Overcoming the Inaction of Misplaced Humility

Disgraced and enraged at the Sages who failed to prevent his public humiliation, the Talmud (Gittin 56a) relates how Bar Kamza encouraged the Roman emperor to send a calf as an offering to the Temple. The Jews’ refusal to bring the offering on the holy altar, which Bar Kamtza ensured by blemishing the animal, would serve as proof of their rebellion against Rome.

The Rabbis wished to accept the offering, notwithstanding the blemish, thus frustrating Bar Ḳamtza’s plans and saving them from potential destruction. Yet, Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas prevented this, lest it set an erroneous precedent concerning laws of sacrifices for later generations. A second option raised by the Rabbis was to kill Bar Ḳamtza and prevent him from reporting the refusal to the emperor. Once again, R. Zechariah thwarted the plan, arguing that this would set a dangerous precedent whereby the sin of blemishing an animal is punishable by death.

The Gemara concludes the tragic tale with an astonishing denunciation: “Rabbi Yochanan said: the humility of R. Zechariah b. Avkulas destroyed our house, burned our sanctuary, and exiled us from our land!”

In the present article, I will seek to understand the depth of this accusation and its timeless significance. I will also argue that it has profound ramifications for the choice facing Charedi society in Israel today.

R. Zechariah’s Destructive Humility

In which sense was R. Zechariah’s humility to blame for the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews from their land? Perhaps his judgment was poor, but why is this considered a problem of hyper-modesty? Of the many suggestions commentaries have raised to answer this question, I will mention but two.

According to Rashi, the trait of humility refers, in this instance, to the virtue of patience: R. Zechariah was overly patient with Bar Kamza, refraining from killing him despite the threat he posed to the future of the Jewish commonwealth. He should have killed him on the spot. A second suggestion is that R. Zechariah, thinking himself as the smallest among the Sages, was the first to express his opinion concerning what should be done. The reality of his great stature ensured that all other Sages were afraid to argue against his position (Tiferes Yisrael). Other explanations, though somewhat convoluted, have also been offered to explain this patent difficulty.

However, an additional reference to R. Zechariah’s humility sheds light on its true meaning, as we learn in the Tosefta:

Beis Hillel said, we lift the bones and shells from the table; Beis Shammai said, remove the entire tabletop and shake off the waste. Zechariah ben Avkulas did not follow the opinion of Beit Shammai or that of Beit Hillel, rather he spat them out behind the couch. Rabbi Yose taught: “The humility of Rav Zechariah ben Avkulas burned the sanctuary! (Shabbos 16:4).

Humility, in this context, refers to inaction, an unwillingness to make the call. In the halachic issue presented by the Tosefta, R. Zechariah finds a way to refrain from deciding the case by “avoiding the issue.” This, states Rabbi Yose, is precisely the problem: R. Zechariah’s humility in avoiding the issue—I am unworthy of deciding, so let’s just circumvent the matter—led to the destruction of the Temple.

R. Zechariah gave reasons for his inaction in averting the wrath of Rome. […] However, the Sages teach us that these were merely rationalizations for the paralysis of inappropriate humility

R. Zechariah gave reasons for his inaction in averting the wrath of Rome. Offering up a blemished animal could lead future generations to say that this is permitted, and killing Bar Kamta could lead to a belief that blemishing a sacrificial animal is punishable by death. However, the Sages teach us that these were merely rationalizations for the paralysis of inappropriate humility.

Indeed, Midrash Eicha (4:3) presents R. Zechariah as the leading Sage who was present when Bar Kamtza was publicly shamed and forced to leave the banquet to which he was mistakenly invited. In the words of the Midrash, “R. Zechariah ben Avkulas, who was present, could have prevented [Bar Kamtza’s removal from the event] but did not intervene.” Here, too, R. Yose reacted with the same words as those cited in the Tosefta: “The humility of Rav Zechariah ben Avkulas burned the sanctuary!” Certainly, R. Zechariah would have somehow justified his silence based on rational arguments. R. Yose, however, would have declared them unconvincing in the face of the root cause of inaction.

The Tragedy of Inaction

The particular brand of “humility” that R. Yose identified is not meant as an ad hominem critique of R. Zechariah. Rather, it means to identify a key component of the Destruction that teaches a lesson for all generations. Of course, it is disingenuous to employ the luxury of hindsight to criticize the lack of action on the part of those who only had foresight. Yet, it seems remarkable that much like the Destruction we mourn on the Ninth of Av, even the annihilation of European Jewry was related to a tragic inaction on the part of the leadership.

In the years leading up to WWII, the circumstances of a large percentage of European Jews had become dire, to say the least. This is true not merely of Germany under Hitler and National Socialism but even of the four million Jews living in Poland. “They hate us for observing the Sabbath,” cited Yiddish poet Jacob Glatstein from a person he met on a visit to his Polish hometown, “and they hate us for violating the Sabbath. They hate pious Jews and they hate freethinkers who eat lobster. They hate our capitalists and they hate our beggars.” The Poles, he noted, were “pogromists by instinct” who would be “happy to bathe in our blood.”

