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A Year of Jewish Ethics #15: Gossip (Lashon Ha-Ra)

How does Torah define gossip?

The dictionaries in English describe gossip as talking about people behind their backs, usually in an uncomplimentary way; or spreading rumors about people without knowing whether something is true; or sharing private details about someone without their permission. Gossip seems like a casual kind of talking, though of course the consequences can be serious in terms of relationships and embarrassment.

In Torah, the overarching term that’s related to gossip is lashon ha-ra, which means literally “harmful tongue.” As I noted in the first teaching in this series, the Torah begins with the power of words. With words the Divine creates the universe and each element within it. So naturally Judaism teaches that the ethics of speech is at the highest level of ethical significance; one statement even parallels lashon ha-ra with murder.

So how is lashon ha-ra defined specifically in Jewish law? Here is how Maimonides categorizes some different varieties.

Rechilut means talking about a third person, telling something they said or spreading a rumor about them, even when these things are true. It comes from a root-word meaning a traveling merchant, a peddler. Lashon hara is when you say something negative about a person, again even if it’s true.

Motzi shem ra means “bringing about a bad name or reputation”, and Maimonides defines it as spreading a lie about someone.

And Maimonides also describes what he calls avak lashon ha-ra, the “dust of lashon ha-ra”. Which includes innuendos, like saying “I don’t want to say anything about Ploni”, winking that actually you are thinking something juicy or negative and encouraging someone to ask you or to fill in the blanks on their own.

Or saying something gossip-y in a humorous way. Or even certain types of praise, which could provoke jealousy. If you comment on the nice party someone else threw, the person you’re with might be envious that you were invited but not them, or upset that you don’t think their own gatherings are as lovely.

All these types of speech back up the Jewish teaching that lashon ha-ra harms not only the one spoken about, but also the speaker and the listener.

If you go by this code strictly, you might wonder if you could ever say something about another person at all! Even if it’s praiseworthy or constructive. We need ways to confer about ethical matters that involve other people who aren’t around, and in fact there are other parts of the codes that address how to talk about public matters, for instance. Some sociologists even propose that there varieties of harmless talk rooted in good humor that help people bond even though they are within the lashon ha-ra framework.

I think it’s worth considering the extreme version laid out by Maimonides based on the Talmud, even as a way of monitoring one’s own speech and noticing just how many different ways we do talk about others and how our casual or light words might be harmful. It might help us hold back some, or challenge us to find things to say that are more germane to the people we are with rather than those who are somewhere else. We could all benefit from studying the teachings of lashon ha-ra and having our own code about gossip.

In the Torah, the mitzvah of not being a "peddler" of rumors is in Parashat Kedoshim, Leviticus 19:16. The laws relating the skin disease called tzara'at in Parashiyot Tazria-Metzora, Leviticus chapters 13-14, are taken as metaphors for the social processes and moral implications of lashon ha-ra.

For one of my own deeper dives, click here for my Rosh Hashanah sermon on the topic in 5773 (2012).

A Year of Jewish Ethics #14: Labor Justice, Part 1

The Jewish perspective on the responsibilities of employers reflects the story of our oppression in Egypt, shi’ibud mitzrayim. That oppression began as forced labor, and when the Torah teaches about wage workers, it often uses the same words that it uses to describe slavery. Jewish law recognizes the inherent dynamic between the one who pays and the one who waits to be paid, the power of the employer and the vulnerability of the employee. So the Torah not only demands a fair wage but emphasizes this particularly for those who most need the income. Employees hired for a day of work must be paid on that day, and their wages may not be held even just until the next morning. This law so that workers not experience even a night of exploitation, and also so that employers not experience a night like Pharoah, the who took our labor for nothing.

