Category Archives: issues of morality or ethics

A Lesson in Love

I used to pass the fellow each morning as I walked up Broadway in lower Manhattan on my way to work.  He would stand at the same spot and hold aloft, for the benefit of all passers-by, one of several poster-board and marker signs he had made.  One read “I love you!”  Another: “You are wonderful!”  The words of the others escape me, but the sentiments were similar.

He seemed fairly normal, well-groomed and decently dressed, and he smiled broadly as he offered his written expressions of ardor to all of us rushing to our offices. I never knew what had inspired his mission, but I know that something about it bothered me.

Then one day I put my finger on it.  It is ridiculously easy to profess true love for all the world, but it is simply not possible.  If one gushes good will at everyone, one offers it in fact to no one at all.

By definition, love must exist within boundaries, and our love for those close to us is of a different nature than our empathy for others with whom we don’t share our personal lives.  And what is more, only those who make the effort to love their immediate families and friends have any chance of truly caring, on any level, about all of mankind.

Likewise, those with the most well-honed sense of concern for their own particular communities are the ones best suited to experience true empathy for people who do not share their own national, ethnic or religious identity.

The thought, it happens, is most appropriate for this time of Jewish year, as Sukkos gives way, without so much as a second’s pause, to Shemini Atzeres (in the Gemara’s words, “a yom tov unto itself.”)

While most Jewish holidays tend to focus on the Jewish people and its particular historical narrative, Sukkos, interestingly, also includes something of a “universalist” element.  In the times of the Beis HaMikdosh, the seven days of Sukkos saw a total of seventy calf-sacrifices offered on the altar, corresponding, says the Gemara, to “the seventy nations of the world.”

Those nations – the various families of the people on earth – are not written off by our mesorah.  A mere four days before Sukkos’s arrival, on Yom Kippur, Jews in synagogues around the world read Sefer Yonah, the story of the prophet who was sent to warn a distant people to repent, and who, in the end, saved them from destruction.  Similarly, the sacrifices in the Beis HaMikdosh, the Gemara informs us, brought divine blessings down upon all the world’s peoples.  Had the ancient Romans known just how greatly they benefited from the merit of the sacrificial service, Chazal remarked, instead of destroying the structure, they would have placed protective guards around it.

And yet, curiously but pointedly, Sukkos’s recognition of the worth of all humanity is made real by the holiday that directly follows it, Shemini Atzeres.

The Hebrew word atzeres can mean “refraining” or “detaining,” and the Gemara (Sukkah, 55b) teaches that Shemini Atzeres (literally: “the eighth day [after the start of Sukkos], a detaining”) gives expression to Hashem’s special relationship with Klal Yisroel.

A parable is offered:

A king invited his servants to a large feast that lasted a number of days.  On the final day of the festivities, the king told the one most beloved to him, “Prepare a small repast for me so that I can enjoy your exclusive company.”

That is Shemini Atzeres, when Hashem “detains” the people He chose to be an example to the rest of mankind, when, after the seventy sacrifices of the preceding seven days, a single par, corresponding to Klal Yisroel, is brought on the altar.

We Jews are often assailed for our belief that Hashem chose us from among the nations to proclaim His existence and to call on all humankind to recognize our collective immeasurable debt to Him.

And those who are irritated by that message like to characterize the special bond Jews feel for one another as hubris, even as contempt for others.

The very contrary, however, is the truth.  The special relationship we Jews have with each other and with HaKodosh Boruch Hu, the relationships we acknowledge in particular on Shemini Atzeres, are what provide us the ability to truly care – with our hearts, not our mere lips or poster boards – about the rest of the world.  They are what allow us to hope – as we declare in Aleinu thrice daily – that, even as we reject the idolatries that have infected the human race over history, “all the peoples of the world” will one day come to join together with us and “pay homage to the glory of Your name.”

© 2006 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Zero-Sum Game

Anyone entertaining the notion that the advancement of “gay rights” needn’t adversely affect those with moral objections to the normalization of homosexual unions should pay close attention to what happened to Christopher Kempling.

The British Columbia public school teacher was suspended for a month without pay and  received a black spot on his professional record for writing letters critical of the practice of homosexuality to a local newspaper, the Quesnel Cariboo Observer.

