Category Archives: issues of morality or ethics

Shooting From the Heart

Although blacks constitute approximately 13% of the American population, the FBI reported in 2013 that 38.5% of people arrested for violent crimes were African-Americans.

Statistics like that one, coupled with a largely unsavory urban black culture (not to mention what passes in some circles for black leadership), predisposes many of us to assume the worst about all blacks – or, at very least, to be sympathetic to law enforcement officers in their dealings with black suspects.

And, as a result, many white Americans tend to be wary of claims that black Americans are unfairly singled out by police for arrest, mistreated and even killed without justification.

So when, in 2013, George Zimmerman, a volunteer with a local “Neighborhood Watch” in Sanford, Florida, was acquitted by a jury of shooting to death Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black youth whom Mr. Zimmerman was following (against orders from a dispatcher to not do so) and with whom he got into an altercation, many of us felt that the volunteer’s claim that he killed the youth in self-defense was plausible, if not probable.  The subsequent protests over the killing were regarded by many as an indefensible rush to judgment.

And last year, when Eric Garner, who was illegally selling individual cigarettes on a Staten Island street corner, died after being put in a chokehold by police, it seemed self-evident that the overweight and asthmatic black man’s death was unfortunate but didn’t negatively reflect on the officer who applied the chokehold and who ignored Mr. Garner’s 11 wheezy pleas that “I can’t breathe.”  When a grand jury declined to indict the officer, that judgment seemed vindicated.

It was also last year that a grand jury elected to not indict Ferguson, Missouri policeman Darren Wilson, for killing Michael Brown, a black youth, in the line of duty; and the U.S. Justice Department declined to prosecute the officer for a civil rights violation. There were widespread protests over that killing, but also a widespread sense that the reaction then, too, had been misguided, and the protesters’ claims of police racism unjustified.

Then, though, came the blatantly racist e-mails exchanged by various Ferguson court and police employees, which led the Justice Department to assert “a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct within the Ferguson Police Department that violates the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and federal statutory law.”  Mr. Wilson was not personally implicated in that ugliness, but the culture of bias clearly existed.

And now we are confronted with the case of Walter Scott, the 50-year-old unarmed black man stopped by a North Charleston, South Carolina police officer for driving with a broken taillight.  Mr. Scott was shot in the back and killed when he fled (presumably, according to reports, because he feared being taken into custody over missed child support payments).

Of all the recent cases, this is the only one where we needn’t – indeed, cannot – rely for judgment on either our preconceptions or anyone’s word.  A bystander’s cellphone video of the incident shows the policeman, Michael Slager, aiming and shooting at Mr. Scott’s back multiple times.

And there’s audio, too, of Mr. Slager telling someone, presumably his wife, that he had killed somebody who had “grabbed my Taser” – the stun gun used to subdue people engaged in violence or resisting arrest.  In the video, the policeman is seen calmly taking something from his patrol car, walking over to the man he had just shot to death and dropping the object near his body.

Mr. Slager is charged with murder.

There are, I think, two takeaways from the most recent story.  One is something the alleged murderer discovered in a this-worldly way but that believing Jews know well in a more profound one: “There is an eye that sees and an ear that hears” – and, of course, “all your deeds are recorded…” (Avos 2:1).

The other is that, while it’s only human to harbor preconceptions, it’s important to realize that presumptions can be wrong, and to recognize that racial prejudice, like religious prejudice, exists, and can lead to terrible things. Yes, most police are upstanding public servants who would never mistreat any citizen.  But by the same token, most blacks are law-abiding citizens.  There are black criminals, to be sure; but there are also trigger-happy racist cops.

And if any group should be rightly disturbed by the specter of innocent people being killed by armed authorities, it should be one that has been victimized by hatred and violence over most of recorded history.

© 2015 Hamodia

Muddy Study

Have you heard the story of the scientist whose area of research was insects’ hearing?  He trained a flea to jump on command.  In the interest of his research, he pulled off one of the flea’s legs and ordered it to jump.  The insect complied, if a bit clumsily because of its handicap.  The scientist recorded the data – the delay in the jump, the distance covered, etc., on a chart. After a second amputation, the flea’s response to the command was even less impressive, and the new results were duly entered on the chart.  After a third leg was removed, the flea’s jump was greatly compromised, and the chart became host to the new data.  Finally, after being deprived of all of its legs, all the flea could do when ordered to jump was buzz about hopelessly on the table.

