The Missing Menschlichkeit

One Shabbat, while squeezed among dozens of worshippers in one of the small shtieblach of Jerusalem’s Beit Yisrael neighborhood, two men caught my attention.

The first was a young father, perhaps in his thirties, who had brought three small children, all under the age of six, to synagogue. Disruptions were inevitable, as were the irritated comments directed toward him by other worshippers.

The second was an older man of serious and dignified appearance. Intent on praying in a particular spot, he pushed his way toward it, forcing several people aside with remarkably little awareness of what he was doing.

Both incidents bothered me. Both involved a lack of consideration for others. Yet I found myself readily judging the young father favorably. I could think of any number of reasonable explanations for bringing the children, even though he surely knew that they would disturb the prayer.

The older man troubled me far more. His behavior was probably entirely unintentional. He simply failed to notice the effect he was having on the people around him. Yet somehow, that made matters worse.

How could a person push others crudely out of his way, with such profound lack of awareness, while convinced that he was engaged in a mitzvah—making his way to his preferred corner in which to stand before his Creator?

The question stayed with me. Why did this relatively minor instance of inconsideration bother me so much? And why did the fact that it was unintentional, the product of sheer inattention, intensify rather than diminish my discomfort?

Eventually I realized that the inattention itself was precisely the problem. I could not use it to judge the man favorably because, in my eyes, it was the principal failing.

What follows is an attempt to understand the moral outlook that can produce such behavior. The question ultimately reaches beyond manners and synagogue etiquette. It concerns the relationship between religious obligation and ordinary human morality.

 

Between Human Morality and Religious Obligation

The relationship between religious duty and human morality is among the oldest questions of religious thought. Philosophers have wrestled with it since antiquity, but the rise of Western humanism gave the question renewed urgency.

Humanism placed the human being at the center and increasingly conceived morality in terms of human welfare, dignity, and flourishing. In doing so, it disrupted an older equilibrium in which religion claimed responsibility both for the moral refinement of the individual and for his service of God. Humanism threatened to divide these realms, and at times even to set them in opposition.

Rabbi Chaim Navon identifies three broad Jewish responses to this challenge.

At one pole stands Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who argued that Judaism is fundamentally detached from moral values. In his formulation, Judaism is defined by “the principled and normative opposition between religion and morality.”[1]

For Leibowitz, a believing Jew is not, as such, a “moral person.” Morality, in its humanistic sense, places man at the center; religion places God at the center. There is therefore no reason to expect a religious person to be morally superior to anyone else. Religious life means serving Hashem through obedience to His commands. It is not a means toward human flourishing, social harmony, psychological wellbeing, or any other external objective.

Leibowitz frequently invoked the teaching of Chazal: “For one who engages in Torah for its own sake, it becomes an elixir of life … while for one who engages in Torah not for its own sake, it becomes an elixir of death.”[2] In his eyes, attempts to justify Torah by demonstrating that its laws accord with human nature or serve humanitarian goals constitute, at best, service of God shelo lishmah—for an ulterior purpose—and at worst a form of idolatry:

So long as a person’s religiosity expresses nothing beyond his personal convictions, conscience, morality, or values, his religious act is ultimately an act of self-service, and therefore a rebellion against the Kingdom of Heaven … Any action through which a person satisfies his own needs—whether physical, spiritual, or psychological—is service of the self rather than service of God.… An expression of the service of God is, for example, laying tefillin in all their precise details: square boxes, black straps, and so forth. There is nothing within the person himself that motivates such an act, nor can there be any motive for it other than fulfilling the will of God Who commanded it. The same applies to Shabbat with all its particular laws, which possess no necessary meaning in terms of man’s physiological, social, or psychological needs.[3]

At the opposite pole stands Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook.

For Rav Kook, Torah and human life emerge from a single divine source. Religion and humanity are not rival categories but parts of one harmonious whole. Torah must accord with life because life, in its deepest and most authentic form, is itself divine:

A person of integrity must have faith in his own life—that is, he must trust the life within him and the feelings that arise uprightly from the foundation of his soul, believing that they are good and upright and lead along a straight path … The Jew is obligated to believe that a divine soul dwells within him, that his entire being is one letter of the Torah.[4]

Between these two positions—one sharply separating religious obligation from morality, the other emphasizing their essential harmony—Rabbi Navon places the thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

In numerous places, Rabbi Soloveitchik speaks of a deep relationship between Torah and human nature. Yet for him, this relationship does not mean perfect harmony. Torah does not merely affirm nature as it presently exists; it teaches what human nature ought to become.