The Canadian Charter of Rights protects citizens’ freedom of expression and religion, but that was apparently no bar, in the eyes of the British Columbia Supreme Court, to a local teachers panel’s punishment of Mr. Kempling.

As one of the justices wrote for the court in denying Mr. Kempling’s appeal of the penalty: “Discriminatory speech is incompatible with the search for truth.  In addition, [Mr. Kempling’s] publicly discriminatory writings undermine the ability of members of the targeted group, homosexuals, to attain individual self-fulfillment…”

The lesson of the Kempling case transcends its Canadian context; it is of no less import to Americans or Europeans. The issue of “gay rights” is not benign; the struggle between those who wish to make homosexuality acceptable as a normative lifestyle and those who do not is, simply put, a zero-sum game.  To the degree that the gay movement’s program is advanced, those who adhere to a traditional moral system will be not merely ignored, but vilified, demonized and penalized.

That “gay rights” zero-sum truism is at the core of a legal brief recently submitted to the United States Supreme Court by the organization I am privileged to represent, Agudath Israel of America.  We asked the Court to review and reverse a lower court’s decision permitting the state of Connecticut to disqualify the Boy Scouts from inclusion on a list of charities to which state employees were encouraged to contribute.  The reason the Boy Scouts were disqualified was the group’s policy of not allowing homosexuals to serve as scoutmasters or in leadership positions

One of the brief’s main points is that decisions like the lower court’s patently malign traditional religious groups for their deeply-held beliefs.  As The New York Sun noted in an editorial shortly after the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s “same-sex marriage” ruling, “with a few exceptions, this cause [the acceptance of same-sex marriage] is being advanced through the denigration of Jews and Christians who adhere to the fundamentals of religious law.”

The editorial went on to recount the reaction of “a friend” of the editorialist to the opposition to same-sex marriages asserted by “Agudath Israel and its Council of Torah Sages.”  Said the gentleman: “I see them as bigots…”

Similarly, an American Civil Liberties Union advertisement several years ago in The New York Times compared those who object on moral grounds to homosexuality as akin to vicious racists of yesteryear.  Those who espouse a traditional view of acceptable sexual behavior, the ACLU asserted, seek “to hide behind morality.”  But, the ad continues, “we all know a bigot when we see one.”

If disapproving of homosexual behavior is bigotry, then adherents of most religions – along with nonbelievers who nevertheless accept the validity of the traditional moral code – are, ipso facto, villains.  What is more, there is no reason why the label is any less applicable to those who disapprove of other affronts to the moral ideal – like multi-partner or incestuous relationships.  Either morality has true meaning and trumps what some people, even many people, wish to do, or it does not.

And if moral scruples are indeed conceptually devolved into bigotry, there will be not only denigration and derision of traditionalists, but discrimination and legal action against them too – as Mr. Kempling’s treatment and Connecticut’s action against the Boy Scouts well demonstrate.

The scenario of Catholic organizations, or Jewish religious schools, or devout Muslims being branded – and even prosecuted as – bigots, simply for operating or living according to deeply-held religious convictions is not unthinkable.

It is, on the contrary, but the logical outcome of a process that began as a plea for “rights,” is continuing as a demand that marriage be redefined, and that – unless it is stopped soon – will end as a triumphant crushing of the ability of religious, or just morality-minded, citizens and communities to live their lives freely, in accordance with their consciences and beliefs.

 

© 2004 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

Recidivist Parents

A number of well-known international groups are very unhappy with my wife and me.

We are, you see, “multi-children” parents, violators of both the law of averages and the sensibilities of folks like those at Zero Population Growth and other such organizations.  Yes, my wife and I helped contribute, even more than most American parents, to the world population’s recent passing of the six billion mark.

Many of our friends, for the most part Orthodox Jews like us, have similarly chosen to raise large families, sometimes with six, seven, even ten or more children.  To others, we must seem at best unbalanced, at worst irresponsible, for our choices – choices we regarded, and still regard, as entirely wise and proper.

The disapprovers are entitled to their opinion, of course.  But it can become irksome when strangers, confronted with the sight of my beloved family, offer unsolicited judgments.