Solemnly, the scientist consulted his chart, created a formula to reflect his findings, and recorded his conclusion: “Fleas hear with their legs.”

The myopic researcher was brought to mind by a recent article about the work of two French economists, Ruben Durante and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya.  The piece, which appeared at MarketWatch, published by Dow Jones & Co., relates the pair’s investigation of the timing of Israeli military attacks against its enemies over an 11-year period.  The economists’ methodology was simple (and rather simple-minded).  They catalogued Israel’s military interventions from 2000 to 2011, and then compared them to what was going on in the news at the time – noting whether that news was “scheduled,” like a major sporting event, or “unscheduled,” like an earthquake or plane crash.

The scientists’ conclusion, in the synopsis of the MarketWatch article’s author, Brett Arends: “Israel habitually launches its most unpopular and, sometimes, deadly attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to coincide with big news events here in the U.S., so that they don’t get too much public attention.”

In Mr. Durante’s and Ms. Zhuravskaya’s own words: “Israeli attacks are more likely to occur prior to days with very high news pressure driven by clearly predictable events.”  There were statistically significant upticks, they assert, in Israeli military action in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before sporting events, but not before things that the Israeli military could not anticipate.

So here, presumably, is the picture: Israel’s Prime Minister and top generals are huddled in the war room, analyzing a current threat against the citizenry.  They pick apart intelligence data about enemy plans, track militants’ movements by aircraft and satellites, consult weather forecasts and, for nighttime operations, moon phases.  And they decide that a strike is necessary.  “No! Wait!” shouts the Prime Minster. “The Super Bowl’s not until next Sunday!”

A few minor problems here.  First of all, did the researchers factor in the Final Four?  And what about avoiding the attention of the rest of the world, which really doesn’t care much about American sports?  Did the economists take soccer’s World Cup into account?  Hockey’s Stanley Cup?

And if the Israeli military/political complex is in fact guilty of the nefarious machinations imagined by the economists, well, the plot doesn’t seem to have worked very well.  When was the last time Israel launched an attack on her enemies and the world’s residents, glued to their sports event of choice, uh, didn’t notice?

Besides, don’t the Elders of Zion control earthquakes and plane crashes too?

Okay, that last argument was facetious. But no less so than the economists’ study, which proffered a wealth of charts and formulae to try to demonstrate a “statistically significant” correlation between attention-getting events and Israeli military action.  How much of a correlation, though, and how much of it may just reflect chance or statistical static isn’t entirely clear. What is clear, though, is that cynicism, born of the stylish if smelly anti-Israel atmosphere these days, informed the study.

A mistaken conclusion about how a flea hears is a rather minor matter.  An accusation of underhanded tactics hurled at a country trying to protect its citizens from murderous attacks, quite another.

The noted British psychologist H. J. Eyesenck famously observed that scientists can be “just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else, and their unusually high intelligence only makes their prejudices all the more dangerous.”  It’s a truism that, in our understandable and usually merited respect for science, we can sometimes forget.

Scientists are people too; and if they harbor personal biases, their prejudices can inform their “science.”  That’s not just unfortunate but, particularly today, downright dangerous.

© 2015 Hamodia

 

 

 

The Differences We Make

In Baltimore’s Yeshivas Ner Yisroel, in whose yeshivah gedolah I was fortunate to study in the 1970s, the custom was that each beis medrash bachur would learn during night seder with a high school-age boy.  I enjoyed the experience and it probably set me on a path to become a mechanech, in which role I was privileged to serve for nearly two decades.

At least one of my night-seder chavrusos, as it happened, followed me into the field of Jewish education, becoming, as I learned years later, the principal of a middle school in New England and then of a Bais Yaakov in Rockland County, the position he currently occupies.

I had only seen him once since our youths, when I was a rebbi and principal in Providence, Rhode Island, where he had brought a group of students from his school there for a Shabbos. That, though, was more than twenty-five years ago, and so it was a special pleasure to find myself at a meeting not long ago that, as it happened, took place in his home.  It was an even greater pleasure to hear what he told me when he took me aside before the meeting began.

“You should know,” he told me, “that something you said when I brought those kids changed the life of at least one of them.”  He went on to recount that a young woman among the group had discovered that, although she was raised as a Jew, she did not meet the halachic standard of Jewishness. At the time of the visit, she was deeply conflicted about whether she wanted to become a giyores or just accept her non-Jewish status and forge a life apart from the Orthodox Jewish world.

