The Eternal Rebellion Against Responsibility“IT’S THE JEWS. IT’S THE JEWS. IT’S THE JEWS.” Those all-caps words comprise the answer offered to the question of “who is to blame for all the wrong in the world,” according to the manifesto left by one of the pair of shooters who killed three people at a San Diego Mosque on May 18.(The following is excerpted from an open letter by Rabbi Avi Shafran, whose powerful insight served as the inspiration for this week’s dvar Torah.)Dear Mr./Ms. Jew Hater,You may think you hate Jews because of bad apples out there who happen to be of Jewish stock, and so you feel justified in generalizing from a handful of lowlifes to an entire people. Or maybe you resent Jewish economic success, assuming it comes from underhandedness rather than competence. Maybe you don’t like Israel or its leaders and see that as implicating all Jews. Or maybe you resent the Jewish claim to being a “chosen people,” even though that chosenness bespeaks a mission, not an accomplishment. All those things may or may not play parts in your animus. But they are not what ultimately underlies it.What stands at the ground zero of Jew-hatred, what allows so many contradictory “reasons” for it to develop in every generation, is something much deeper and more subtle. The deepest root of Jew-hatred is fear of responsibility, the concept the Jews introduced to the world.The Jewish “crime,” as you conceive of it, was committed millennia ago at Sinai — where the Jewish people introduced the idea that there are God-given moral and ethical absolutes, that human beings are accountable for how they live, and that freedom does not mean freedom from responsibility.Much of the world has, thankfully, come to terms with, and even embraced, the once-radical idea that human beings bear responsibility to live according to moral ideals. You, though, have not made your peace with personal responsibility. Consciously or not, you feel threatened by the idea, and that angst distills into hatred.Rabbi Shafron’s letter reveals that the hatred is not merely toward Jews, it’s for what we represent—responsibility, an idea we see in this week’s Parsha, which revolves around the responsibilities of the tribe of Levi. The Torah painstakingly describes how each branch of the Levite family was given a specific role in transporting the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary the Jewish people carried through the desert. One family carried the holiest vessels, including the Ark and the Menorah, another carried the curtains and coverings, and a third family transported the heavy beams, sockets, and structural foundations.Why spend so much time describing transportation assignments and inventory? The Jewish nation, a holy nation, is built when people understand they are responsible for something greater than themselves. Every Levi carried a burden—literally—but not every burden looked the same. Some jobs appeared to have gravitas and spiritual depth, such as being responsible for transporting the Ark or Menorah, while others seemed physical, technical, and exhausting; every task was essential. Without the beams, there is no Mishkan. Without the coverings, there is no sanctuary. Without every family embracing its role, the Shechina (Divine Presence) could not dwell among the people. Each family had its own service and burden to carry.This may be one of Judaism’s most profound ideas: Every person has a purpose and a responsibility to carry it out. Every person has something they were meant to contribute to the world and, hence, living a life of responsibility is a necessity.Although modern culture often defines freedom as escaping obligation and living without limits, commitments, and responsibilities, Judaism stresses the opposite. At Sinai the challenging idea that human beings are accountable for how they live and responsible for the world they create was introduced to the world—and the world has never forgiven us for it. No matter how much a Jew may try to blend into society and go unnoticed, history has shown that every Jew ultimately becomes a symbol of that idea. Jew haters do not distinguish between one Jew and another because, in their minds, each of us represents the eternal call of Sinai — the demand that human beings live with moral responsibility, accountability, and purpose.After Herman Rauchning, a confidante of Hitler, abandoned Nazism he wrote The Beast From the Abyss to alert the world of the extent and danger of Nazism. This former Nazi summarized the concept about which we have been speaking. It is against their own insoluble problem of being human that the dull and base in humanity are in revolt against… the eternal call to Sinai, against which humanity again and again rebels.Judaism insists that life has purpose, morality matters, and every human being needs to be treated with dignity–we are called upon to live for something higher than themselves. At Sinai, the Jewish people accepted that responsibility willingly and, in this week’s Torah reading, the Levites show us that it doesn’t mean running away from responsibility, it means lifting it onto our shoulders and carrying it with dignity.In fact, the very word Nasso means to lift up. Although modern society often assumes that responsibility weighs a person down, Torah teaches the opposite; responsibility is what lifts a person up. A life without obligation may feel easier in the short term but will ultimately be empty and lead to frustration. Meaning comes from what we are willing to carry; often, the greater the responsibility we embrace, the more meaningful our lives will be.At Sinai, the Jewish people willingly accepted not the burden of privilege but the responsibility of mission; not a sense of superiority, but a calling to accountability—and perhaps it’s precisely that willingness to carry responsibility that has enabled Jews to survive every empire, and every hatred directed against us. Civilizations built solely on power or self-interest eventually crumble but a nation built on responsibility endures.The message of Sinai — and the message of Parshat Nasso — is that greatness is not measured by how free we are from responsibility but by how willing we are to embrace it. Good Shabbos
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