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1973

Man in Society: Jewish Ethics in Action (1973)

Bereishit Yom Kippur
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Jewish Ethics in Action (1973)

The Talmudic sage Rava compressed his understanding of the human condition into four Hebrew words: O havruta o mituta. "Either companionship or death." Without the possibility of human relatedness, man is empty. Without an outside world of human beings, there can be no inside world of meaningfulness. Personality, liberty, love, responsibility — all that makes life worth living — depend upon a community in which man can locate and realize himself. But man is more than the sum total of his connections with others. There must be a self in order for there to be communication; there must be an inner existence to relate to the outer world. If man is not an island, neither is he a switchboard, a maze of wires that transmits the messages of others but has nothing of its own to say. God created men out of the dust of the earth and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, man became "a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). Onkelos, the Aramaic translator of the second century C.E., renders that phrase "a speaking soul." Speech is the vehicle of relationship. Man is a composite of both soul and speech, of self and a society to whom that self relates. Without '"soul" or self, he is no more than an elaborate cybernetic mechanism, lacking content or meaning. Without "speech" or social relations, he is only a species of protoplasm, so withdrawn he might as well be dead.For man to be man he must maintain the delicate tension between self and society, between personal privacy and public relationships. Mediat-ing between them is the family. Juda-ism is concerned with all three as-pects of man's existence. It addresses itself to the question of his inner psychic and spiritual life, his dignity and destiny. But its major concern is with the quality of man's relation-ships to the world around him, and these are usually developed within the family.This emphasis on family and com-munity may best be understood in terms of the way Judaism treats the very beginnings of man. The Bible offers two acc…
Bereishit Yom Kippur Character Development Jewish Law & Secular Law

Speech

Man's Dignity vs. the Three Deadly Dogmas (1964)

The basic principle in the Torah's teaching about man is that he possesses dignity – that is, special worth, unique value. Man is something new and something different in the ancient order of nature. He was created not only on the pattern of a biological organism, but also on the pattern of the spirit, in the "image of God," "To be invested with dignity," writes a contemporary thinker, "means to represent something mote than oneself" (A.J. Heschel, The Earth Is the Lord's). It is man's dignity, his essential value, that he is more than just man; he is Representative of God in the world.; It is that which makes man precious, loveable, and worth cherishing. / "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ani ha-Shem, I am the Lord."It is because both I and my fellow-man are creatures of God and created in His image -- with free will, moral conscience, creativity -- that‘^ we are worthy of love and esteem. Because our very creation is thebe'tzellem Elokim, in the image of God, therefore/nx dignity of52 man 18 democratic, it is distributed to all men alike. It is a dignity £■$ | that 18 Inherent, natural, part of our constitution. It is one which1 we may fulfill or affirm or, if we wish, forfeit and defile. It is a J 4-P^"dlgnity that can be sold -- but not bought" (D.Runes). It la ax this . ^^*'i awareneKS-of his kinship with God that permits«to retain his self-1 ל^ respect even when he has filed Ln his earthly enterprises end Lost allelseome, possessions, family, friends .A "True dignity abides with1 him alone/Who, in the silent hour of Inward thought,/ Can still suspectand still revere himself,/ In lowliness of heart" (Wordsworth). On this holy day, and in this "silent hour of inward thought," let us discuss and reaffirm this true dignity which Judaism teaches and which enables man, though he suspect himself and though he be lowly of heart, to revere himself •si the Godly within him.Never, indeed, was it more important to reaffirm this Jewish teaching of human dignity. …
Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur

Synagogue Sermon

Judaism from the Inside (1975)

The more significant an event is, the more elaborately and deliberately must we prepare for it. Rabbi Soloveitchik once said that more important than the שומר שבת is the שומר ערב שבת – the one who prepares before Shabbat in the right measure and spirit. In this sense, it is worth turning our attention to the preparation for Yom Kippur. The Talmud (Yoma 2b) teaches that the High Priest had to remain within the Temple for seven days before Yom Kippur. Every year, he was to set aside this week and remain completely within the Sanctuary, in a chamber known as lishkat parhedrin, there to prepare himself for the holiest day of the year.As we all know, any room or house which serves as a residence requires that we affix a mezuzah to the doorpost. Nevertheless, for certain reasons, the Temple rooms were exempt from this obligation of a mezuzah. Hence, the lishkat parhedrin did not require a mezuzah. However, R. Judah (Yoma 10b) is of a somewhat different opinion. As one of the Sages, he normally adheres strictly to principle and is unconcerned with popular reactions and public opinion. Yet here he shows a remarkable divergence from this method. He agrees with his colleagues, that no chamber of the many within the Temple required a mezuzah. The lishkat parhedrin, the chamber where the High Priest stayed for seven days, similarly did not require the mezuzah insofar as the law was technically and formally concerned. However, R. Judah maintains that the Rabbis promulgated a special decree requiring only of the lishkat parhedrin that it be adorned with a mezuzah. The reason offered by R. Judah is amazing: שלא יאמרו כהן גדול חבוש בבית האסורים, so that the people will not say, “the High Priest is imprisoned in the Sanctuary!” R. Judah feared that when the masses of the people came to Jerusalem for the High Holy Days, and congregated about the Temple, they would notice that after the Priest went into the Sanctuary until after Yom Kippur, he did not emerge for seven full days. Not …
Yom Kippur