Hence Rabbi Soloveitchik’s emphasis on sacrifice.

In his important essay “Catharsis,” he describes the withdrawal and renunciation demanded of the halachic personality in virtually every dimension of life: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Judaism does not instruct a person simply to realize every natural capacity to its fullest. It demands restraint. It asks the individual to surrender something of himself.

Here Rabbi Soloveitchik differs from the more harmonious emphasis of Rav Kook. Religious life contains genuine sacrifice.

Yet neither does he accept Leibowitz’s radical divorce between religion and human values. Torah is deeply concerned with shaping the human being. Its purpose is not necessarily to maximize happiness as understood in immediate humanistic terms, but neither is the human person irrelevant to its concerns.

Torah seeks to create an ideal world—but not one detached from our own. The ideal it presents is the elevated form of this world itself.

Its purpose is to refine reality, to raise and perfect it. To accomplish this, Torah must sometimes restrict the individual rather than maximize his immediate interests. It is not humanistic in the sense of placing the subjective wellbeing of the individual at the center. Its concern is the elevation of human existence to a higher plane.

This is not an escape into mystical spirituality, but an attempt to give ordinary life a higher form and meaning.

Rabbi Soloveitchik describes the relationship in striking terms:

The creation of the world is a moral act whose completion was found in the revelation at Sinai. The realization of the revelatory-moral command constitutes an act of creation. Perfecting reality is itself a moral act. Existence embodies the moral will. Moral action creates and renews. Man’s highest purpose is to live a full and perfected existence and to participate in elevating the existence of others … Halachic Judaism is therefore suffused with profound optimism … It hungers and thirsts for concrete life and for the majesty of its beauty … All existence is a moral eruption of the Infinite, and man’s moral purpose is to exist in the uniqueness with which God endowed him.[5]

 

Haredi Judaism and Humanistic Morality

Where does Haredi society stand in relation to these approaches?

At first glance, one might suggest that Haredi Judaism has effectively adopted the position of Leibowitz. Its tendency toward withdrawal from worldly life could appear to imply that Torah belongs exclusively to the religious sphere and has little to say about ordinary human existence.

On closer examination, however, the comparison fails.

Leibowitz’s worldview makes the separation of religion and state exceedingly simple. Religion and politics belong to entirely different categories, and there is therefore no inherent difficulty with a secular state devoted to the human dimensions of existence. Religion need not be hostile to secularity because it makes no claim to govern that sphere.

Paradoxically, Leibowitz grants humanism considerable legitimacy precisely by restricting the jurisdiction of religion. He defines where religion is relevant—and, just as importantly, where it has no claim to be relevant.

The Haredi position is fundamentally different.

Haredi Judaism does not accept the legitimacy of humanism as an autonomous moral realm. It does not truly recognize a division of labor in which religion governs one part of life and secular human values another. Even Haredi withdrawal from the political and civic arena has historically been accompanied by a sense of protest—the consciousness that “we remain in exile.”

The basic Haredi conviction is that Torah should direct the entirety of human life.

Ask virtually any Haredi Jew, and he will readily affirm that Torah is meant to refine a person’s character and guide all his conduct, both bein adam laMakom and bein adam lachavero. A person who meticulously keeps Shabbat while behaving cruelly or dishonestly is not considered an exemplary religious Jew. His religious life itself is understood to be defective.

In this respect, one might expect Haredi thought to lie closer to Rav Kook or Rabbi Soloveitchik. Both insist that religious commitment encompasses the moral quality of human life and that human goodness is not the enemy of religion but integral to its purpose.

Yet here we encounter a difficulty.

In practice, at least in parts of Haredi society, there is a noticeable tilt toward explicit religious duty at the expense of ordinary human obligation. This does not generally result from an ideological rejection of consideration, kindness, cleanliness, or basic decency. People do not believe these things are bad.

Rather, they often fail to notice them.

The imbalance develops almost automatically, without any explicit normative decision. People simply fail to see that they are trampling on someone else.

Why does this happen? What produces such intense attention to specifically religious obligations alongside such inattention to elementary human ones?

