Jerusalem — In a famous Talmudic passage, our rabbis ask why God began the human race with only a single human being. To teach us, they answer, that we descend from a common ancestor, and that to kill another is to destroy a member of our own family.
To me these words represent our rabbis’ vision of a common humanity. Judaism is the faith whose concern does not end with “I” and “me.”
A recent experience revealed to me how much indifference we often feel. My first-year rabbinic school class took a trip to Mevasseret Zion, a town outside of Jerusalem, where we met with the first Israeli-born female rabbi. An inspiring speaker, she discussed how she came to the rabbinate and the struggles she has encountered building up a liberal Jewish community in Israel.
After our discussion, we boarded a bus and visited the site where her community is constructing a new synagogue and childcare center. It was hot and windy at the construction site, and dust blew in our eyes. We were also hungry and yearned to return to the sandwiches and air conditioning awaiting us at school.
I found it hard to focus on what the rabbi was saying to us about the synagogue’s architect and floor layout, so I looked around and saw six construction workers on the roof, all of them Arab, staring down at us. Their sweaty faces expressed a blend of curiosity, amusement and contempt. Their ragged clothes and tired bodies stood out in stark contrast to the glorious mountains surrounding us.
As the rabbi continued to speak, I found myself thinking about a poem by the late Yehuda Amichai, modern Israel’s most celebrated poet.
In his poem “Tourists,” Amichai imagines himself sitting on the steps in front of David’s Citadel in Jerusalem. Next to him are two heavy baskets that he had been carrying. In front of him is a group of tourists, whose guide is pointing out an arch built on the Citadel during the Roman period.
The guide is using Amichai’s head as a point of reference for explaining the location of the arch to the tourists, but becomes frustrated when Amichai moves his a head a bit.
Amichai says to himself, “Redemption will come only when they are told, ‘Do you see that arch over there from the Roman period? Never mind that, but near it, a little to the left and then down a bit, there’s a man who has just bought fruit and vegetables for his family.’”
Redemption might come for us when Israeli and Palestinian, Jew and Muslim, can make space for one another in their hearts. Indifferences — whether among Israelis and Palestinians, between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews, between rich and poor — threaten community and the realization of our common humanity.
One of the virtues and joys of Judaism is its celebration of relationships. It takes ten people to make a minyan. Most Jewish prayers are written in the plural. Community is not merely expedient or convenient; it is holy.
The Hebrew poet Ibn Gabriol, paraphrasing a sentence in the Talmud, once wrote: “When two people love one another, they can stand together on the head of a pin. When two people hate one another, the whole world is not wide enough for them to co-exist.”
Fox Point native Evan Moffic is a rabbinic student at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion who is studying in Israel this year.
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