The treatment of workers goes beyond the money relationship. One midrash explores the Hebrew word perech or b’farech, which shows up both in the Egypt story and in the later Torah laws and is usually translated as “ruthlessness.” The midrash relates the word perech to the two words peh rach, which means “soft mouth” or “soft speech, gentle speech.” It imagines Pharaoh first inviting our ancestors to join him to work together on his building projects, even making bricks himself. Thinking this was a gesture of comradery, they came to build alongside him and worked with gusto as a strong and mighty and devoted people would. But when night fell, Pharaoh left them with overseers who were instructed to implement strict quotas on their production. The pose of solidarity and graciousness in the midrash is an injury on top of the material exploitation. So employers are charged to be careful how they speak and how they related to workers, not to mislead about intentions or insinuate promises or offers or relationships they do not intend to honor.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, one of our foremost teachers about Jewish labor law, reminds us of the Torah’s teaching that all of us are in fact servants – servants of the Divine (for instance Leviticus 25:42). She quotes the frequent Talmudic elaboration that we are not servants to other servants – v’lo avadim la’avadim.

That’s true regardless of economic status. So, many Jewish teachings emphasize that a laborer should never made even to appear lower status or slave-like. That applies to the nature of the work, the conditions, and the way employers and supervisors speak with employees.

Shabbat is of course the ultimate Jewish teaching about labor. The Torah teaches that no matter who we work for, we deserve to rest, and anyone who works for us is entitled to the same rest as we are. This is a matter of justice, again recalling the unceasing work imposed on us as slaves in Egypt. And we recognize that even the Divine is pictured as needing to stop working after creating the universe. We are not to become slaves to our work, even to worthwhile work as God’s surely was and is.

Work itself, whether self-directed or in someone else’s employ, is considered by the Torah to be a way we imitate God. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught that the Torah’s command about Shabbat begins “six days shall you work” (Exodus 20:9, for instance) -– we are to be creators as the Divine is a creator. In treating our employees well, we are recognizing and honoring someone who through their labor for us is reflecting the Divine.

For a much deeper dive, see Rabbi Jill Jacobs' responsum, "Work, workers and the Jewish owner."

A Year of Jewish Ethics #13: Lost and Found

It is a mitzvah to return a lost object to its owner. That might seem like a fairly obvious thing to do, but what’s not so obvious is why Jewish law considers returning things to be such a major mitzvah. There are eight chapters devoted entirely to lost and found in the Mishneh Torah, the comprehensive code of Jewish law by the philosopher and Rabbi Moses Maimonides.

To start with the basics, the name for this mitzvah is hashavat aveidah. Hashavat means “returning of”, from the same word as teshuvah, changing ourselves by returning, and aveidah is something lost.

The first thing you’re supposed to do when you find an item is to figure out whether it has signs that it belongs to someone else or rather the kind of thing that is easily disregarded even by someone who might have owned it. This section of the laws is fairly common sense. Look for a name or some kind of identifier, obviously. But also it makes a difference if the item has indications that it was made or assembled by someone, even if you can’t tell who at first glance. The Mishnah gives the examples of a pouch of coins, or a stack of three coins, or a loaf of bread with coins inside it, or a loaf of bread with a distinctive shape different from the typical loaf sold in the market. These look like things someone cared about, put together with intention.

If an object looks like it might belong to someone, Jewish law says to hold onto it and make a public announcement. Anyone who claims the lost item would have to tell its identifying marks; otherwise you are not obligated to give it to the person.

And here’s where the mitzvah goes beyond the obvious. There is one view in the Mishnah that you have to wait for a cycle of the three annual pilgrimage festivals to be completed before giving up finding the owner. There is a tradition that in the Second Temple in Jerusalem there was actually a lost and found, known as the Claimer’s Stone, Even To’en, where people would announce lost objects and come to look for them on the festivals. After a time, if the owner doesn’t materialize, then the owner is considered to have given up hope of finding their lost object, and the finder can keep it.

Before that time is up, the person with a lost object is obligated to take care of it. If it’s a scroll, the Mishnah says, it should be unrolled and read from each month. There are responsibilities for another person’s lost animals – the finder has to take care of them. That’s how the Torah introduces this mitzvah, by talking about animals that have wandered off (Deuteronomy 22:1-3). As you can imagine, this is itself a complicated area of Hashavat Aveidah, because there are costs that go with taking care of an animal.

Where does the spiritual force behind Hashavat Aveidah come from? One is the general Jewish concept that possession does not come with unlimited rights. Possession as often comes with obligations and limits. It’s always a covenant between us and God, and that’s even when I do own outright the thing in my possession. We are in some sense always borrowers from the Divine, even when we are not holding onto someone else’s lost item.