 

The Space of the Sacred and the Space of the Ordinary

The Gemara in Yoma records the famous dispute between the Sadducees and the Pharisees concerning the incense offered by the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur:

The Sages taught: “He shall place the incense upon the fire before Hashem”—he must not prepare it outside and then bring it inside, contrary to the view of the Sadducees, who say that he should prepare it outside and bring it in. What is their interpretation? “For in a cloud I shall appear above the Ark-cover”—this teaches, according to them, that he should prepare it outside and then enter. The Sages replied: But it is already written, “He shall place the incense upon the fire before Hashem.”[6]

According to the Sadducees, the Kohen Gadol was to create the cloud of incense outside the Holy of Holies and only then enter with the incense already smoking. According to the Pharisees, the preparation itself—the placing of the incense upon the coals—had to take place inside the Holy of Holies.

For the Pharisees, even the act of preparation belongs within. For the Sadducees, preparations and arrangements belong outside. The innermost sanctuary is no place for such mundane activity.

Dr. Ze’ev Friedman has suggested that this dispute reflects a far deeper disagreement between Pharisee and Sadducee than a technical argument over the Temple service. It represents two conceptions of the relationship between sacred and ordinary life, between spirit and matter.

The question is whether sacred and mundane can coexist within a single integrated sphere of life, or whether each requires its own separate domain.

The question is whether sacred and mundane can coexist within a single integrated sphere of life, or whether each requires its own separate domain.

The dispute is not over whether Torah has anything to say about ordinary human existence. Both sides accept that the Torah contains instructions concerning human life alongside specifically religious obligations.

The disagreement concerns whether the two occupy the same space.

The Sadducean conception insists upon separation. The physical act of preparing the incense must therefore take place outside the Holy of Holies. Sacred and ordinary cannot operate together within the same sphere.

The Pharisaic position is radically different.

There is ultimately one sphere of life, containing sacred and ordinary, spirit and matter, Torah and labor. Distinctions between sacred and profane certainly remain, but they inhabit the same world. The sacred penetrates the ordinary and the ordinary enters the sacred.

Even in the most sacred place, on the most sacred day of the year, the Kohen Gadol must perform an act of preparation. The Holy of Holies itself contains an element of mundane work.

The implications are profound.

When sacred and ordinary are placed in entirely separate spheres, a psychological partition arises between them. It becomes possible to “forget” the sacred while engaged in ordinary life—and, no less significantly, to forget the ordinary human dimension while engaged in the sacred.

A person can excel magnificently within the religious sphere while remaining almost unaware of the ordinary human implications of his actions.

Indeed, such a worldview makes it surprisingly easy to live according to two standards. In the sacred realm, one may be scrupulous about every detail and pursue ever greater levels of halachic excellence. Yet in ordinary life the same person may operate with very little attention, unintentionally trampling upon those around him.

Within the Pharisaic vision, this split is much harder to sustain.

There is only one human arena. Sacred and ordinary fulfill different functions within it, but both require attention. The sacred must enter the ordinary, and the ordinary must remain present even within the sacred.

Proper conduct in mundane life therefore possesses religious meaning. And even the religious sphere contains elements of ordinary human activity—the preparation and grinding of incense, as it were.

 

The Neglected Human Dimension

Haredi society takes understandable pride in its educational system and in the young people it produces. One often hears Haredi parents remark upon the values, refinement, and derech eretz of their children compared with those educated elsewhere.

There is truth to this. Haredi teenagers are frequently characterized by a gentleness and innocence that are increasingly rare in the surrounding culture. Haredi education possesses genuine virtues that should not be dismissed.

Yet there is also a weakness that deserves attention.

A growing divide has emerged between education toward the observance of mitzvot and education toward basic humanity—toward values that can appear “secular” because they are not readily classified as a particular mitzvah or prohibition.

It is not uncommon to see a child walking with his parents throw a food wrapper onto the street, or damage something in the public domain, without eliciting any meaningful response. Had the same child discarded shemot—a sacred text requiring genizah—the parental reaction would presumably be immediate. Had he damaged private property, creating a clear case of gezel, the educational response would likewise be severe.

The difference is revealing.

Being a mensch, simply as a human being, does not always stand at the center of the educational radar. Children may be trained meticulously to observe Torah and mitzvot while receiving far less education toward forms of ordinary human behavior that do not arrive with the recognizable label of mitzvah or aveirah.

Again, why?

Surely virtually every Haredi Jew agrees that Judaism demands proper human conduct beyond narrowly defined ritual obligations.

I believe the answer lies in the separation of spheres.

Haredi culture often creates a psychological divide between the simple routines of “this world” and the Torah-and-mitzvah existence associated with “the World to Come”; between ordinary life and sacred life. Eating, drinking, walking down the street, and occupying public space belong to one category. Mitzvot and aveirot belong beneath another roof.

