The Tragedy of Forgetting our Mission

Avraham Yehoshua Heschel once wrote that “The gravest sin for a Jew is to forget what he represents.”[1] I would go further and say the gravest sin for Jews is to forget Whom they represent.

There is a high price to pay for living as a Jew. One must be holy in order to be accepted. One is commanded to surpass civilization so as to be average. Our existence is neither desired nor easily tolerated. God has positioned us in history in a most curious way. To be a Jew is either utterly inconvenient or the most exalted merit a person can ever attain. There is no middle road. Our choice is either our undoing or our blessing. We are the most challenged people on earth. We are superfluous, or we are indispensable. It is either extremely tragic or exceptionally joyous to be a Jew. There is no in-between.

Being normal

We have recently entered an age in which we Jews try to convince ourselves that we should be ordinary, that holiness should no longer be our trademark. We are obsessed with the dream to “normalize” ourselves so as to obtain a ticket into the world community. And now that we have “arrived” and gotten our way, there are far too many times when we embarrass ourselves in the eyes of the world and our own people.

Even the religious Jewish community, which has always believed in our uniqueness and the need to live a saintly life, is often compromised by its own followers. Ultra-Orthodox Knesset members sometimes behave in ways that violate the sanctity of Judaism; several of them have actually been imprisoned on charges of financial corruption. To our great astonishment, some were allowed to join the Knesset again, even with the sanction of powerful halachic authorities. We would have hoped that these authorities would have had the moral fiber to dismiss this possibility out of hand. After all, once a person has violated halachic or ethical standards, they can no longer represent authentic Judaism, even if they have paid for their crime.

When added to so many other aberrations within some sectors of the religious community—including sexual harrassment and abuse—the behavior of Ultraorthodox political figures has violated the integrity of Judaism in the eyes of many Israelis and in front of the world community. These people are now seen by non-religious Israelis as the representatives of the kind of Judaism of which they want no part. And who can blame them?

A light to the nations

This is nothing less than a global desecration of God’s name. It also compromises our most sacred mission: to be a light to the nations. We were summoned to be God’s witness in the world, and instead, we have made ourselves trivial.

True, it is only a few Jews who are the ill-doers. But we are all guilty, especially we who call ourselves religious. How do we allow our co-religionists to get away with this? What is missing in our Jewish religious education? Sometimes it is the secular Jews who seem to live by higher moral standards than some of the religious. Did they get the message about what it means to be a real Jew, and we didn’t?

If we fail to fight for something, we will find ourselves having to fight against something worse. If we don’t fight for righteousness, for justice, for holiness in the name of the Torah, we will have to fight against sacrilege, against injustice, and against evil.

This is a time when our leaders, rabbis, and heads of yeshivot are challenged as never before. They will have to instill in the hearts of their students and followers one overwhelming and all-encompassing mission: to clear God’s name, to fortify the great ethical message of Judaism, and to inspire Jews to make a lifelong commitment to the sanctification of His name. We must convince our fellow Jews and ourselves to live a life of holiness in which even the trivial becomes sanctified. This is now the most important task of every yeshiva and Jewish day school.

Forgetting the message

If we do not fulfill this duty, our teaching Judaism becomes a farce. It is an embarrassment to perpetrate even the lowest level of corruption while living in the presence of God.

Without this awareness, we can no longer call ourselves Jews, the children of Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya’akov. We have no right to serve God, to pray, or to study Torah when real Judaism is no longer our trademark; our passion for integrity no longer our ultimate goal.

We Jews are messengers, but the tragedy is that too many of us have forgotten the message. It is our obligation to rediscover it and advance it into eternity. We must not betray our pledge. Our task is to be more than human, more than good, and more than pious. Our task is to surpass all these and once again become God’s stake in the future.

Let us go to our homes, families, schools, businesses, and yeshivot, and let us look for every opportunity to sanctify God’s name, living up to the highest standards of Judaism, and radiating holiness. At every opportunity, we must protest the corruption among members of religious parties, call out those among us who act unethically or dishonestly, and strive to bring holiness back into our communities. We must remind ourselves and our nation to remember our holy mission.

Heschel was right: “The gravest sin for a Jew is to forget what he represents.”

Questions to Ponder

1. What emotions and thoughts arise within you think about your own identity and role within the Jewish community? How do you navigate the tension between embracing your uniqueness and longing for societal acceptance?
2. Rav Cardozo argues that Jews are either superfluous or indispensable, with no middle ground. Is it realistic or fair to place such an extreme expectation on any group of people? How can individuals within the Jewish community find a balance between their unique identity and the pressures of conforming to societal norms without compromising their values or well-being?
3. Do you agree that holiness should be the trademark of Jewish identity? Have there been instances in your life where you witnessed the sanctification of everyday actions. Do you feel that this is particularly representative of Judaism, or is it something innately human? On the opposite side, think of instances in which you have witnessed ethical lapses within the Jewish community. How did this make you feel? Did you find yourself particularly upset that these lapses were committed by “one of ours”?
4. Rav Cardozo mentions instances of corruption among religious leaders as especially detrimental to the image of authentic Judaism among Israel’s secular population. How can religious communities ensure that their leaders embody the ethical standards they preach? What mechanisms can be put in place to hold leaders accountable and restore trust within the community?

[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Earth Is the Lord’s: The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978), 109.