But we can also zero in on the two words that label this mitzvah: Hashavat Aveidah Hashavat , the returning-of, comes from the root shuv, which means to go back or return both literally and spiritually. I’ve already taught in this series about teshuvah -- going back as the central spiritual practice of reviewing our deeds, going over them, and if we did wrong and find ourselves returning to a similar situation then choosing a different action.

Lost objects remind us of our own misplaced souls, which we are always seeking and which we depend on others to bring us back to.  Lost objects remind us that the world is full of good things that aren’t always where they belong. Ideas and ideals and purposes, when they are not actively being made real it’s not because they don’t exist, but just because they have wandered off, become detached from the people they belong to.

In the Torah the first avediah, the original lost item, is the Jewish people. We were lost in Egypt, away from our domain, the place where we did our essential work and were nourished. The Divine found us, cared for us in the wilderness while we were still lost, and returned us. Lost and found is the foundation of our story. The whole Exodus story is Hashavat Aveidah.  So every time we stop and notice a lost object, and try to return it, we are trying to imitate the Divine.

For a deeper dive into the spiritual significance of Hashavat Aveidah, and its relationship to teshuvah, click here to read or here to listen.

A Year of Jewish Ethics #12: Exodus and Freedom

In my overview of ethics and Exodus, you may have noticed I didn’t talk about one central idea: freedom! Well, the Jewish conception of freedom deserves its very own presentation.

In Judaism freedom has many layers. The term for free people is b’nai chorin; a free person might be a bat chorin or a ben chorin. One of the first blessings we say in the morning expresses gratitude to God she-asani bat chorin or she-asani ben chorin, for making me a free person.

Obviously from the story of Yetziat Mitzrayim, freedom means not being subject to a tyranny or tyrant, and not being forced to work without earning a fair share of the fruits of one’s labor. Flipping that around, we have a positive obligation to do what’s in our power to increase political freedom and eliminate economic exploitation. Whether that’s in how we vote or how we treat people we pay to work for us, or in more continual or large-scale civic action.

When the rabbis of the early Talmud were discussing how to tell the Exodus story at the Pesach Seder, there was a disagreement about the exact arc -- the beginning and the climax of the story. The sage Shmuel said that the story begins with “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Mitzrayim”, Avadim hayinu l'Phar'oh b'Mitzrayim -- suggesting that the story is fundamentally about political and economic oppression, and the Exodus achievement is crossing the sea into freedom. Rav said that the story begins with our idol-worshipping ancestors long before even Egypt, and that the real transformation in the story is arriving at Mt. Sinai. There, away from Pharaoh, we were given the freedom to accept the Torah and the Divine covenant. Rav’s concept of freedom includes the ability to choose a covenant to be bound by.

The debate between Rav and Shmuel foreshadows a distinction made by the modern Jewish political philosopher Isaiah Berlin between negative freedom and positive freedom. Negative freedom is freedom from unjust constraints. Positive freedom is freedom for. The choices a free person has the ability to make ought to be good choices, directed at a higher good and guided by Torah. The Exodus story is obviously about both. The demand Moshe brings to Pharaoh from the Divine is not just “Let My people go”, but “Let My people go that they may serve me" Shalach et ami v'ya'avduni.

The freedom at Mt. Sinai involves trading a surface freedom for the ability to choose wise guidelines and commitments to live by. Being able to make a covenant and bind ourselves to it is part of the Jewish concept of freedom.

Sometimes what gets in the way of our positive freedom isn’t force from the outside, but forces on our inside. In fact all the way back at the beginning of the Torah, in the Garden of Eden, the first woman exemplifies for us the nature and operation of freedom as she weights the fruit she has heard she may not eat, but which the snake says will bring her godlike powers. The Torah describes her moment of deliberation, as she sees that the fruit is good to eat, exciting to the eyes, and fascinating to contemplate. In that moment, she is free to assess the outside authority of God and the snake, her relationship to her husband – all of that coming from the outside -- and the superficial and deeper dimensions of the fruit, the present and the possible future that might flow to her if she eats – these are on the inside.

