Rabbi Nachum Lamm
February 20th 1971
Jewish Center
Historians tell us that when they find a law in a document, they assume that the mode of
conduct which this law prohibits is the one that generally prevailed before the law was passed.
With this in mind, let us turn to a Talmudic law enunciated as a commentary on one of
the verses in this morning’s Sidra. We read, as part of the Torah’s civil legislation, אם כסף תלוה את עמי את העני עמך, If you lend money to any of My people, even to the poor with you...” (Ex.
22:24). It is the verse which, in addition to the prohibition of usury, is the source of the
commandment that we must lend our money to those in need. The Rabbis, troubled by the queer
construction of the verse – “My people, the poor, with you” – deduced the following order of
priority as to who shall be the beneficiary of our generosity in lending money:
עני ונכרי, עני קודם; עני ועשיר, עני קודם; ענייך ועניי עירך, עניי עירך קודמין; עניי עירך ועניי עיר אחרת, עניי עירך
קודמין.
If two people solicit your loan, and one is a fellow Jew and one a gentile, then all other things
being equal, if you have sufficient to lend only one of them, the Jew takes precedence over the
non-Jew. If the two people appearing before you are otherwise equal, but one is a poor man and
one a rich man, the poor man comes first. If you are approached for a loan by a poor man who is
a relative and a poor man who is a neighbor, the relative is to be preferred over the neighbor. If
one of them is a poor man who lives in your town, and the second is a poor man who lives in
another town, the poor man who is your neighbor takes precedence over the poor man from afar.
(Bava Metzia 71a)
Note well that the Talmud does not bid us neglect the gentile, the non-relative, or the
stranger. It does give us a list of priorities. What the Talmud is telling us is that a totally altruistic
ethic, which does not recognize intimate human bonds and affiliations, is unnatural, and
impractical – and hence, ultimately morally valueless. An ethic which does not consider and
which affirms such human associations as nation, people, family, neighborhoods, is realistic and
hence morally invaluable.
That would seem to be an acceptable and self-evident principle. Yet the need the Talmud
saw for legislating this rule indicates, according to the historian’s device we mentioned earlier,
that this principle was often violated. There were and are, apparently, many people who would
rather assist the stranger than the acquaintance, would rather benefit the non-relative than the
relative.
Indeed, I would diagnose this phenomenon as an American Jewish disease! Western
Jews, since the Emancipation, have grown up on the myth of “Universal Man,” a universalism
which negates ethnic identity and national-religious uniqueness. It is the kind of myth which, for
many years, fed anti-Zionist classical Reform and the American Council for Judaism from
which, thank Heavens, we hear less and less as time goes on.
I recall a passage in the notorious “Symposium of Intellectuals,” which appeared several
years ago in Commentary magazine. One writer, who apparently came from a warm, ethnic
Jewish home against which he had been leading a decades-long adolescent rebellion, complained
that in his family people would, upon reading in the newspapers the casualty list of some
airplane disaster, scan the names for those which were Jewish-sounding and express their horror
at finding such names. I confess that for many years thereafter I was embarrassed when I found
myself doing the same thing. The embarrassment, however, was short lived, because I soon
noticed that this nefarious, tribalistic habit was not unique to Jews. When an airplane disaster
occurred overseas, the American press would itself list the names only of American passengers.
And in the listing of Vietnam War casualties, the New York newspapers would list only New
York names, the Chicago newspapers only Chicago names, etc... It dawned upon me, as it never
dawned upon the pretentious intellectual of Commentary who had liberated himself from his
parents’ Jewish provincialism, that it is quite rational and natural for people to give emotional
and practical priority to those who are closest to them, either in flesh or faith or geography. I
realized that one can feel greater attachment to his fellow Jews in reading of such unfortunate
events, without in the least detracting from his fundamental human compassion for all his fellow
men. To give priority to Jews does not imply disdain for gentiles. To give precedence to the poor
of your city does not compel you to an attitude of cruelty to those who live afar. To love your
family does not imply to hate your friends.
The New Left, whether here or in Israel or in Europe, seems to be guilty of that same
perversion of the human spirit. The Jewish members of the New Left apparently believe that
every people has the right to its own national expression, but that only Jews must be “universal!”
