The communal sin that we commit willingly

The atonement clock is ticking. There are just seven weeks from today to atone for all the things we did not get right in 5784 — the ones we did not get right in 5783 that we promised God we would get right in 5784, and then immediately forgot that we made that promise.

The Torah readings on Shabbat from now through the Shabbat before Yom Kippur this year come from Deuteronomy, D’varim. There is one point that it makes over and again: We must “do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord.” All the rest is commentary.

This requirement is carried through the entire Torah. It is the only reason we exist as a people. It is our mission, so to speak. That is why our Father Abraham was chosen to found the nation we would become. It was so “that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep [My] way by doing what is just and right,” as God is quoted as saying in Genesis (Bereishit) 18:19.

We are given very specific guidelines on how to do “what is right” in God’s eyes in Exodus 21-23, and a condensed version of those guidelines is found in Leviticus (Vayikra) 19.

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We must atone for these things because they are the things that matter most to the God from whom we seek forgiveness and from whom we ask a blessing for a good year ahead. We do have ritual requirements, of course, but although we must fulfill them, we do not get points for doing so because they are not what most concerns God. Proverbs (Mishlei) 21:3 states it quite bluntly: “To do what is right and just is more desired by God than sacrifice.” Sacrifices, in a practical sense, also include our ritual requirements — keeping kosher, observing Shabbat, wearing ritual fringes (tzitzit), and donning tefillin.

Our Sages of Blessed Memory noted that Proverbs pointedly “did not say, ‘Like a sacrifice,’ but said ‘is more desired by God than sacrifice.’” The Sage Rabbi Nachman even imagined God as saying, “My children, since doing what is just is so beloved before Me, be careful with it.” (See Deuteronomy Rabbah 5:3.)

That is why, like sacrifices, our ritual requirements take a back seat to “what is right” in God’s eyes because doing them was never the point. They are all meant as devices designed to keep us focused on doing “what is right” in God’s eyes.

Regarding the laws of kashrut, for example, the medieval biblical commentator Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (the Rashbam) said these laws are the Torah’s “way of emphasizing…respect for life.” We are told, for example, not to cook a kid in its mother’s milk, milk that is intended for its nourishment. To do so, he said, “is a shameful, distasteful thing.” (See his comment to Exodus 23:19.)

The commandment regarding tzitzit clearly states that their purpose is for us to see them and not be led astray by any evil impulses. (See Numbers 15:39.)

We put tefillin on our hands and our foreheads to remind us not to use our hands or our minds to do those things that are not right in God’s eyes.

Shabbat, as I have often noted, is all about social justice. For one-seventh of our entire lives, coming once every seven days, we must acknowledge that we have no power to lord it over anyone or anything God created, be they our children, other people, whether they do or do not work for us, or even our animals. And once every seventh year, we must also provide rest for the land itself.

With that long introduction, let us consider one behavior that is all too common in our own Jewish world. It grows out of a comment Moses made in last week’s Torah portion. Said he, “The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb — not with our fathers, but with us, all of us who are here alive this day.” (See Deuteronomy 5:2-3.)

Yet God did make a covenant “with our fathers” — Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob —and God renewed that covenant later at Sinai, 40 years before Moses spoke these words. On the other hand, God did not make a covenant with the people Moses was talking to because they were never at Sinai. That generation had all died out by then.

Moses, however, did not get his facts wrong. He had a far more important fact in mind: When God spoke to the Israelites at Sinai 40 years earlier, God was also speaking to every generation of Israelites from then on. God was speaking to them at Sinai, and God is speaking to us today, wherever we may be found.

God exists outside of time and space, Moses was saying. In God’s eyes, there is no distinction between one generation and another. There is only Ahm Yisrael, the People Israel. We are one and indivisible, just as God is one and indivisible.

This theme of our oneness is very relevant as we move forward to the start of the High Holy Days on October 3, because it involves a host of sins we commit individually and communally.

There is no such thing as Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, or secular in God’s eyes, and there should not be any such thing in our eyes, either, at least not in any negative sense, because we are tasked to emulate God. There is no chasid or mitnagid (non-chasid) in God’s eyes, no charedi Jew or modern Orthodox Jew, no Sephardi or Ashkenazi, or Mizrachi Jew, no Bene Israel or Beta Israel Jew, there is only the People Israel. There is no them and us; there is only us, there’s only the People Israel.

That is the lesson he was trying to teach us by his chosen words — words he chose very carefully.

We are only Israel, however, when we are united, when we look out for each other, and when we reach out to one another, when we respect one another — but we are not united. We identify ourselves by artificial differences created to keep us separated from each other.

We separate ourselves by the liturgies we use when we pray, for example, not by the fact that we are all praying to the same God and for the same things.

We separate ourselves by the way we pronounce the words in our prayers or what language we use when we pray, but not by the fact that those words, however they are pronounced and whatever language they are in, all mean the same things and are all directed to the same God.

We separate ourselves by how we dress.

We separate ourselves by what divides us while we ignore what should unite us.

There are countless divisions just within the Orthodox world, but one thing most of these myriad Orthodox sects do agree on is that they do not want to have anything to do with the non-Orthodox. Most will not even acknowledge that non-Orthodox rabbis are rabbis. Differences do exist among and between the other streams, but at least they acknowledge each other and are willing to work together on issues that benefit the entire Jewish community. Too many in the non-Orthodox world, however, mock the practices of the Orthodox.

Our Sages understood the need to respect each other. The Talmud quotes Rabbi Meir, one of our greatest Sages, as saying, “[One] person is different from another in three ways: in voice, in appearance, and in thought.” (See the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin 38a.)

In other words, because God deliberately created a world filled with diversity, we must not judge people based on superficial differences.

When it comes to accepting how each of us approaches our Judaism, however, we do just the opposite.

This is a sin. Judaism was always pluralistic. The only thing that should ever matter is whether our different approaches came about for the sake of heaven, for the sake of giving God’s law life for yet another generation.

All streams act for the sake of heaven, not in spite of it. All seek to do “what is right” in God’s eyes. We do not have to agree with their approach, but we must not demean them or separate ourselves from them.

The Schools of Hillel and Shammai almost never agreed on matters of Jewish law. If one said black, the other would say white. A midrash has our Sages appealing to heaven to resolve the disputes. Both were right, a heavenly voice said, because both schools made their rulings for the sake of heaven. “This one and that one are both the words of the Living God,” it said. However, it added, we follow the School of Hillel’s rulings because its scholars would respectfully teach the School of Shammai’s opinions before defending their own positions. (See BT Eruvin 13b.)

Is that even possible today?

Our Sages taught us that unless we make a sincere effort between one Yom Kippur and the next to avoid repeating the sins we vow not to repeat, we are wasting our time fasting and praying. (See Mishnah Yoma 8:9). That includes our vows to respect each other — individually and communally.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is www.shammai.org.