Being free means using our capacity to assess authority when authority gives us both rules and the space to follow or question. It means sorting out our perceptions and judgments, noticing what is on the surface which might appeal to our desires in the moment, and what might be deeper implications or consequences.

Being b’nai chorin, free people, means bringing more decisions into this kind of awareness. It means cultivating that in others whether as educators or parents or friends, and creating spaces for others to act with that kind of freedom. And not ourselves being arbitrary authorities or exerting emotional force or manipulative words to push someone away from their freedom.

That’s why to me there is a connection between the first of the Ten Commandments and the first rule in the law code that immediately follows. The First Commandment doesn’t sound like a commandment – “I am Adonai Your God who brought you out of the land of Mitzrayim, out of the house of slaves.” The first law is about possessing and freeing a household slave after six years. I don’t think it’s really a permission to own slaves. On the contrary, it’s a recognition that each of us at some point finds ourselves exerting coercive power over someone else, in one way or another. We have a responsibility not only to relinquish that, but to bring a person who is not free enough toward their own positive freedom.

A Year of Jewish Ethics #11: Exodus and Ethics

Most of this series is about specific concepts in Jewish ethics, but like the last one I recorded I want to talk here about something foundational, namely the Exodus story and how it generates so much of Jewish ethics.

Sometimes when we say “Exodus” we’re talking about the part we focus on during Pesach, the festival of Passover, from enslavement by Pharoah to liberation by the Divine. This Exodus is known in Jewish terminology as the Going-Out from Egypt, Yetziat Mitzrayim.

There is a book of the Torah called Exodus, or Shmot in Hebrew. The book of Exodus takes the story further, toward Mt. Sinai where the people experience Divine revelation, enter into a covenant, and receive many specific laws and teachings. It includes the story of the Golden Calf, the first major challenge to those teachings. Shmot ends with the people contributing from their own materials toward the building of the Mishkan, a sacred tent where a cloud of Divine presence comes to rest.

And sometimes when we talk about the Exodus, we mean actually everything that happens in the Torah after Yetziat Mitzrayim, including the whole forty-year journey through the desert and all the challenges and insights of that journey, all the way to the doorstep of the Promised Land.

Here are some ways that Yetziat Mitzrayim shapes Jewish ethics.

First, the Exodus extends the idea that human beings are created in the image of the Divine, B’tzelem Elohim. God pays attention to a people who as outcast as a people can be. A people exiled from their home, feeling abandoned by their God -- indeed, living in a deep valley far from the heavens. A people demonized by a ruler, feared by him and then mocked by him. A people covered in the mud in which they worked as they made bricks for Pharaoh’s works. This is the people the Divine chose as the vehicle for bringing Torah into the world. This is the way the Divine chose to reveal something of God’s essential nature, by showing the Israelites and the world that no one is beyond the reach of Divine attention.

Second, and related, the book of Exodus presents this as though it were a heavier lift for God than even creating the heavens and the earth. Requiring even more Divine energy, metaphorically speaking. It takes many more chapters to make liberation happen than it does to create the universe. In Genesis the Divine creates against a backdrop of formlessness, but in Exodus there is an active and powerful enemy in Pharaoh who calls himself a god. It’s in proving God’s-self against Pharaoh that God shows the measure of Divine strength and greatness.

Third, the opening chapters of Exodus show different people pulled toward connections to others and their responsibilities to them, motivated by more than group solidarity. The first people we meet in the book of Shmot include midwives who serve Israelite mothers but might themselves be Egyptian; Pharaoh’s own daughter, who decides to override her father’s decree of death for Hebrew babies when she is face-to-face with one herself; Moshe, who when he first encounters slaves we’re not sure if he knows he’s an Israelite or if they do either. These stories force us to ask how it is that people decide whom they are connected to, reconcile different sources of authority, reconcile law and compassion, reconcile public identity and conscience.