The two worlds are not fully synchronized.

Maintaining equal consciousness in two separate realms is exceedingly difficult. Inevitably, the center of gravity shifts toward one. For Torah-observant Jews who believe in Hashem and in eternal reward, the emphasis naturally falls upon spiritual life—the world of Torah and mitzvot.

The ordinary realm then becomes secondary. It is the space that can safely be ignored.

Whatever is not itself a mitzvah struggles to command attention because it has no obvious presence in the sacred category. It stands “outside.” And the defining feature of what lies outside is precisely that we do not pay attention to it.

The result is a peculiar inversion: ordinary life proceeds with remarkably little conscious attention, while opportunities for religious action are actively and sometimes artificially pursued.

Consider, by way of illustration, the gathering popularly known—somewhat inaccurately—as a seudat amenim, a meal organized in order to enable participants to recite additional blessings and answer “Amen.” People deliberately manufacture a setting of sacred activity, arranging food around the opportunity to accumulate another religious act.

The ordinary meaning of eating disappears. The meal receives significance only when translated into the language of the sacred: another blessing, another “Amen.”

The same pattern shapes the way children’s behavior is perceived. So long as an action has not been classified within the mitzvah-aveirah system of sacred life, it attracts far less attention.

When the religious sphere is separated from the human sphere and consistently privileged over it, moral passivity develops within the latter.

The child’s moral radar is consequently trained primarily upon the World to Come, while this world is left curiously unattended. He learns to identify the fulfillment or violation of explicit commandments, but may remain far less sensitive to ordinary failures of humanity that do not arrive with a familiar religious label.

When the religious sphere is separated from the human sphere and consistently privileged over it, moral passivity develops within the latter.

A person’s conduct in ordinary life then becomes governed largely by immediate need: where he wants to stand, what he wants to obtain, how he can reach his destination. He need not consciously decide to disregard others. He simply fails to consider the consequences of his actions for the people and environment around him. This is not wickedness. It is inattention produced by a divided consciousness.

And this brings me back to the man in the shtiebel.

His pushing others aside was not the conduct of someone who had rejected morality. It was the conduct of someone habituated to notice primarily what belongs to the explicit religious sphere.

Had his intended action involved a recognizable prohibition recorded in a halachic text, he would presumably have been exceedingly careful. Indeed, had he seen another person transgressing such a prohibition, he might well have rushed to fulfill the mitzvah of “You shall surely rebuke your fellow.”

But at that moment he inhabited the sacred sphere alone. He was on his way to pray before Hashem.

In the ordinary human sphere, meanwhile, he was simply searching for a convenient place to stand. That part of the experience received almost no moral attention at all.

And so he pushed people aside.

***

The notion that the commandments of Hashem have nothing to do with human morality is mistaken, and it certainly does not represent the dominant Haredi outlook. Every believing Jew understands that we refrain from improper conduct not only when it falls neatly beneath the formal heading of an “aveirah,” but because impropriety itself is contrary to what Hashem expects of us.

The problem lies elsewhere.

Haredi society has, to some degree, separated human morality from religious morality, constructing distinct spheres of sacred and ordinary life. This division is artificial, and its consequences are serious: sacred life becomes exalted precisely through its detachment, while the moral texture of ordinary human existence is neglected.

Haredi society has, to some degree, separated human morality from religious morality, constructing distinct spheres of sacred and ordinary life. This division is artificial, and its consequences are serious: sacred life becomes exalted precisely through its detachment, while the moral texture of ordinary human existence is neglected.

Chazal offer us another model.

We are the heirs of the Pharisees. Sacred and ordinary are meant to inhabit the same space.

We do not need to leave the human realm in order to perform mitzvot, nor must we suspend our ordinary human awareness when entering the realm of holiness. Paying careful attention to the small details of everyday life—the person standing beside us, the cleanliness of the street, the dignity and comfort of another—is not a distraction from Torah.

It is one of the places in which Torah must live.

The incense must be prepared inside.

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[1] Avi Sagi, “Introduction,” in Avi Sagi (ed.), Yeshayahu Leibowitz: His World and Thought, p. 13.

[2] Babylonian Talmud, Taanit 7a.

[3] Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judaism, the Jewish People, and the State of Israel (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1979), p. 28.

[4] Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, Orot HaTorah, chap. 11.

[5] Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, U-Vikkashtem Mi-Sham (And From There You Shall Seek), p. 223.

[6] Talmud, Yoma 53a.