When Jews assert their national or ethnic individuality, then that same attractive spirit of
nationalism undergoes a traumatic change from glorious self-determination to an ethnocentric
jingoism that is beneath contempt. The same nationalistic consciousness which, when practiced
by Castro or El Fatha, is described as a healthy, struggling, emerging liberation movement, is
referred to by the New Left when it appears as Zionism – as an “oppressive, neo-colonialist
imperialism.” They have reversed the Talmudic formulation and believe that: your people and
the stranger, the stranger comes first; the poor of your city and the poor of another city, those of
the other city come first.
But of course, the parents of the New Left – if not biologically, then ideologically – were
not much different. The immediate predecessors of today’s interreligious dialogues were the little
lamented “interfaith” meetings, which assimilated and semi-assimilated America Jews
approached with so much solemnity, and which was really so empty and vacuous. A famous
anecdote about such events expressed a great deal of truth in its wit: After one such meeting, a
Jew who attended was asked by another Jew how many people were present, and he replied,
“There were two goyyim and ten ‘interfaiths’!
The time has long passed for us to get away from the pretense of supposedly
non-sectarian bodies with all-Jewish membership. We should by now have sufficient dignity to
do away with that colossal make-believe that when defending Jewish interests. That is nonsense!
There is nothing wrong with defending your own interests and those closest to you. Show me a
man who does not love his own children, and I will show you a man whose love for other
children I do not trust. If there is a person who has no feeling for his own people, his feeling for
other people is meaningless. There is no reason to be embarrassed by asserting clearly and
unequivocally the principle of “the poor of your city come first.” There is no need to excuse
American Jewish support of Israel by the old U.J.A. slogan that, “Israel is the only bastion of
democracy in the Middle East.” It is true that it is the only fortress of democracy in the Middle
East. But what if Lebanon were similarly democratic, would that call for the U.J.A. to divide its
funds equally between Israel and Lebanon?
There is nothing undemocratic, non-humanitarian, or unenlightened about Jewish
solidarity. It is natural, proper, understandable. On the contrary, for Jews to pretend and
dissimulate and apologize is unnatural, degrading, undignified, and humiliating.
For too long have we allowed the apostles of extravagant universalism to lay exclusive
claim to the prophetic tradition, as if the Prophets of Israel demanded that the Children of Israel
abandon all claims to their self-interest and think first and foremost, if not altogether, only about
the welfare of the Egyptians and Babylonians and Hittites. That, of course, is nonsensical. The
Prophets’ universalism grew out of their nationalism, and was not at all in conflict with it.
Remember the famous words of Isaiah (58:7) which roll down at us with the force of a
thunderclap every Yom Kippur afternoon when we read them as part of the Haftorah –
הֲלוֹא פָרֹס לָרָעֵב לַחְמֶךָ וַעֲנִיִּים מְרוּדִים תָּבִיא בָיִת כִּי תִרְאֶה עָרֹם וְכִסִּיתוֹ וּמִבְּשָׂרְךָ לֹא תִתְעַלָּם.
The prophet tells us that the true fast must result in a genuine moral transformation of man, so
that he will break his bread and share it with the hungry; and bring into his own home the
abandoned poor; and offer clothing to cover the nakedness of those who can afford no garments.
But the climax comes in the last three words, ומבשרך לא תעלם – From thine own flesh hide not
thyself!” Do not imagine that charity to all means neglect of those closest to you! Of course you
must break bread with all the hungry and offer shelter to all the poor and give clothing to all the
naked, but without this last reminder not to ignore your own flesh and blood, what came before
is simply universalistic preachment that makes good copy for a liberal press but it is otherwise
ineffective and meaningless; with it, you have true prophecy, the kind that can become actualized
as a real ethic of life. The prophets did not preach love of Man, but the love of men, beginning
with your own. Only if “the poor of your city take precedence,” will we learn to care as well “for
the poor of another city.”
It is in this sense that I take an especially dim view of the opposition by the majority of
American Jewish organizations to the Speno-Lerner bill currently being debated in Albany.
According to this bill, the government will subsidize by a certain amount the secular education of
those children who attend private religious schools. I am not at this time referring to any
particulars of the bill, but rather to the principle that informs the American Jewish opposition. I
do not by any means suspect their motives, but I question their rightness and their relevance in
their almost intuitive, Pavlovian reaction to any suggestion of Federal or State aid to parochial
schools.