Fourth, the experience of Yetziat Mitzrayim shows up in all kinds of specific Jewish ethical teachings. The most obvious is the one labeled over and over by the Torah itself: Do not oppress or abuse or defraud someone who is “other” (ger) in your society, because that was you in the land of Egypt. The Torah’s business and labor ethics are meant to be the opposite of Pharaoh. The prohibition against verbal abuse and fraud is a response to Pharaoh. Even the importance of returning lost objects to their owners is an echo of the Divine restoring us, a lost people, to our place and our dignity.

Some of these sorts of things are of course in other systems of ethics too. But in Judaism, we are guided to see ourselves and others always in the light of the Exodus. Not only as a past experience, but as an essential drama taking place on a daily basis. We are always trying to be aware of when we slip into the habits of Pharaoh in our own domain, and whether there is someone near us who might need the same outstretched arm we did in Mitzrayim.

A Year of Jewish Ethics #10: Teshuvah

One of the most fundamental Jewish ethical practices is teshuvah. Teshuvah is the word that’s often translated as “repentance” and is too often just associated in people’s minds with the season of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Yamim Nora’im or Days of Awe. The word teshuvah has a broader meaning of “going back” or maybe “going back over”, and it is in fact a fundamental discipline in Judaism for every time of year. In Rabbi Moses Maimonides’ code of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, teshuvah is taught not in the holy day section but in the section on the fundamentals of Torah.

Maimonides defines the paradigm of teshuvah as finding oneself in a situation where one previously acted wrongly or made the wrong choice, and this time doing it differently. Maimonides notes that there are various ways to avoid doing wrong, including just not thinking of it the next time, or not having the power or capacity to do the same wrong this time around. So for Maimonides, the ideal teshuvah is when you come to a situation again, with awareness of exactly what you did wrong and the reality that it was wrong, and with all the same capacities and thoughts that you brought to the earlier time available to you this current time. But this time, out of free will you override any situational or internal factors and take a different action.

Usually we are not in the exact same situation – with the exact same person we mistreated a certain way, in the same locale or setting. Generally teshuvah opportunities are by analogy, when the situation reminds us of something we did before. Teshuvah is a discipline of noticing those parallels, those analogies and resonances, and going back. We’re supposed to go back in memory so we can name the act, the type of situation, the thoughts or motivations behind our choice before that we want to reverse. Then an act of teshuvah is not just a bad act avoided this time, but a change within, overcoming a prior thing or a prior pattern in a way that is more likely to endure.

The figure in the book of Bereshit or Genesis who most exemplifies teshuvah is Yehudah, the fourth of the twelve sons of Yaakov. Yehudah plays a key role in throwing their young brother Yosef into a pit to get him out of their lives, and then making it look to their father as though Yosef had been killed by a beast. Yehudah sees his father himself torn apart in mourning and doesn’t do anything to show the truth, much less own up to the act. Some years later, during the famine, Yehudah and most of his remaining brothers go down to Egypt to buy food. They meet with an official there, who they don’t realize is actually Yosef himself – in any case, the Egyptian sends them off with food but insists on holding captive one brother, Shimon, and says that the brothers cannot come again for food without bringing along their youngest brother Binyamin.

They go home to Yaakov in the land of C’naan, and eventually their purchased food runs out. The only option is to go back to Egypt, and the only way they can do that is with Binyamin. Yaakov initially refuses, reminding his sons of his ongoing grief over Yosef. Standing in this situation once again, seeing his father still inconsolable, Yehudah has a moment of teshuvah. He tells Yaakov that he personally will guarantee Binyamin’s safety, exactly what he did not do when the brothers wanted to harm Yosef. This guarantee is the only thing that convinces Yaakov to let them take Binyamin.

Then in Egypt, when the official offers to release all of the brothers to return home well provisioned if they leave Binyamin behind – Yehudah steps forward and tells this (apparent) Egyptian stranger a version of the story of their family. He mentions his father and his father’s losses and grief; he mentions that there is a brother not with them. It’s not the whole story. But faced with a similar choice as at the pit and after, Yehudah goes back to the moment when Yosef was left behind and the aftermath. He states his refusal to do those things again, to another brother and to his father.

