Covenant & Conversation

Lech Lecha 5774 Volume XXI Number 6 Toras Aish Thoughts From Across the Torah Spectrum idols is in terms of what they represent. They symbolise RABBI LORD JONATHAN SACKS power. That is what Ra was for the Egyptians, Baal for Covenant & Conversation the Canaanites, Chemosh for the Moabites, Zeus for the Greeks, and missiles and bombs for terrorists and eaders lead. That does not mean to say that they rogue states today. don’t follow. But what they follow is different from Power allows us to rule over others without their Lwhat most people follow. They don’t conform for consent. As the Greek historian Thucydides put it: “The the sake of conforming. They don’t do what others do strong do what they wish and the weak suffer what they merely because others are doing it. They follow an inner must.” Judaism is a sustained critique of power. That is voice, a call. They have a vision, not of what is, but of the conclusion I have reached after a lifetime of what might be. They think outside the box. They march studying our sacred texts. It is about how a nation can to a different tune. be formed on the basis of shared commitment and Never was this more dramatically signalled than collective responsibility. It is about how to construct a in the first words of G-d to Abraham, the words that set society that honours the human person as the image Jewish history in motion: “Leave your land, your and likeness of G-d. It is about a vision, never fully birthplace and your father’s house and go to the land realised but never abandoned, of a world based on that I will show you.” justice and compassion, in which “They will neither Why? Because people do conform. They adopt harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth the standards and absorb the culture of the time and will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the place in which they live – “your land.” At a deeper level waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11: 9). they are influenced by friends and neighbours – “your Abraham is without doubt the most influential birthplace.” More deeply still they are shaped by their person who ever lived. Today he is claimed as the parents and the family in which they grew up – “your spiritual ancestor of 2.4 billion Christians, 1.6 billion father’s house.” Muslims and 13 million Jews, more than half the people I want you, says G-d to Abraham, to be alive today. Yet he ruled no empire, commanded no different. Not for the sake of being different, but for the great army, performed no miracles and proclaimed no sake of starting something new: a religion that will not prophecy. He is the supreme example in all of history of worship power and the symbols of power – for that is influence without power. what idols really were and are. I want you, said G-d, to Why? Because he was prepared to be different. “teach your children and your household afterward to As the sages say, he was called ha-ivri, “the Hebrew,” follow the way of the Lord by doing what is right and because “all the world was on one side (be-ever echad) just.” and he was on the other” (Genesis Rabbah 42: 8). To be a Jew is to be willing to challenge the Leadership, as every leader knows, can be lonely. Yet prevailing consensus when, as so often happens, you continue to do what you have to do because you nations slip into worshipping the old gods. They did so know that the majority is not always right and in Europe throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth conventional wisdom is not always wise. Dead fish go century. That was the age of nationalism: the pursuit of with the flow. Live fish swim against the current. So it is power in the name of the nation-state that led to two with conscience and courage. So it is with the children world wars and tens of millions of deaths. It is the age of Abraham. They are prepared to challenge the idols of we are living in now as North Korea acquires and Iran the age. pursues nuclear weapons so that they can impose their After the Holocaust some social scientists were ambitions by force. It is what is happening today haunted by the question of why so many people were throughout much of the Middle East and Africa as prepared, whether by active participation or silent nations descend into violence and what Hobbes called consent, to go along with a regime that they knew was “the war of every man against every man.” committing one of the great crimes against humanity. We make a mistake when we think of idols in One key experiment was conducted by terms of their physical appearance – statues, figurines, Solomon Asch. He assembled a group of people, icons. In that sense they belong to ancient times we asking them to perform a series of simple cognitive have long outgrown. Instead, the right way to think of tasks. They were shown two cards, one with a line on it, 2 Toras Aish why, however small their numbers, Jews created TORAS AISH IS A WEEKLY PARSHA communities. It is hard to lead alone, far less hard to NEWSLETTER DISTRIBUTED VIA EMAIL lead in the company of others even if you are a minority. AND THE WEB AT WWW.AISHDAS.ORG/TA. Judaism is the countervoice in the conversation FOR MORE INFO EMAIL [email protected] of humankind. As Jews we do not follow the majority The material presented in this publication was collected from email subscriptions, computer archives and various websites. It is being merely because it is the majority. In age after age, presented with the permission of the respective authors. Toras century after century, Jews were prepared to do what Aish is an independent publication, and does not necessarily reflect the poet Robert Frost immortalised in The Road Not the views of any synagogue or organization. Taken, Birches, and Other Poems: TO DEDICATE THIS NEWSLETTER PLEASE CALL Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, (973) 277-9062 OR EMAIL [email protected] I took the one less travelled by, the other with three lines of different lengths, and asked And that has made all the difference. which was the same size as the line on the first. It is what makes a nation of leaders. © 2013 Unbeknown to one participant, all the others had been Rabbi Lord J. Sacks and rabbisacks.org briefed by Asch to give the right answer for the first few RABBI SHLOMO RISKIN cards, then the wrong one for most of the rest. On a significant number of occasions the experimental Shabbat Shalom subject gave an answer he could see was the wrong, nd he built there an altar to the Lord and he because everyone else had done so. Such is the power called out in the name of the Lord" (Genesis of the pressure to conform that it can lead us to say “A12:8) Abraham is the first Hebrew, the founder what we know is untrue. of the Hebrew nation and the path-breaker who created More frightening still was the Stanford the Hebrew religion. From this portion in the 12th experiment carried out in the early 1970s by Philip chapter of the Book of Genesis until the last word of the Zimbardo. The participants were randomly assigned Book of Deuteronomy, it is Abraham’s Israelite roles as guards or prisoners in a mock prison. Within descendants who are the major subjects of the Bible. days the students cast as guards were behaving Fascinatingly, G-d commands Abraham to abusively, some of them subjecting the “prisoners” to leave his country, his birthplace and his father’s house psychological torture. The students cast as prisoners to travel to the unknown land of Canaan (Israel) without put up with this passively, even siding with the guards any introduction to Abraham’s personality or his against those who resisted. The experiment was called previous connection with G-d. Indeed, G-d elects off after six days, during which time even Zimbardo Abraham as the progenitor or patriarch of “a great found himself drawn in to the artificial reality he had nation which will become a blessing to all the families of created. The pressure to conform to assigned roles is the earth” without any mention of Abraham’s strong enough to lead people into doing what they know worthiness. is wrong. This is very different from G-d’s commandment That is why Abraham, at the start of his to Noah to build an ark, which comes after the Bible has mission, was told to leave “his land, his birthplace and already informed us that Noah “was a righteous man, his father’s house,” to free himself from the pressure to wholehearted in his generation. Noah walked with G-d” conform. Leaders must be prepared not to follow the (Gen. 6:9). It also contrasts with G-d’s charge for Moses consensus. One of the great writers on leadership, to lead His people in the Book of Exodus, which comes Warren Bennis (in his book On becoming a leader, after Moses left Pharaoh’s palace to empathize with his Basic Books, 1989, 49), writes: “By the time we reach Hebrew brethren and put his life on the line by slaying puberty, the world has shaped us to a greater extent the Egyptian taskmaster who was beating a Hebrew than we realise.

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