According to my former chavrusa, the young women he had brought from his school joined the Providence Bais Yaakov for Shabbos seudos, one of which my wife and I and our daughters were invited to attend.  He told me that I spoke to the group about the parasha and, although I had been oblivious to the presence of a potential giyores, had made some reference to illustrious geirim and descendants of geirim in Klal Yisrael.

“It made a tremendous impact on her,” my former chavrusa told me, and recounted how the girl underwent giyur shortly afterward and went on to get married and move to Eretz Yisrael, where she is the mother of a large and wonderful family.

The story, as might be imagined, warmed my heart.  The only problem was that I had no recollection of ever having spoken to the group, or of speaking about geirim to any group of visitors.  I strongly suspect that the orator at issue had been one of my wonderful colleagues in Providence at the time. Whatever.

But the story, whomever it concerned, was one worth pondering, and still is.

One can never know the effect of an offhand encouraging word or positive comment.  If we think about our own lives, most of us can readily remember something said by a teacher, parent, friend or even a stranger, that subtly (or not so subtly) put us on this road rather than that one.  Sometimes it may even, as the famous Robert Frost poem goes, have made all the difference.

Unfortunately, the same, it must be thought as well, is true about discouraging or negative comments; the difference they can make can be devastating.  Anyone who is thinking of entering the field of chinuch needs to realize that, while being a Jewish educator relieves one of many of the ethical challenges of other professions – doctors, lawyers and businessmen face all sorts of dilemmas – there are dangers in the seemingly idyllic vocation of teaching Torah too.  Like the possibility of inadvertently saying or doing something that might negatively affect a young person.

I might not remember saying many of the things that erstwhile students of mine have told me made a positive difference in their lives.  But I remember more than a thing or two I said in frustration or under pressure that certainly could have, chalilah, had the opposite effect.  And those students won’t likely call to let me know.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” Shlomo Hamelech informs us (Mishlei 18:21).  And while that organ may be physically soft and feeble, it can have the effect of a protective fortress or a sharpened dagger.

An important realization for every mechanech.  Actually, no less important for us all.

© 2015 Hamodia

Doubt Thyself

For years, national network news anchorman Brian Williams told various versions of a story about his experiences during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.  His recent admission that he had gotten crucial facts wrong and his subsequent suspension don’t just comprise another case of the sudden fall of a mighty man (if one can define might as having earned widespread  respect – and $10 million a year).  The scandal may actually hold a niced-sized nugget of instructional hashkafah-gold.

It’s certainly possible, of course, that the broadcaster had been intentionally lying when he claimed to have been on a helicopter that came under fire (a rather foolish choice, since those present with him at the time could, as several eventually did, contradict his account).  But it is also conceivable that Mr. Williams may have unconsciously conflated something he knew had happened to someone else with what actually happened to him, or confused a vivid fantasy with reality.

As Hillary Clinton may have when, in 2008, she claimed to have landed in Bosnia in 1996 amid sniper fire.  She recanted her assertion when a video of the moment showed otherwise.

Many of us, understandably, might more readily attribute a talking head’s or politician’s false claims to venality or vanity.  But the fact remains that memory distortion is not at all rare.  Perhaps you have experienced it yourself.  I have, although not about any grandiose claim of bravado or danger, but about more mundane things like who was at a chasunah or how a book ended.  I’ve been certain that my recall was accurate – until a photograph or document clearly showed me I was not.

Memory, to put it simply, is unreliable. In the 1990s, cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus successfully convinced people that, as children, they had once been lost in a shopping mall. In another study, researchers showed people a doctored image of themselves as children, standing in the basket of a hot air balloon. Half of the participants later had either complete or partial false memories, sometimes “remembering” additional details from this event – an event that never happened.

Psychologists, moreover, have discovered that when people recall things, they often unwittingly “edit” their memories; and then, the next time the memories are recalled, they will include the “edited material,” as part of the original memory.  Disconcerting, but true.

Trial lawyers and judges have long known that people will swear to have seen things that they didn’t in fact see, and that they are most sincere in believing their memories are accurate.

The Rambam (Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, 8:2) acknowledges the same.  Explaining that the requirement that a navi perform a miracle is a Torah-requirement but does not imply that a miracle, per se, can prove that its performer has been sent by Hashem, he then adds: “…just as He has commanded us to decide [legal] matters through [the testimony of] two witnesses, even though we cannot know if they are testifying truth or falsehood.”