The precarious condition brought Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky to warn, in 1938, that “time was running out” for Polish Jewry and that the only way to save them was by leaving. At the 1937 Twentieth Zionist Congress held in Zurich, Chaim Weizmann acknowledged the abysmal situation, recounting his testimony before the Peel Commission in which he noted that only youth could be saved: “The old ones will pass, they will bear their fate […] only a remnant shall survive. We have to accept it.” Jabotinsky refused to accept such fatalism, urging the evacuation of millions—but his calls went largely unheeded.

For the Orthodox, rabbinic discouragement of emigration had good reasons. Rabbis considered the shores of America and Palestine as being spiritually unsafe, the more so concerning the latter, which was under the control of secular Zionists. Strengthened by the prevalent attitude that Jews must wait passively for the arrival of Mashiach and bolstered by the fact that communities had survived hostile environments for centuries, it was only natural for the great majority of rabbinic leaders to choose the path of inaction in the hope the threat would blow over. In cases like that of Hungarian Jewry, this policy extended well into the years of Jewish extermination. Writing in 1943, Rabbi Yissachar Shlomo Teichtel noted, with a harshness reflecting the inconceivability of his situation, that his rabbinic peers had been “smitten with blindness.”

As noted, there is no intention to pass judgment; we would have done the same. The point, however, is to highlight that even the horrific destruction of the Shoah was deeply related to the tragedy of inaction. As the famous quote attributed to Edmund Burke wisely states, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The Shoah could reach the fullness of its diabolical realization because too many good men did nothing.

Proud Rebuilding

Exile and its attendant evils are the product of false modesty that breeds inaction. According to the Chafetz Chaim (Shemirat Halashon, Chap. 19), this paralyzing humility was at the heart of the sin of the Spies, who claimed that the promise of the Land was reserved for the perfectly righteous alone and did not apply to those prone to sinfulness. As he explains, this attitude is patently false: “So long as a person does not rebel against Hashem to deliberately uproot his mitzvot, he may hope for all good.”

By contrast, the building work that leads us toward redemption is the product of action that recognizes responsibility and strives wholeheartedly to live up to it. This was certainly the case for the rebuilding of Jewish life after the Shoah, which was achieved by the remarkable energies of individuals, embers saved from the flames. They had every excuse to retire from public life, but they did not. Instead, they chose to dedicate all their energies and resources to the task of restoring. This is certainly true of the State of Israel and all it entails. It is also true of the Torah world, on which Charedi society focused its energies.

One anecdote tells of a chance meeting between the Gerrer and Belzer Rebbes around 1948. Their circumstances were not the same. The Gerrer Rebbe had arrived in Palestine with many Chassidim before the war, while the Belzer arrived as a sole survivor at its end. However, both suffered the harshest losses of both family and community. As they met, they wept on each other’s shoulders – a scene that reminded the Belzer Rebbe of the biblical encounter between Yosef and his younger brother Binyanim.

For one’s own loss, one does not cry. One rebuilds

Why, he asked his rabbinic peer, does Rashi explain that each cried over the future loss of the other at the time of the Destruction? Is it not legitimate that each should cry over his own loss? “We cry,” responded the Gerrer Rebbe, over the loss of others. “For one’s own loss, one does not cry. One rebuilds.” And so they did, building anew great dynasties that far exceeded those of the European heyday. The following quote, from the Slonimer Rebbe, Rabbi Shalom Noach Berezovsky, highlights the wondrous achievements of such great men:

Before our eyes, we see a phenomenon that includes incredible revelations nobody could have dared to imagine a generation ago. Suddenly, a wonderful generation arose, a generation of Torah and Jews who observe Mitzvos meticulously. Torah tents are flourishing, and the study within them is at the highest level. At the same time, the Chasidic courts are thriving in all their glory, and the amazing Teshuvah movement that we have not heard of in any generation. Naturally, the question arises: who gave birth to all these for us? Who is the one who has the power to cultivate and raise such a generation, unheard of in previous times? Certainly, there is no natural explanation for this, except that the Holy One, blessed be He, alone – “I am Hashem, in my glory and alone” – has nurtured and multiplied this generation.

The Rebbe credits “the holy martyrs” of the Shoah together with Divine assistance. Both, of course, are true, yet credit is also due to those leaders who invested all they had in the labor of rebuilding. Rabbi Yosef Kananeman, the Rav of Ponovezh who happened to be in Palestine when his community, including wife and children, was murdered, is another example. Rather than wallow in justified self-pity, he dedicated himself to the great yeshiva he established. At his funeral, he was eulogized by the Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Shmuel Rozovsky:

[Rav Kahaneman’s] soul found no rest. He was frequently bothered and disturbed by the thought: “I saved myself but not my ship.” [But] this is what gave him tremendous strength to create and build, to work day and night, all for one goal: so that instead of having “saved myself but not my ship,” he would also save his ship, his generation. He would rebuild the destroyed world of Torah, restoring the crown to its former glory, until it would be as if he had saved the entire ship by extricating it from the stormy ocean waves and bringing it to the safe shores of Zion.

