes, lots and long is good, but a little, on an ongoing basis, appears to produce results that are just as good – just as life- and health-giving.

And yet, don't we always need to do MORE, as time accrues, just to keep up? Maybe there never is really enough of too much, since time sort of "eats up" the past, and we are constantly impelled to renew and refresh not just ourselves, but our things, to replace, and upgrade.

BUT newer, and bigger, just isn't always better. Having things is costly. You have to move them, or store, them, repair them and clean them. Taking care of our stuff COSTS a lot of time-capital, and starts to look more like a vicious circle than a cycle of renewal and returning.

Certainly the American model tends to be … get the new American model! Upgrade it, super-size it, buy in bulk … small is beautiful is not a marketing current trend!

Let's hear more from the Jewish model.

Here is some framing guidance from Rabbi Elliot Dorff, writing in To Do the Right and the Good: A Jewish Approach to Modern Social Ethics. Dorff is Rector and distinguished professor of Philosophy at the University of Judaism, and has written widely on Jewish thought, law and ethics.

He explains a fundamental difference between Jewish and American thought: "In Judaism, I begin with the assumption that things can be expected of me; in the American system, I begin with the assumption that I have an inalienable right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which the government has been established to secure. In his 1961 inaugural address, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,' but those lines are memorable precisely because they are so surprising in an American context."

The rah-rah individualism so identified with the American character is inimical to this enshrined right. The expectation engenders a profound disconnect from the notion of the commonweal. We are so lacking in an inherent civic sense of communal responsibility, that when citizens respond WELL towards each other in a time of crisis, it is remarked upon with shock and surprise.

Amitai Etzioni writes in The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda: "A study has shown that young Americans expect to be tried before a jury of their peers, but are rather reluctant to serve on one. This paradox highlights a major aspect of contemporary American civic culture: a strong sense of entitlement – that is a demand that the community provide more services and strongly uphold rights – coupled with a rather weak sense of obligation to the local and national community."

The traditional Jewish framing of this concept is captured succinctly in another phrase from Pirkei Avot - al tifros min hatzibur - do not separate yourself from the community.

Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, over a long career and in many of his books and articles, offers a Jewish philosophical grounding for the integration for these two goals of uniting a community to sustain its communal needs, while retaining the individual's sense of integrity. For Kaplan a critical factor is the shared – and mysterious – sense of we-ness of the Jewish people

He forged his concepts as a student of the emerging field of sociology, in the early years of the 20th century, while a graduate student at Columbia University. In trying to assess the distinction between the we-feeling of a kinship network, and the we-feeling of an ethnic community, Kaplan utilizes this new term – peoplehood, which is central to both his theology and philosophy.

First – the mystical element: "The self-identification of the individual with his [sic] Jewish people is the source of mystical element in the Jewish religion … We characterize as mystical anything which we regard as indispensable to our life as human persons, without being able to explain why that is so, on logical or rational grounds." This is an astonishing assertion, particularly for a theologian so often maligned and caricatured as having no spirituality, being utterly rational, and brooking no challenge to the dethroning of a supernatural god!

Kaplan continues in this passage: "When we are asked: ‘Why remain Jews?' the only reason we should feel called upon to give is: ‘Because the Jewish people is here and we are a part of it.' … To belong to the Jewish people is a highly spiritual adventure which has intrinsic value regardless of the consequences and practical end." Dynamic Judaism, p. 64; A New Zionism, pp. 114-6

Here we have not a right to pursue anything, but rather a membership in a social entity that seems to inherently offer no concrete benefits, in Kaplan's theological estimation.

It is the MEANS, the path that defines the Jewish experience, the MITZVOT. They are sometimes called commandments, or obligations, but it is through the framework of halakha, Jewish law, that we glean the better metaphoric translation. The term halakha comes from the root word for walking, or way, thus standing for an inherently evolving system, or tool.

Our "way" is not the path of rights, but the path of responsibilities. "Literally understood, mitzvot means law commanded by God… all the 613." Kaplan contrasts the reactions of traditionalists and secularists to this system. The former, when faced with, say, the obsolete nature of the sacrificial cult embedded in the system of mitzvot, either deemed some practices to be suspended for an indefinite period of time, or devised, in his words, "legal fictions or sophistries… as a means of overcoming their restrictive character."

"On the other hand," he decries, in condemning the prevailing alternative of his day, "to resort to the secularist solution of abolishing mitzvot altogether is to perform a surgical operation that might kill the patient. A third alternative is to transfer them from the dimension of divinity to the dimension of peoplehood. The mitzvot would thus retain their imperative character, not merely because they are the product of collective Jewish life but because they … are relevant to our spiritual needs [emphasis added]. Some traditional mitzvot may become obsolete, some may have to be modified, and some may have to be created anew." Dynamic Judaism, p. 63; Greater Judaism in the Making, pp. 488-9

(Continued)