JustASC

Ruth Messinger of the American Jewish World Serivce (the “Jewish Peace Corps”) gave the commencemnt address to graduates of the Jewish Theological Seminary on May 21.  It’s bound to add fuel to the peoplehood/universalism debate; in fact, I heard a federation leader critique it last night. He said that while Jews have an obligation to promote social justice beyond their own community, he worries that emphasis on universal social justice comes at the expense of the obligation to one’s fellow Jew.

Messinger unmistakable thrust was that the struggles and challenges within the Jewish community pale next to the poverty and degradation f elt in places like the Congo and Zimbabwe:

Previously, as a people, we were held together by our common enemies — by anti-semitism, by others’ hostility to Israel and by our remembrance of the holocaust. In the future we must also be held together by our commitment to our common values — by our recognition of our obligation not just to teach Torah but to live it, by our commitment to pursue justice.

What is required, first, is that we embrace those with whom we do not share a faith or a neighborhood, a country, a language, or a political structure. We must bend our minds and our voices, our energies and our material resources to help those most in need, both at home and abroad. They are surely b’tzelem elohim — people made in the image of god.

Note the “first” in the second paragraph. It puts universalist activism ahead of the classic Jewish activist’s concerns, namely anti-anti-Semitism, pro-Israel activity, and Holocoaust remembrance.

Messinger also suggests that the affluence of  American Jews obligates them to share with those outside the community (and that their own money woes are as nothing compared to the poorest of the poor):

Yes, there are people in our own communities who have suffered severe losses and have few financial resources left, and we must help them put their lives back together. There are many more people in our communities who have seen their investment portfolios shrink, but that has not translated into significant changes in their day-to-day lives. For many of the world’s poorest, however, shrinkage in their portfolio means going from one meal a day to none. It is important that we urge our community, that we urge ourselves, not to abandon our responsibility to these people….

Think for a minute of your grandparents or great-grandparents. I am certain the vast majority of them could not have imagined the level of affluence and influence the American Jewish community has today. If they were here, wouldn’t they ask us what we were doing with this significant wealth and power?….

The worst consequences of the economic crisis are not felt in the boardrooms or seen in our bank accounts. They are seen in the eyes of the children dying of hunger in Democratic Republic of Congo, and the children neglected in our own communities, the children here or there unable to get health care because a parent has lost a job or no transport is available or a hospital is without staff or medicine.

One thing she didn’t talk about, which I often hear in those arguing for Jewish universalist causes, is “tikun olam” as a tool for attracting and engaging young people. Her argument is solely about “committing to a higher moral standard.”

I don’t know what the rabbis, cantors, and Jewish educators in the audience made of her talk, although her unmistakable message was: “You can luxuriate in the parochial exercise of ministering to a comfortable, affluent ethnic group and its so-called ‘challenges,’ or you can help feed, clothe, and save the lives of people who are really suffering. Your call.”

I support engagement with the wider world, first and foremost as a Jewish (and human) moral imperative, but also as an advertisement for the Jewish people, and as a way to engage those for whom particularist Jewish causes seem either narrow or irrelevant.

But I don’t think we can go as far as Messinger, which perceives ethnic loyalties as an obstacle to a general philanthropic and altruistic impulse. In her reading, it’s either/or.  I find more compelling those who say  particularism and univeralism are not in conflict, but conversation. Our impulse to help the wider world develops within the bosom of famiy.  If you allow this family to wither by devoting all of its resources to the world beyond, that impulse may wither as well.