The book of Bereshit (Genesis) is not a manual of ethics; there are plenty of actions by our founding ancestors that look wrong or are wrong, even in the eyes of our tradition. And in fact as we will see, it will take the Exodus story to finish the foundations of Jewish ethics. But if we look at the Torah from the standpoint of ethics, it is the development of Yehudah that is the culmination of the book of Genesis, the defining part of the generation that will complete the book. Yehudah’s change may not meet every criterion of Maimonides for complete teshuvah. But it’s also a reminder of how much we can do by approaching that ideal. Yehudah’s teshuvah is described in the Torah through a series of moments. That’s what teshuvah is, an ongoing spiritual, ethical discipline, and it's one of the gifts of the many final chapters of the book of Bereshit. It is one of the reasons that we, the Jews, are named after Yehudah (Judah) -- the Judah-ites, the Jews, the people who do teshuvah.

For a completely different type of deep dive on teshuvah, check out Tov! A Podcast About "The Good Place" and Jewish Ideas -- here on the web, or search for Tov! on any podcast app.

A Year of Jewish Ethics #9: If Someone Treats You Badly How Good Do You Have to Remain?

All of us want to hold ourselves to a high standard of integrity and honesty and to go the extra mile for people as much as we can. But what happens when we are stuck dealing with another person who is either straight up unethical toward us, or whose actions are only just technically acceptable, not against a rule or a law but right at the line and not as good as they should be. And no feedback is going to lead to any change.

I’m talking particularly about business relationships, where in addition to being unpleasant it might cost money that a provider with more integrity would not charge. Though you can think about whether what I say applies beyond a financial context.

Whenever possible we should avoid people who are known to do business this way, or to extricate ourselves once it becomes clear that this is the case. But that’s not always possible, either because there is only one person or firm who does what we need, or because the financial or practical costs of cancelling a contract are prohibitive. Left in such a situation, how far is it acceptable to sink from our own standards to set things right for ourselves, so long as we are not ourselves violating a basic ethical norm?

This is how exactly how I see the situation of Yaakov Avinu and his father-in-law Lavan, in Genesis chapter 30 in Parashat Vayetze. Lavan has taken advantage of Yaakov’s labor for nearly two decades, changing the terms of his service and giving Yaakov the most unfavorable interpretation of their agreements. Yaakov finally tells Lavan he wishes to leave and they negotiate an exit fee to be paid to Yaakov. Instead of asking for a certain number of sheep and goats, Yaakov proposes to tend part of Lavan’s flock for one last period of time, and then collect the speckled and spotted animals among that part as his final payment.

Lavan agrees to the terms as spelled out. Then, Yaakov sets up a breeding system that dramatically increases the number of speckled and spotted animals within his assigned flock, far beyond the expected yield. When Lavan’s sons become aware of what has happened, they see it is as stealing on the part of Yaakov, and communicate that to their father.

What Yaakov has done here is to make a specific agreement and then get the most out of it. Presumably Yaakov knew that he would be able to leave with a bigger payment than Lavan thought he would owe, but it’s all within the letter of the agreement.

Did Yaakov owe Lavan the kind of extra, ahead-of-time transparency that Lavan had never given him? Lavan had not always lived by the letter of his own statements; was it okay for Yaakov to make the most of his own, as long as he himself has not lied?

In this kind of circumstance, where Yaakov has been defrauded over many years, I see the Torah indicating that it is permissible for him to try to make his situation better so long as he does not engage in actual dishonesty. He has after all an obligation to his family and himself, and is not required to leave without the means to set up away from Lavan in some kind of security. And at the same time, it’s important for Yaakov to understand that he is stooping. Not stooping all the way to Lavan’s level, but in that direction. There is a spiritual cost to making that choice in the moment, and a risk for the future of getting used to it -- a risk to himself and to people he may affect. Much of Jewish ethics is a virtue ethics, where our ability to act well has to be built and then replenished continually by repeated actions. When we do something we know is just all right but not honorable, we set up an obstacle for ourselves. Yaakov already has too much experience in his prior life being comfortable with deceit, and indeed some of his own children will learn badly from his example.

I have not quoted much from the Talmudic commentaries on Yaakov and Lavan, or other sources that ask the same question outside that context. But at least on this story from the Torah, there is a sense in the tradition from some interpreters that someone in Yaakov’s situation has a defense for stooping the way he did -- but one ought to still recognize that it is stooping, and take more steps than Yaakov did to prevent yourself from making such stooping into a habit, much less something you are proud of.

