This essay responds to video commentary by Donniel Hartman on the topic of finding a Torah for a Jewish democracy and is part of a Call & Responsa Series.
The assumption that all Jews can be characterized in uniform ways, and can be expected to behave in predictable ways, is reflective of a slavery context. In Egypt the Israelites were seen functionally as workers who supported Pharaoh’s vision of society. In eras of persecution, Jews were similarly viewed monolithically through anti-Semitic canards. The lies were varied, but each had the goal of erasing variety. They were tooled to dehumanize by making grand statements about who “the Jews” were.
To the extent that we wish for a world in which all Jews look more like ourselves, we have imbibed the slavery and persecution contexts of our oppressors, who would love to think of us in simplistic terms.
The wilderness narrative of the Torah attempts to correct slavery’s suppressions by putting color back on our people’s palette. We begin with a census that reveals the full diversity of the clans who descended from Jacob’s sons. Each clan is named and stands apart with its own banner. Tradition assigns them each colors and symbols.
Even the Levites who are to care for the Tabernacle have subgroups, each with distinct roles. When it came to bringing offerings, the Torah uses precious scroll space to grant each tribe pride of place in naming them and their leadership as they bring their gifts. They are one people, but not the same person.
They each encamp around the tent of meeting. There is a place that unites them, but they create different homes with different traditions around that place.
The process of bringing the Israelites out of slavery and preparing them to enter their homeland, includes preparing them for the complicated task of embarking on a collective project that honors diversity. This is not just because of democratic values such as tolerance, freedom, and rights. This is not so everyone can seek their own truth without feeling held back in any way. These ideas have their place, but individualism is not a compelling motivator for the Torah.
What motivates the Torah is redemption. Redemption begins when the Israelites were most lost, nameless, and forgotten in the depths of Egyptian oppression, and when God “heard their moaning…looked upon the Israelites and knew them.” The Israelites were known.
In return, the stages of redemption lead to knowing. God says, “I will free you…redeem you…take you…and you shall know that I, the Lord, am your God.”
But this does not complete redemption. Now the Israelites who feel known must come to know others. “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger.”
Freed from the bondage of being seen as a collective, an Israelite must now look to give that same dignity to those most in need of being seen.
Redemption is an arduous spiritual task. Knowing someone requires self-overcoming. It requires us to stop projecting and making assumptions and instead, truly see the person. It requires us to free ourselves from our biases and preconceptions. Every day we must work to overturn the pyramids of a world in which Pharaoh does not know Joseph.
The ultimate tragedy would be if, after finally being seen for all our multi-colored beauty, we settled in the land and chose to enslave ourselves by requiring uniformity of identity and practice under the black and white banner of one chieftain.
We were lost, and then we were known. Redemption will come when we return the favor not to God, but to each other.
Aaron Brusso is rabbi at Bet Torah, Mt. Kisco, NY, and a participant in the Hartman Institute’s Rabbinic Leadership Initiative