In just a handful of decades, the Jewish People have witnessed the absolute devastation of the Shoah and the astonishing rebuilding of its aftermath. The former involved inaction, and the latter a product of intense, passionate labor. The difference between the two brings us to the great dilemma of our present time.

Responsibility Now

The distinction between the inaction during our destruction and the amazing labor in its aftermath is the nature of the activity.

The labor of establishing yeshiva institutions, faith communities, Chassidic courts, and a host of religious services and community organizations is what Jewish leaders have done throughout the ages. It is the kind of activity we have known and taken pride in for time immemorial, the kind that maintained us over long centuries of hostile exile. By contrast, the action that could have saved the Jews, in the Destruction of the Mikdash and the recent devastation of Europe’s Jewish population, required a departure from a time-tested script. For R. Zechariah, the challenge (which he did not live up to) was departing from standard halachic precedent in exceptional circumstances. For today, the issue is our relationship with Israel.

Simply put, Charedi society has grown from under three percent of Israel’s population at inception to approximately fourteen percent today and counting. And this makes all the difference

Simply put, Charedi society has grown from under three percent of Israel’s population at inception to approximately fourteen percent today and counting. And this makes all the difference.

As a small and threatened religious minority, it made sense to withdraw from the Israel project and focus all available resources on the Torah rebuilding project noted above. From the Charedi perspective, the Torah project was a continuity mission that necessitated the perpetuation of an exilic mindset. Other than the geographical setting, nothing changed; we continue to languish in Galus, even as we live in the Land of Israel, and the Torah mission is no different from what it always was. Certainly, it has nothing to do with the secular State of Israel.

Fast forward more than seventy-five years, and we still find Charedi publications declaring that we are in “exile among Jews, which is perhaps the worst of all exiles.” The statement, found not infrequently in Yated Ne’eman editorials, makes an astonishing accusation. Is Israel, the Jewish state that has facilitated the rehabilitation of our great Torah institutions and under which Jewish life has flourished in every sense, worse than the cruel and murderous regimes in which we were exiled for centuries? Leaving aside the absurdity of the claim, the very notion of “exile among Jews” is living on borrowed time. Can you maintain a Galus mentality when Charedi MKs serve as ministers (no longer vice-ministers) in Israel’s government? Can you be in exile when a Charedi politician is a member of Israel’s elite security cabinet? Can we be in exile among ourselves?

As a large, growing, and deeply influential part of Israel, it is up to us to embrace new responsibilities for Israel, including state institutions, the economy, and the army. There is no other way. Returning to Yated Ne’eman editorials, a popular citation from the Brisk Rav defines how we ought to act if Charedi society becomes the majority of Israel. “Even if I were to become the Interior Minister and Rav Yechezkel Avramsky the Defense Minister,” he explained, “we would still not be able to run the state.” This is because “these are matters of life and death concerning which we have no halachic tradition.” Absent precedent, we are simply unable to take responsibility, which would apparently remain with the non-Charedi minority.

Even during the lifetime of the Brisk Rav, other rabbinic authorities (such as the Chazon Ish) did not agree with his strident and fatalist attitude. Galus might be a reality imposed on us, but there is no mitzvah to perpetuate it. Moreover, over time Charedi rabbinic leaders instructed their representatives to enter Israel’s governing coalition, accept ministerial responsibilities, and even send delegates to the Zionist Congress. The standard rhetoric, whereby participation in politics is only permitted “to save from the lion, the bear, and the cheetah”—to channel resources for the benefit of Charedi society and the Torah world—has never been less convincing.

As a vast and still-growing body within Israel’s Jewish majority, the “limited responsibility” position has become implausible. Like the core responsibility of parents, children, community members, and citizens, our responsibility to Israel draws from the reality in which we live. Of course, there are legitimate concerns. But given the size and strength of our communities and institutions, we can surely step up to the fullness of our responsibility for Israel without undermining core values and sense of identity. Doing so will go a long way to healing the fractures of Israeli society, ensuring the stability of the beleaguered Charedi education system and Yeshivot, and making a true Kiddush Hashem.

This is no time for the tameness of humility. It is a time for action.

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The ultimate contrast to R. Zechariah’s failure to save the day is the action taken by Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai, who ensured Jewish survival by doing the unthinkable: giving up on Jerusalem while securing Yavne and its scholars. It was a controversial and agonizing decision. Even upon his death bed, R. Yochanan b. Zakai told his disciples that he was unsure about the path he would take: the path of Heaven or that of Hell (Berachos 28b). But as he died, he beheld King Chizkiyahu, whose own agonizing decisions on behalf of Jerusalem were verified by Scripture (II Melachim 18:3). Standing at the momentous inflection point of the present time, we are charged with following the lead of R. Yochanan b. Zakai over that of R. Zechariah, the path of brave action over that of misplaced humility.