41
ImagInIng the JewIsh Future
L
ike you, I still have memories
from high school. And like at
least some of you, not all of
these memories are embarrassing. I
remember one teacher in particular,
a Talmud teacher. We were studying
a passage of Tosafot, the 12th- to
13
th-century scholars from northern
France and Germany whose analyses
are now printed on the outside border
of the standard Talmud page.
I don’t remember what question he was
asked, but I do remember his answer:
Tosafot could not have imagined that
Jews like us would exist. And that line
has always stuck with me. It’s pithy, it’s
funny, and it conveys a certain truth
because, in fact, Tosafot could not have
imagined that Jews like us would exist.
Tosafot could not have imagined that
Jews like us would live in a free society.
For that matter, they couldn’t have
imagined such a thing as a free society.
Tosafot could not have imagined that
Jews would live in a society in which
Judaism was “cool.” (Tosafot could not
have imagined “cool!”) Tosafot could
not have imagined that Jews would live
in a society in which Christians would
respect and value Judaism and Jewish
rituals.
They could never have imagined, for
example, that there would be churches
that would want to celebrate Passover
seders. And more to the point of
our talk this morning, Tosafot could
never have imagined that the modest
Talmudic phrase “
tikkun olam
”
would
undergo a profound transformation
in the 20th century to become the
shorthand for a relatively newly
discovered Jewish religious obligation
to fix and repair our broken world.
Tosafot could not have imagined
that. They certainly could not have
imagined that a man like the Christian
philosopher and activist Cornell West
would embrace the phrase “
tikkun
olam
”
and even proclaim on more
than one occasion: “
Tikkun olam
all
the way.” Tosafot certainly could not
have imagined these things.
They could not have imagined what we
think of as a “cause,” whether the cause
be climate change or other environmental
issues, or creating equality of
opportunity, or equality of education
for children across the globe. They
couldn’t have thought in those terms.
To Tosafot and to the other Jewish
legal scholars of the Middle Ages, the
cluster of concerns that we group
under the heading “social responsibility”
were actually grouped under a number
of smaller headings. There was
“
tzedakah
” (
charity) and the laws of
tzedakah
.
There was “
gemilut hasadim
,”
a Hebrew phrase that literally means
“
reciprocation of kindness,” which
we use to refer to acts of kindness.
There were laws governing how to
relate to tenants, how to relate to
workers, how to engage ethically in
business with one another, how to
engage ethically with others on other
occasions and in other contexts as well.
Tosafot and their fellow Jewish legal
scholars of the Middle Ages would
have grouped under these various
different headings the numerous
concerns that today we group under
the broad heading “social responsibility.”
s
oCiaL
r
esPonsibiLity
Alyssa Gray, Ph.D., Emily S. and Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman Chair in Rabbinics
and Associate Professor of Codes and Responsa Literature, HUC-JIR/New York
watch thE vIdEO:
huc.edu/inauguration/gray