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The
Jewish 'Generation of Babel' Becomes a People
Translated from Hebrew by DR.
S. NAthan
l'ilui
nishmat Esther bat mordechai
L'ILUI NISHMAT MAYER HIRSH BEN
LAIBEL
Between the laws of
creation, formed by the Creator, and the functioning
systems formed by man, an epic confrontation is taking
place. Yet truthfully, what harm is there in
science’s splendid achievements? What is
ineffective about technology’s sophisticated
functional systems? For indeed they have
proven effective in resolving existential problems
over a broad range of applications, such as
medicine, economics, politics, social organization,
and security.
For some reason, there is
a fly in this ointment. The more effective
medical science grows, the more the public seeks
relief through alternative medicine. This
occurs, it is true, only in cases of failure.
Yet although failure occurs equally on both sides,
the alternative healer can become entangled in the
law, whereas the doctor entrenches himself behind
the license bestowed on him by organized
society. His superiority lies in his wiser
merging with society’s rules of play.
This example serves to
prove that more than protecting the consumer, the
legal system is designed to protect the professional
from charges that might be brought against him by
the consumer.
Such is the case with all
man-made systems. Their intention is to endow
the powerful and organized with the power to exploit
the individual, who has not had the wisdom to join
and belong to the group of the powerful and
organized, preferring to retain his own personal
freedom. Thus we find minority groups that are
deprived and exploited by a majority that forces
upon them rules of play that it itself
prefers.
The truth of the matter is
that man has created these social laws and systems
out of his desire to prove his non-dependence upon
his Creator, through his ability to operate systems
that are capable of offering satisfactory answers to
the problems of his existence – this despite a long
and winding road paved with failures of such
magnitude as to cast heavy doubt upon man’s good
judgment.
Consolidating a Nation
The bloody failures that
saturate human history have occurred mainly in the
public sphere. Yet on the surface of things,
why should a public sphere be necessary? Man
has adequate social interaction within the direct
and natural frameworks of family and tribe.
These are frameworks that have developed
organically, and that are derived from man’s own
natural and authentic needs.
Within this natural
framework, an individual finds fulfillment for his
need to belong as well as for his need for personal
freedom, for each of these needs complements the
other, as container and contained complement one
another. He develops a sense of
responsibility, being directly responsible for those
dependent on him. He learns to express
personal connectedness, emotions of love, and of
authority, all of which find their ideal expression
only within the bosom of the natural family.
Why then does man need to belong to a public domain,
if he is capable of finding his place in the private
domain?
Historical experience can
point to a deliberate distortion of the goals of
social organization. Intended in order to
uphold the principle of equality before the law, to
protect the individual from society – in keeping
with the sacrosanct value of protection of the weak
(the individual) against the strong (society) –
social government has instead been exposed as being
nakedly brutal.
Social government makes
cynical use of the human tendency to belong to a
group, emptying it of its meaningful content – the
value of the freedom of the individual – who is the
first one betrayed, to be used as a cover for the
aggressive individual, the quick and clever one who
knows how to exploit the rules of social play for
his own benefit.
The clever individual soon
becomes the all-powerful ruler, and his will becomes
the law, binding upon all the individuals who
populate that society, in droves. Thus a
tyrant thrives, trampling the will of the individual
with an arrogant foot, replacing it – by force –
with his own will.
“France is me,” declares
De Gaulle in his massive arrogance, never once
doubting the purity of his own intentions. In
this way a nationalistic ideal turns the dedicated
idealist into a dangerous person who annexes the
public welfare to himself. “I know what is
good for the Israelis better than they do,” Ben
Gurion declares.
In contrast, Moses "our
master" – the faithful shepherd – views himself as
no more than a servant. “How will I be able to
carry you by myself?” He is willing to remove
himself from office immediately upon request, and
even prior to that – whenever he feels he is not
succeeding in bringing the nation toward their
destiny.
Erev Rav – A Mixed Multitude: A
rabble of slaves of vague identity, an assortment of
individuals marching in a jumble under desert
conditions. Having no real hold on any
substantial reality, they require an identity that
will bond them, that will lead them toward a goal
that will rise – and raise them – high above and
beyond this existence that lacks any meaningful
content or realness.
The wise men of sociology
put their faith in the organization of a bonding
framework that is built of the sum total of its
members’ needs, and that consolidates them into an
ethnic group. They presume to attempt to
characterize all behavioral phenomena according to
cultural grouping.
What is unifying about
territory, language, history, and the rest of
communal living conditions is understandable.
What is less understandable is how a nation
maintains its bonds, its meaningful content, and its
goals, when dispossessed of most of the conditions
that create an ethnic group, and this throughout
millennia, while “scattered and separated among the
nations,” and mingled among populations of radically
different cultures, from the Far East to the Far
West.
The Characteristic Feature that Consolidates
a Jewish Public: Obligations
The Characteristic Feature that Consolidates
a Non-Jewish Public: Rights
“And you shall be a kingdom of priests
and a sacred nation for Me:”
Sacredness as authority. Supreme authority is
the key word; this consolidates a nation.
