In recent weeks, our hearts have been broken by the plight of the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Several of us have friends or family members among the 10,000 Jews of New Orleans who have been tragically dislocated by Katrina. A large percentage have left the city to find refuge elsewhere. New Orleans Jewry today is essentially a community in exile. Its many synagogues and Temples have stood nearly empty on these High Holy Days. The Jews of Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Lake Charles have also suffered a similar fate.
But let us look beneath the surface. The painful reality is that the vast majority of those Hurricane victims, particularly of Katrina, are not Jewish. In fact, most of them are destitute African-Americans. Unlike the Jews of New Orleans, a large part of these poverty-ridden Black Americans couldn't leave the city before the disaster hit. Some died. Some waited days to be released from the filthy conditions at the Superdome. Some swam through fetid waters to reach land. Others huddled together on rooftops for safety, only to be ignored by rescue helicopters flying overheard. Some blessedly did escape to San Antonio and other cities for temporary residence.
I am proud that the men, women and children of our San Antonio Jewish community, in general, and Temple Beth-El, in particular, rendered assistance both to Jews and non-Jews without discrimination. We donated clothing, food, medical supplies, and toys. We wrote generous checks. We personally comforted the evacuees at shelters at Kelly and Windsor Park. We offered home hospitality. And here at Temple, we opened our Religious School to children whose hurricane-ridden congregations could not operate educational programs. In short, we helped Jews and non-Jews alike, without making distinctions.
Yet, a vexing question arises: To whom do we owe our primary obligation to render help in these circumstances- to the Jewish victims or to all victims in general? If we have to choose, which should come first? This recently became a contentious issue in the Jewish community of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as that community received the evacuees of Katrina.
This is a thorny question. How do we prioritize the groups of those who seek our help? When I taught Confirmation class, I used to explain that tzedakah is a central value in Judaism. Each of us is traditionally obligated to contribute 10% of our income for charitable purposes. Our motto as a Jewish people is: “Live generously. It does a world of good.” But who is to receive our tzedakah? Just Jews or both Jews and non-Jews?
In this connection, I would pose this question to my students: If you are given $100 to award either to the Jewish Federation, which assists primarily Jews, or to the United Way, which helps people of all backgrounds, how would you respond? Are we obligated to serve primarily Jews in need or all human beings regardless of religion or nationality? Let us ponder that question.
Some Jews go to one of two extremes in dealing with this matter of whom must we help first. On the one hand, we find Jews who ignore the agony of the Jewish world. They concentrate only on the anguish of humanity at large. They support only general causes and ignore specifically Jewish ones.
One famous case was Rosa Luxemburg, the radical Jewish Marxist, in Germany. In 1916, she wrote this troubling message to a friend: “I have no room in my heart for Jewish suffering. Why do you pester me with Jewish troubles? I feel equally close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putumayo or to the Negroes in Africa….I have no separate corner in my heart for the ghetto.” In other words, Rosa Luxemburg felt no unique ties of solidarity with fellow Jews and wanted to shun them.
An example of the very opposite is found in a story of the famous German Jewish thinker, Hermann Cohen. Once he was traveling through Poland and stopped to worship in a tiny synagogue. The cantor, while intoning the liturgy, suddenly broke down when he sang the words of Isaiah, which, incidentally, are engraved about the front entrance of our Temple: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
After the service, Cohen approached the cantor and asked him why he cried so bitterly when intoning these words. The cantor, who was hostile to the Gentile world, replied that he is grievously pained by the thought that some day goyim will occupy our Holy Temple. Neither the Jewish self-loathing Rosa Luxemburg nor the xenophobic cantor are worthy of our emulation.
In recent years, some leading Jewish philanthropists seem to embrace Rosa Luxemburg's sentiments. They have bequeathed billions of dollars to symphony halls, art museums, hospitals and universities. All of these are worthy of our largesse. However, these same philanthropists have left little to nothing to synagogues, Federations, and other Jewish institutions.
I think of the verse from the Song of Songs, which speaks of tending the vineyards of others, while neglecting one's own vineyard. Of course, there are other Jewish philanthropists, far, far, fewer, who follow the cantor's inclinations. They have willed large grants to Jewish groups and nothing whatsoever to those in the wider community.
We must acknowledge, as we ponder this dilemma, that we Jews do have a duty to each other. We Jews are to assume a strong family kinship with each other. Our rabbis teach us: “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh lazeh.” This is usually translated: “All Jews are responsible one for the other.” However, in the Talmud, it really means: “All Jews are guarantors for each other.”
It is as though we are co-signers on a promissory note. We agree to repay the loan if the debtor is unable to do so. In other words, we Jews are here to rescue each other when one of us is in trouble. Throughout the centuries, we have done so with great distinction. We Jews really constitute one world-wide family. When members of our family are in distress, we want to rush to their aid.
It is interesting that in the former Soviet Union, religion was banned for all groups. Yet it was only the Jewish community that rallied forces to protest this injustice, to fight for the religious freedom for fellow Jews. We Jews raised funds, we sent letters, we signed ads, we attended protest rallies, we traveled to Russia to visit Refusniks, and when the fortunate ones left Russia to live here, we welcomed them enthusiastically into our communities and congregations. Non-Jewish groups, by contrast, did nothing to help their own co-religionists in the former Soviet Union.