Two people, in other words, can lie, or be misled by their memories, almost as easily as one.  The Torah’s directive to accept two witnesses’ word isn’t a logical construct but a Divine law.  We can’t know with surety if what was testified is the truth, only that Hashem wants us to accept it as legally determinative.  As to the facts of the matter being testified about, they may have been accurately recounted, intentionally distorted or innocently misremembered.

It would be a mistake to imagine that the unreliability of memory lacks application to our personal lives.  So many of our bein adam lachaveiro dealings, our interpersonal relationships – whether with friends, acquaintances, spouses, employers or employees – are colored by the memories we have of previous interactions, sometimes recalled with a negative tint.

When we come across someone who evinces a dark feeling, and then trace it to what we remember the person once said or did, it might be wise to stop and consider for a moment that our memory may not be entirely accurate.   To consider the possibility that what we recall may be an “enhanced” memory – one that was unintentionally “edited” at some point, or perhaps was inaccurate from the start.

Imagine how different our lives would be if, when dealing with others, we relegated negative memory-baggage to the realm of the doubtful.

Doubting oneself has a bad name in the contemporary world.  But its wisdom seems to be borne out by science.  And, more important, by the imperative of judging others l’chaf zechus.

© 2015 Hamodia

Thanks (I think), New York Times

I can’t say with any certitude that my repeatedly bugging of the New York Times’ public editor (who sent the criticism to a different department — which never responded to me) had anything to do with it.  Or that my opinion piece last year (at http://hamodia.com/2014/08/06/ugly-times/ ) did.

But I’m happy to report that the “Times Journeys” offering of a tour to Israel with the theme “The Israeli-Palestinian Conundrum” seems to no longer feature Hanan Ashwari (who David Harris once said “is to truth what smoking is to health”) as one of its resident experts for the tourists.  (The come-on is at http://www.nytimes.com/times-journeys/travel/israeli-palestinian-dialogue/ .)

But it never hurts to be a squeaky wheel (and to encourage  others to squeak along); sometimes one may get the grease.   One thing is certain: every proper hishtadlus is worth the time and trouble.

And thanks, New York Times, if you did, for taking the criticism seriously.

Wedded Bling

Do the price of an engagement ring and cost of wedding have anything to do with how strong a marriage will prove to be?  Two Emory University economists recently studied that question. They noted that the multibillion-dollar wedding industry sends the subliminal message that large amounts of money spent on getting married can help assure successful marriages.  However, the researchers found, the evidence suggested that, if anything, relatively inexpensive weddings are associated with lower likelihood of divorce.

Correlation, it is famously and accurately said, does not necessarily imply causation.  It has been noted, for instance, that per capita consumption of cheese in the U.S. correlates closely with the number of people who died by becoming entangled in their bedsheets.  And mathematical proficiency generally correlates with shoe size (children’s feet, after all, being smaller than those of adults).

So it’s wise not to put too much emphasis on the recent research, which was based on a survey of nearly 3,400 people who answered 40 questions, much less to extrapolate from it to the observant Jewish community.

But still.

The researchers’ conclusion – “We find that marriage duration is either not associated or inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and wedding ceremony” – does seem sensible, and correlates well, I’d venture to say, with many people’s experience.

Baruch Hashem, the divorce rate in the Orthodox community is nothing like what it is in the larger society.  But, sadly, it seems to be higher than it’s ever been; and there is widespread perception, if not clear evidence, that, Rachmana litzlan, it is growing.

And so, whether or not the recent Emory study holds any real-world meaning for us, it might certainly serve as a spur to thinking about chasunah and gift-related excesses, which we cannot deny exist within our community as well.

Most of us have attended a wide range of chasunos, some modest, others less so, and others even more less so.

This is only a personal observation, of course, but my enjoyment of a simchah has never had any relationship whatsoever to the presence or absence of a wet bar, number (or dearth) of cooked dishes at the reception/chassan’s tish, variety of courses at the meal or number of musicians in the band.

In fact, when things were “fancy,” I often enjoyed the chasunah less, pained in my heart by what struck me as a wanton waste of money; and in my ears, by the decibel overkill.

Now, there may, of course, be perfectly valid reasons to host a lavish simcha rather than a simpler one.  Like the need to impress business contacts, to satisfy the mechutanim, or to create jealousy in others (okay, okay, scratch that one).  But one thing is certain, at least to me: Excess spending does not somehow create an enjoyable simchah.  Or, it’s safe to say, if only from reason alone, healthier marriages.