Let us be honest. For a long time, and even now, such opposition to government aid for
religious schools came from an unadmitted fear of control of education in New York by the
Catholic Church. But this is an unworthy element. First, if the law results in an unjust and
onerous burden of double taxation on parents of children whose consciences cause them to
choose a private religious school, then it is unfair to deny them government aid for the secular
portion of their studies. Furthermore, from a practical point of view, there is no danger today of
the Church taking control of the government or the educational system of New York; the Church
today is not even in control of the Church! Such elements therefore are completely irrelevant to
the issue at hand.
But most important, even if we should assume that such government aid would not
accord with the strictest and most rigorous application of the principle of separation of Church
and State – and I seriously doubt whether there was any time in the history of this country that
this principle was maintained in its pristine purity – and even if such federal aid were to be
considered in the minus column of the equation that determines the welfare of the public schools
system, do not the American Jewish organizations have any obligation to Jewish parents whose
children attend day schools – the only real guarantee of survival of Jewish life in this country?
Must these organizations persist in their knee-jerk reactions without ever reconsidering their
policies on the basis of an enlightened self-interest? Are not “Jewish Jews” also a part of their
constituencies?
All of life, all of law, all of politics revolves around the question of conflicting interests
and competing claims. There is little in these areas that is all black or white. It is true that we
must not always prefer our own individual interests over the overriding interests of the general
welfare. But must the American Jewish Congress and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies
make it a rule that “the poor of the other city come first?” Have we not pushed the universalistic
myth to the point of self-denigration and self-harm?
I have spoken in day schools around the country, and have met with parents and
principles and lay leaders of these schools. Our day schools are in trouble. No matter how much
tuition they charge the parents, they are tottering on bankruptcy. And parents are groaning under
the burden. I am not referring primarily to parents of the upper middle class or even the lower
middle class although they find the task very difficult and for young parents it is often
staggering, but especially to parents of the lower economic class, who have to deny themselves
not only luxuries that others enjoy, but the basic needs of life, in order to give their children a
Jewish education. Why do these claims find no resonance in the lofty, liberal, and universalistic
proclamations and exhortations of many of the organizations of our Establishment? “And from
thine own flesh do not hide thineself!”
Yet, having said all this, I would not want us to lose our sense of balance. I would not
want to see our communities slip into the opposite kind of one-sidedness: an extravagant ethnic
retrenchment that throws off responsibility to the poor of another city, to the poor of the non-Jew.
It is true that we can no longer afford to indulge in this polite and unhealthy collective
masochism that gives precedence to all other causes over the Jewish interests. But neither is it
desirable for us to encourage a wave of reaction whereby we neglect other needs and general
humanitarian causes, whether civil rights or ecology, whether politics or world peace or
economic justice.
The Talmud (Hullin 63) asks why in the Bible the stork is called חסידה, a word from the
root חסד, which means love or charity or kindness. The Talmud says:
למה נקרא שמה חסידה? שעושה חסידות עם חברותיה
It is called חסידה because the stork performs acts of חסד or benevolence with its friends and
children. Whereupon the Hasidim ask: If so, why does the Bible consider the stork or חסידה an
unclean bird, non-kosher and unfit for human consumption? And they answer: because it is kind
only to its own young and not to the young of other species of birds!
If we are to be sane, natural Jews, we must care for our own first. But if we are to be
kosher Jews, we must not neglect the others.
We must therefore strike a balance between ethnic introversion and exclusiveness on the
one hand, and universalistic masochism and self-denigration on the other. With Maimonides, we
must choose the middle way in this as in all else, between the unhealthy consequences of the
universalistic myth and the commandment, “From thine own flesh hide not thyself.”
The trouble with some people is that for them charity begins at home and ends at home.
The trouble with others is that their charity excludes their own home, and therefore ends up as a
solemn and vacuous joke. The right way is for charity to begin at home, and then to extend in
ever-widening and concentric circles outward, to encompass all people.
Perhaps all this was best summed up by that immortal aphorism of Hillel the Elder: אם אין אני לי מי לי ושאני לעצמי מה אמי
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am for myself alone, what – or who – am
I?”
Jewish moods are notoriously volatile, often gyrating from one extreme to the other
without going through the transitions.
It is best that we always remember and practice both principles: אם אין אני לי מי לי , the
priority of our own needs; and וכשאני לעצמי מה אני , to proceed therefrom to service to all other
human beings.
Both together are the Golden Mean of enlightened self-interest.
Now, above all, is the time to reassert this authentically Jewish doctrine, for " אם לא עכשיו אימתי ” if not now, when then?”