This feeling of Jewish solidarity was strong until few decades ago. However, such is not the case now. The late Rabbi Eugene Lipman served as a United States Army chaplain during the D.P. era in Europe from 1945 to 1948. He recalled walking along the street of a German city in 1945, just after the war. Suddenly a man approached him and whispered in his ear, “Amkha?”
Rabbi Lipman discerned that this was a Jew speaking with a Polish-Yiddish accent. “Amkha” is a Hebrew word which means, “your people.” In folk usage, it simply means “a Jew.” The man was asking whether or not Rabbi Lipman was a Jew. When Rabbi Lipman answered affirmatively, the man said: “Borukh Hashem. Ihr zeit a Yid- Thank God, this is a Jew.”
During those D.P. years, Rabbi Lipman was asked that word hundreds of times. It was an identification sign among Jews, during and after the Holocaust. “Amkha” signified that he belonged to the same people as the person he was questioning. Rabbi Lipman related that post-war incident to his Confirmation Class at Temple Sinai in Washington, D. C.
He explained to his class the concept of the Jewish people and the significance of the word, “Amkha.” He then asked the class: “How many of you would consider yourselves 'Amkha'?” Only a minority said that they would. The vast majority answered the question, as follows: “I am a Jew, but I am not Amkha. I am not a member of a group.”
Many Jews today share that sentiment. In San Antonio alone, there was a time when almost every Jewish resident was affiliated with one of our local congregations. Today the affiliation rate has dropped to about 50%.
The San Antonio Jewish community is less rooted than it used to be. The overwhelming majority of our local disconnected Jews lead life-styles without any Jewish identification. They don't feel duty-bound to establish any Jewish associations. In short, the feeling of connectedness with other Jews has weakened considerably, here and elsewhere. Jewish isolation is supplanting Jewish community.
In this connection, Rabbi David Wolpe related an incident in the class he was teaching at Hunter College in New York City during the 1980's. A Jewish student, with lukewarm Jewish allegiances, informed him that that afternoon, there would be two rallies outside the United Nations building. One was to protest the mistreatment of Russian Jews. The other was to object to the apartheid in South Africa. The student told him that he had planned to attend the one on the apartheid.
He then challenged Rabbi Wolpe to give him a good reason why he should go to the rally on Soviet Jewry. The rabbi explained that both moral issues are critically important to Jews. Discrimination against any human being is unconscionable to Jews. Yet, many others will go to the rally on the apartheid. But if Jews don't go to the one on Russian Jewry, who will? We can't expect non-Jews to come to the aid of our beleaguered Jewish brothers and sisters.
Rabbi Wolpe's answer has great merit. However, I probably would have responded somewhat differently. Since rallies generally are lengthy events, sometimes lasting several hours, I would have suggested that the student divide his time between the two and appear at both. How much time he allocates to each would be his decision.
Similarly, I would tell my Confirmation students that I was less interested in the exact amounts they allocated to the Jewish Federation and the United Way with the $100, as long as they supported both. Not only are Jews guarantors of each other but our Torah instructs us repeatedly to care for the stranger or the non-Jew in our midst. We are even enjoined to attend to the burial of a non-Jew, if no one else is around to assume this task.
In fact, the Talmud and the Rabbinic Codes insist that we help both needy Jews and non-Jews alike. They do not give us any percentages to guide us in our allocations. Yet these traditional sources of Jewish law issue one caveat. We must make sure that every needy Jew in our midst is taken care of. Ignoring a single Jew in need brings disgrace upon a Jewish community for its gross negligence.
In short, we Jews are called upon to be both universalists and particularists, both general practitioners and specialists. We must support both the Jewish community and the general community, both the non-Jews facing massacres in Danfur and the Jews crushed under oppressive rule of Iran. There is a connection between these two claims on us. One prepares us for the other. The Jewish experience is the training ground for reaching out to the entire human family.
By identifying with Judaism and the Jewish people, we hone our skills to aid non-Jews. For example, on Passover, we recall the brutal slavery of our Jewish ancestors in Egypt. As a result, we should become eager to labor for the emancipation and liberation of all oppressed peoples. On Holocaust Memorial Day, Yom Hashoah, we remember 6,000,000 of our Jewish brothers and sisters whom Hitler and his henchmen exterminated. By doing so, we should commit ourselves to battle against bigotry and genocide everywhere. Thus our embrace of Judaism gives us our base from which we can reach out to others. The more Jewish we are, the more compassionate we become to all peoples.
Cynthia Ozick, the renowned writer, explains this idea vividly by noting the unusual anatomy of the shofar which we shall hear at the end of Yom Kippur today. She observes that the shofar has a narrow end and a wider end. We can only make ourselves heard when we blow into the narrow end. If we blow into the wider end, we won't be heard. In other words, if we view ourselves primarily as human beings without identifying specifically as Jews, we won't make any impact.
Thus, we learn to help Jews and non-Jews best by being the best Jews we can. Martin Buber, the eminent Jewish philosopher, summed it up so tersely, yet so eloquently: “Being Jewish is my way of being human.” What a penetrating insight Buber gives us for this New Year! Amen.
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