As to rings, baruch Hashem, neither our daughters or daughters-in-law had any insecurities about diamond size or flawlessness or clarity (or any of the other creative “chiddushim” invented by the diamond industry – itself based on the fiction that diamonds are somehow inherently important to a shidduch).  I think that any of them would have happily accepted a cubic zirconia ring, a lovely replacement that, were I king of the world, I would insist upon for all my subjects’ engagement gifts.

I might well be accused of holding such opinions because my wife and I, having been privileged to marry off eight children so far, boruch Hashem, always opted (as a matter of necessity – but with no embarrassment or regrets) for the most simple gifts and affairs available.  We went for one-man bands (except in one case, where mechutanim were close to a bandleader and wanted to honor him with the job), no wet bar, limited reception food and simple seudah fare.  When a “takanos hall” – a wedding hall that subscribed to the call of Gedolim to keep simchos simple, and insisted that its patrons hew to a list of clear limitations – was available, that was what we chose.

But the simchos were beautiful, as have been, baruch Hashem, the marriages that began at each.  If any guest was disappointed at not having enjoyed a fine scotch before the chuppah or by not being regaled by a horn section or offered a choice of main course, well, I imagine he’s gotten over it by now.

The chasunos all shone.  But the shine came from faces, not silverware.

© 2015 Hamodia

Private Matters

It comes as something of a revelation to many to confront the Rambam’s treatment of kiddush Hashem, or “sanctification of Hashem’s name” for the first time. One definition of the concept in Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, 5:10 – perhaps its most essential one, has nothing to do with readiness to give up one’s life or to act in a way that presents a good image of a Jew to others.

To be sure, that the Torah commands us to be willing to perish rather than violate certain commandments (or any commandment – even custom – in certain circumstances) is well-known to most Jews with a modicum of Jewish knowledge.  And the understanding that living an upstanding life, exemplifying honesty and sterling demeanor, is also a form of kiddush Hashem is likewise widely recognized.  The Gemara in Yoma (86a) famously describes various amora’im’s examples of such projection of Jewish personal values, labeling them kiddushei Hashem.

What is surprising is the Rambam’s statement that kiddush Hashem is something that can be accomplished as well entirely in private.  In fact, particularly in private.

“Anyone who violates, willingly, without any coercion, any of the precepts of the Torah…” reads the Rambam’s psak, “has profaned the name of Hashem…”

“And likewise,” the halachah continues, “anyone who refrains from a sin, or performs a mitzvah, not because of any this-worldly concern, nor threat, nor fear, nor the seeking of honor, but only because of the Creator, praised be He, has sanctified the name [of Hashem].”

It would seem that the core of kiddush Hashem isn’t an act’s effect on others, which it needn’t have, but rather the fact that it has been freely chosen, out of pure, selfless devotion to the Creator.  Dying al kiddush Hashem, in other words, is but a manifestation of such selflessness. But it is selfless devotion to the Divine that itself truly defines kiddush Hashem.

Elsewhere (Peirush Mishnayos, last commentary in Makkos), the Rambam writes that such performance of any mitzvah, or refraining from any sin, out of pure selflessness and desire to do Hashem’s will is the key to Olam Haba. “It is of the fundamental beliefs in the Torah that when a person fulfills a mitzvah… fittingly and properly, and does not join with that performance any ulterior motivation… but for its own sake, with love… he has merited eternal life [Olam Haba].”

The Rambam there presents that idea to be what Rabbi Chananya ben Akashya meant in his famous Mishnaic dictum about Hashem’s gifting us with many mitzvos as a means of affording afford us merits.

It’s not easy, of course, to do something purely out of altruistic, Hashem-focused motive.  We do myriad mitzvos daily, but their very daily-ness allows them to easily be muddled by habit. There are tefillos recited but with scant thought about their meaning, brachos recited as mumbled formulae, tefillin that we sometimes notice suddenly on our arms and heads, with meager memory of having consciously donned them.  Even “Lisheim Yichud”s – intended to focus our attention on what we’re doing – are themselves relegated to rote.

We are, moreover, constantly subject to the pressure of our peers – the knowledge that it just won’t do to eat at that restaurant with the less-than-ideal hechsher, or to miss a tefilla b’tzibbur or regular shiur.  And even in the relative privacy of our homes, well, we want our spouses and children to think well of us, no?

But when those moments of potential pure choices appear, when decisions to act, or to not act, are unaffected by rote and impervious to considerations of honor or other’s expectations, they are gold mines of potential kiddush Hashem.