The smiles and even the pointing fingers don’t bother me; I try to follow the Talmud’s dictum to judge others favorably, to assume the best: here, that the smilers and pointers are happy for us.  But commentators like the fellow in the airport who snidely query-editorialized, “Catholic or careless?” leave very little room for good will.  (“Jewish and caring,” I responded; it was all I could summon at the moment.)

And then there was what was probably my personal nadir of incivility, years ago in a California supermarket, when a severe-looking lady with an unmistakably Teutonic accent scolded a much younger and brasher me – wheeling a daughter-filled double stroller – with a humorless comment, something like, “Well YOU certainly don’t believe in population control!”

On that occasion, I must admit, I was inexcusably rude.  My Polish-born father and father-in-law each had siblings who never managed to make it out of young adulthood, thanks to some folks’ efficient determination to starve, shoot, gas or burn them.  Several of my children carry the names of those unmet great-aunts and great-uncles.

Maybe it was the matron’s accent that sent me, relatively speaking, over the edge.  “When I reach six million,” I heard myself intone through clenched teeth, “I’ll consider stopping.”

Though I think that, over the years, I have become more understanding of others’ dismay at large families, I haven’t quite managed to bring myself to regret that particular retort, graceless though it was.

As it happens, though, the Fraulein was quite right.  My wife and I are unrepentant infidels when it comes to the ZPG movement.  The “expert” predictions in the 1960s about a world swarming with wall-to-wall humanity within a decade or two have proven silly.  And although new claims have emerged about a future “population crisis”, they, like their predecessors, are impelled more by ideology than by empirical evidence.  One need do no more than take a drive across the vast empty spaces even within our own relatively crowded country to realize how lightly populated the planet really is.

And, if that doesn’t do the trick, return across Canada.

A subsequent stroll, moreover, down any Manhattan, Chicago or Los Angeles restaurant-row, taking note of the prodigious amounts of food daily discarded in modern cities, would be an equally eye-opening experience.  Human malnutrition, informed folk know, is the result not of new babies but of old problems.  Humans still starve, tragically, even in the new millennium, not because there is too little food but because of poor management, inefficient distribution and – perhaps primarily – because of the unconcern (or worse) of other humans.

In any event, much more than disbelief in doomsday scenarios or determination to re-establish truncated genealogies figures in my wife’s and my choice of a large family.  We would have endeavored no less even if Canada resembled Calcutta, even if the Holocaust had been only a bad horror film instead of history, even if we had needed to pull names for our children from the void.

For our faith-system, that of all Jews’ ancestors over millennia, views procreation in and of itself as the holiest of endeavors, and children as the greatest of blessings.  And when it comes to blessings, as most folk seem to naturally (though less aptly, to my lights) understand with regard to the monetary sort – the more, the merrier.  How ironic, I often reflect: Were children shares of blue-chip stocks, my wife and I would be regarded with neither disapproval nor curiosity but envy.

Which is not to say that having children is, in the end, a self-serving vocation.  It is true that life offers no joy remotely approaching the resplendent sight, at the end of a long, hard day, of a joyous, squeaking two-year-old face one has loved since its appearance on earth bobbing above a pair of little arms opened wide.  But the challenges of raising children, especially several times the average number of children per family, are considerable.  Barring a lottery-win, my family won’t ever retain a housekeeper or own a boat – or, for that matter, a road vehicle that someone else hasn’t driven for 50,000 or 60,000 miles first.  And any disposable income we manage to amass is quickly absorbed by one or another worthy but costly educational institution.

At the same time, though, and above all else, we believe with our hearts and souls that our children are gifts beyond all earthly value.  And my wife and I are doing all in our power to help ensure that our progeny will use their precious lives for the good of their fellow Jews and of humanity.

So if you should find yourself at a playground or highway rest stop and spy a group of Jewish kids of various ages who seem to resemble one another, please don’t think their parents irresponsible.  Try to remember that a profound commitment and deep love likely lie behind the striking sight.

And if it should happen to be any of my children or grandchildren, we’ll all do our part, and try to interpret any smiles we elicit as expressions of delight.

© 2003 Rabbi Avi Shafran