A Year of Jewish Ethics #8: War and Peace

The word Shalom is probably the most widely-known Hebrew word, among Jews and also people who aren’t Jewish. Shalom means peace, and because of that Shalom is also the word for greeting someone and saying goodbye. Shalom means not just peace but wellbeing and wholeness, so when we see someone we are expressing our hope that they are well and whole, and we leave we wish them a blessing of peace.

Shalom is even part of the name of our holiest city, Yerushalayim, Jerusalem, the City of Peace. Shalom is central to the Jewish view for humanity and for our holy land.

And at the same time, Judaism is not pacifist. War is sometimes unavoidable and sometimes necessary. One question we can ask is how Judaism views that necessity.

One response is in the midrash about the reunion between Yaakov and Esav. Yaakov returns toward home after 20 years of separation from his brother Esav, who at the time wanted to kill him. So Yaakov is afraid this is still the case, particularly after hearing that Esav has 400 men with him. The Torah says that "Yaakov was very afraid and he was troubled", vayira Yaakov m’od vayeitzer lo (Genesis 32:8).

The midrash picks up on the two descriptions for Yaakov’s fear, and explains it like this: Yaakov was afraid that Esav might kill him, and he was troubled that he might have to kill Esav.

Between this verse and the brothers’ actual reunion, there is the famous story of Yaakov wrestling at night with a being. This being is often called an angel, but in one midrash, the being is described as a representation of Esav and his might. In the course of the fight, Yaakov is given a new name, Yisrael, which has inside it the word sar which means "power" or "rule." And at the end of the fight, in the morning, Yaakov is limping.

These two midrashim suggest a view of war: that being powerful is necessary, and that even justified killing is wounding to one’s soul. War can be necessary for survival, and survival is important not just in itself but in order to continue the covenant the Jewish people are charged with following. Killing in war is never desired, whether the people who die are innocent or enemies. Going to war ought to be sobering, never triumphalist, even when it’s unavoidable or the cause is just. A people who fights will be defined by that fighting, as Yaakov was renamed Yisrael, and they will always have something to heal from, as Yaakov did.

And shalom must remain a goal and a hope, embraced even when shalom between particular nations isn’t likely in the short-term. That is one of the reasons why the essential part of every Jewish service, the Amidah, always concludes with prayers of shalom.

A Year of Jewish Ethics #7: Competition

The story of Yaakov and Esav is basically about an unending competition, which begins even in the womb over who will be born first. Esav wins, earning the birthright which would be relevant for inheritance way later -- but Yaakov manages to get it from him in a deal for some lentil stew. The brothers compete for their father Yitzchak’s blessing, which is about both a spiritual legacy and an easier life for the blessed one and his descendants. In between these two stories, Yitzchak himself is in a competition with his Philistine neighbors over control of a series of wells that his father Avraham had dug and the Philistines claimed for themselves or tried to block Yitzchak from accessing.

These competitions are all in Parashat Toldot, a single Torah reading. And these stories are part of a larger motif of competition that goes throughout the book of Bereshit (Genesis), from Kayin and Hevel (Cain and Abel) all the way to the end through the twelve sons of Yaakov.

Competition is a fact of life the Torah acknowledges and depicts, from specific incidents between individuals to the destiny of tribes and nations. So what does Judaism generally have to offer us as a perspective on competition?

Obviously these Genesis stories portray the destructive effects of certain kinds of competition. In the Talmudic tradition, competition can be a generative dynamic. Talmudic Judaism itself is created and expressed through a series of discussions where rabbis try to best each other intellectually and spiritually. The generations that created the foundations of Jewish law in the Mishnah and Gemara are anchored by pairs of sages who pushed each other about every kind of topic: Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael, Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah, Rav and Shmuel, Rabbi Yochanan and Resh Lakish, to name a few. Not to mention Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, two entire schools of thought. In the Talmudic literature, when a pair of sages squares off for the sake of Heaven, Torah is perfected.