That our contemporary world offers us such moments was the message of Rav Avrohom Schorr in his Motzoei Shabbos message at this past year’s Agudath Israel national convention.  He noted an irony: modern technology presents us with challenges that are, by very virtue of their ease and privacy, free from influences like fear or honor.  The only motivation we have to stand up to and overcome such challenges is yiras Shomayim, our freely chosen and sincere choice to accept Hashem’s will.

Rabbi Schorr asked the large gathering to consider why Hashem has given us such challenges, which did not confront any Jewish generation until our own.  The answer, he said, is clear: “Because He wants to bring about the time of nisgadalti viniskadhashti”; He wants to offer us the opportunity to accomplish kiddush shem Shamayim.

It’s in our hands in a way it has never been in any other ones, ever.

© 2015 Hamodia

Greed Is Gross

The carnival of carnage that seems a constant in the Islamic world proceeded tragically apace last week, with a suicide bombing at a gathering in Ibb, Yemen to commemorate Islam’s founder’s birthday.  At least 23 people were killed; an Al Qaeda affiliate is the suspected culprit.

Then, over in Afghanistan, at least 26 people attending a wedding party were killed, and 45 wounded, when a rocket struck a house during a firefight between government forces and Taliban insurgents

But what might rank as the week’s most senseless loss of life took place in a non-Islamic land, China.  At least 35 people were killed and 43 injured during a stampede in an area of Shanghai where tens of thousands had gathered to celebrate the advent of a new calendar year

The cause of that disaster is unclear, but it was reported that shortly before the crowd had grown restless, people in a nearby building had dropped green pieces of paper that looked like American $100 bills.

Now, there’s an awful metaphor for our covetous times.  The pursuit of money is nothing new, of course.  It has been the engine powering many a civilization, and the rot destroying many a human life.  And while it’s easy to decry the venality and greed of the worst that Wall St. and Hollywood have to offer, it’s considerably harder to check our own individual inclinations to grab what green we can.

It’s a silly inclination, of course.  Not only can money buy only stuff, not happiness, but a believing Jew should have well absorbed the truism that his financial status is, in the end, a function of what is decreed for him by Hashem at the start of each Jewish year.  To pursue money, then, for the sake of, well, pursuing money, to exert oneself in a quest to have more than one needs, is just to court expenses that one wouldn’t otherwise have.

Still and all, mindless greed somehow seeps into countless lives, even Jewish ones, even Jewishly educated ones.  Lavan, after all, is in our family tree.

Yet possessions are valuable things.

Yaakov Avinu, we all know, recrossed Nachal Yabok in order to retrieve small jars inadvertently left behind.  “From here we see,” Chazal explain, “that the possessions of the righteous are as dear to them as their bodies.”

That comment, of course, does not mean to counsel greed or miserliness; Yaakov, after all, is the man of emes, the forefather who embodies the ideal of “truth” or honesty.  It is meant to teach us something deeply Jewish, that possessions have worth.  And that is because they can be utilized for truly meaningful things. A dollar can be converted not only into a euro but into a mitzvah.

It can buy a soft drink or a packet of aspirin or part of a New York subway fare.   But it can also buy a thirsty friend a drink, or a get-well card for someone ailing, or part of the fare for the ride to the hospital to deliver it in person.  It can be put into the pushke or given as a reward to a child who has done something reward-worthy.

Possessions are tools, in their essence morally neutral.  Put to a holy purpose, though, they are sublime.  And so, the Torah teaches, valuing a small jar can be a sign not of avarice but of wisdom.

It’s unfortunate – no, dreadful – that some of us seem only to remember the importance of valuing money but forgotten the reason for its value.  Greed – all the more so when it leads to less than honest expression – is the very antithesis of the example set by the Jewish forefather associated with emes.  The righteous, continue Chazal in their statement about Yaakov’s retrieval of the small jars, “do not extend their hands toward theft.”  Truly Jewish-minded Jews see money not as an end justified by any means but as a means that can lead to a holy end.

And if it’s only the end that matters, as it should, the means cannot be of any inherent importance.  Means can take many forms.  A wealthy person can, as many do, use his financial resources to help others and support Torah.  But the financially unendowed are at no disadvantage.  They simply resort to what other wealths they may have, their time, their intellects, their talents.

And so should we find ourselves with dollars, actual ones, raining down upon us, the Jewish thing to do would be to perhaps hold out our hands, but to stand perfectly, happily still.

© 2015 Hamodia