Mishkan, Tabernacle; Bet
HaMikdash, Holy Temple; Erets HaKodesh,
the Holy Land; mitsvot hatluyot ba’arets,
commandments conditional upon the Land; Hovat
Aliya LaRegel, Ascension [to the Temple] for
the Festival; hakravat korbanot, offering
of sacrifice; hilchot tuma, laws of impurity
– prohibiting entry to one impure as a result of
contact with the deceased; the obligation to purify
oneself; “and your camp shall be sacred”; “and the
unauthorized one who approaches shall be put to
death”; Kodesh Kodoshim, the Holy of Holies,
which the High Priest entered once a year to pray
over a holy nation; korbanot tsibur,
sacrifices on the public behalf...
These supreme elements –
that shelter like the ananei hakavod, the
protective shelter of the "clouds of glory," - these
supreme elements that sanctify everything that bows
to them – create an authority to which all are
subject and to which all are equally
obligated. This authority obligates the
individual, who becomes a part of a public that has
been consolidated by its obligation toward the
supreme authority, and by the obligation of each
individual toward his earthly fellow: “All of
Israel are guarantors for one another.” “Love
your friend as yourself; I am God.” The
Sabbath: “So that they can rest – your ox and your
friend and the stranger...”
The commandments “between
man and his fellow” create an obligatory network of
relations between one individual and another.
An individual is not permitted to abstain from
involvement with the public. This obligation
upon individuals forms them into a consolidated
unit, in that this obligation penetrates into the
private realm, preventing self-centered isolation,
yet not negating the private space, and indeed
encouraging creative personal expression.
Individual freedom is not
threatened by one’s obligation to belong to the
public, in that this obligation is absolutely
coordinated with an individual’s right to
freedom. This obligation is measured solely by
the individual’s ability, and does not exist in a
case in which public involvement will deprive the
ability to cultivate one’s own unique
contribution. The Jewish perception views
belonging to the group as a containing vessel that
preserves freedom and that does not exist at
freedom's expense.
We can see then that
supreme authority completes the individual’s
obligation, forming a perfect circle, as an
expression of individual freedom within the
framework of belonging to a public, while both are
bonded into one entity. Thus individual rights
bloom in the garden of public obligation.
Obligation comes forth to express pleasure, and
rights and duties join hands in perfect
friendship. There is no room for the hostile
mechanisms of self-preservation in this idyllic
relationship where belonging acts as the
preservative of personal freedom.
The key word that
characterizes western society is ‘rights.’ The
right of the individual to freedom, to equality
before the law, and all the other enticements:
Anyone caught in their trap finds himself entangled
in the fine print of the law, which turns the whole
pot of rights on its head. He enters innocent,
and leaves guilty, as in Kafka’s work, The Trial:
He is completely incapable of comprehending why and
wherefore, and how it came about.
How could it be otherwise,
when the basis of belonging to the group are the
seductions that emerge from the study halls of
the survival instincts, and with egocentricism being
the cause and purpose of one’s existence.
A public that is
consolidated by the terror of existence – a terror
that never looses its grip upon the individual,
gnawing incessantly at his confidence – is compared
to a jungle, in which “one man to another is a
wolf,” and all that is left for the law to do is to
defend the individual from the terror of the wolves
that circle his private space.
Recognition of the freedom
of the individual is limited to accepting his right
to express his tendencies, or perversions, or any of
survival instinct’s other seductions, as long as
these are not carried out at the expense of others.
Such a framework, built on
the survival instincts, takes no interest in
educating for values. Ultimately, it
cultivates an increasingly rapacious survival
instinct: The genie of wantonness and moral abandon
escapes from the bottle, never to be forced back in.
The damage is
irreversible. It creeps first from the private
realm, eventually to poison the public realm,
gradually assuming epidemic proportions.
Reciprocally destructive relationships form between
the private space and the public space. The
free market becomes a cartel of monopolies, one
greedier than the other. Goodness is traded
for a winner, and authority for power.
Ratings, etc. (all components of the public survival
instinct) are substituted for the values and goals
that were a source of sustenance for the public:
Family lineage, respect for the wise, for the elder,
for tradition, for all factors denoting permanence
such as homeland, such as supreme goals and
authority: All these are pushed aside for the
fleeting, for the dynamic flow of change that
welcomes every passing wind.
Politics with its fluid
and fickle character as opposed to what is
permanent. The popular lie as opposed to truth
as a value. Fickle public opinion as opposed
to the bedrock foundations of existence and a vision
of destiny. Moods as opposed to guiding
principles that are anchored in the past and that
lead toward eternal destinations.
Modern politics is ruled
by power groups representing egocentric interests
that are remote indeed from reflecting the immunity
and immutability of a people. Thus modern
society loses its family framework. Yet the
institution of the family is the only framework for
cultivating fundamental values, for educating to
responsibility for others.
That the foundations of
family are deteriorating is cause for concern, in
that it reflects a syndrome: Rejection of permanent
elements in favor of passing ones.
Our parasha raises
the banner of tribal and family relationships, as
the tool for expressing the permanent values that
promise and preserve a continuity of values, and
that include in their embrace both the group and
every single individual.
When the first-born group
is replaced by the cohen group
to be God’s ministers, this has the effect of
purifying the chosen group of any trace of a power
basis. It is established instead upon a basis
of values that is as pure as possible.
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