In Talmudic thought we also find the notion of harnessing the yetzer hara, which is the selfish or competitive nature within us. Humans are regarded as having two motors, this yetzer hara, the so-called evil nature, and the yetzer hatov, the nature for good. In one view, the yetzer hara is what perfects goodness (Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 9:7), because it’s competition that pushes people to do constructive things like building a house, and more profound things as we've seen with the Talmud. If someone in the economic sphere becomes wealthy through competition, their wealth can become tzedakah that helps someone else on a scale that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. Even if the original motivation is not pure, the outcome can be very good.

In a future video, I’ll talk about competition more particularly in the realm of business. For now, the Jewish view of competition can be summed up with reference to another Talmudic story, where the rabbis capture the yetzer hara and put it in prison (Yoma 69b). Many creative and productive activities come to a screeching halt. So the rabbis come up with the idea of altering the yetzer hara in some way and then release it back into the world, to get the best of competition without its destructive effects. That’s the Jewish perspective. If only the story told how us how to do that specifically, not just metaphorically!

A Year of Jewish Ethics #6: Ownership

In chapter 23 of Bereshit Sarah dies and in order to bury her, Avraham makes his first purchase of land. Burial is such an important mitzvah, and it’s important that a mitzvah becomes the context for the first purchase recorded in the Torah. What does this teach us about a Jewish ethic of ownership?

Avraham wants to buy from the Hittites M’arat Hamachpelah, the cave of Machpelah. Their leader, Ephron, wants to gift it to him, or perhaps only to give him the use of it. But Avraham wants to own it. So they go back and forth about whether it’s a gift or a purchase, until they agree on a price and make the deal.

Many people are critical of Avraham’s focus on this business at a time of mourning. But I think it’s worth considering nonetheless what the story teaches us about the ethical significance of ownership.

In modern America, we say “A man’s home is his castle.” Think about what this conveys about our culture. Ownership in the dominant American view is bound up primarily with individuality and individual control. That’s the typical starting point – owning creates an absolute individual right, and to deviate from that requires a special justification.

For Avraham, the starting point is different. Avraham has been a wanderer, and while he owns herds and has been very prosperous and never in need, only very late in life does he turns to consider ownership of land for the first time.

For Avraham ownership of the cave is grounded first and foremost in a purpose. There is an immediate purpose, which is a mitzvah he needs to do. He needs the cave to bury Sarah. Avraham also intends for this place to endure beyond his own life, as a physical symbol of his family legacy, which is the story of a covenant that is young at the moment but will unfold over generations. God has promised a mission for his descendants that will take place in this land, and Avraham wants to leave his descendants something connected to that which is theirs undisputedly.

Avraham’s purposes for owning the cave define what he can and can’t do there. He can’t use it to build a separate settlement for himself apart from the Hittites, or a fortification.

Second, for Avraham owning the cave is about defining a relationship between him and the people around him. Avraham has been a transient in this city of Chevron, coming and going, and the Hittites and he don’t necessarily know each other that well. So this acquisition is a jump-start toward an enduring relationship. At its best, doing business with someone is the easiest way to begin to develop trust. In the context of a very specific acquisition transaction, it’s easy to define what honesty and integrity are. If done well, exchanging ownership is an easy win, a deposit on a positive relationship. It’s a moment of equality, and then the boundaries around what’s mine and yours give us a way over time to respect each other’s individuality. Definition helps us see each other as who we are, to relate to each other specifically.

So in this story, ownership serves purpose and relationship. Within those come individuality and the prerogatives of ownership.

This is the ideal. Obviously owning is often not done well. Soon in the Torah Yaakov will purchase Esav’s birthright, but he will do it by taking advantage of someone who is weary and hungry. Modern examples of this are everywhere, including in the contemporary city of Chevron in Eretz Yisrael, and these realities lead some to a critique of ownership all together.

Which is why it’s important to define a Jewish ethic of ownership. Ownership is everywhere in our daily life and our social structure. It pervades our consciousness and our metaphors and our language. To push against the modern language of ownership we need an alternative. In the Torah, that alternative begins with Avraham and the Hittites, and the ownership of M’arat Hamachpelah.