Printable PDF available here. Last year’s piece on Ki Tavo is available here.
Rav Kook (Based on Ein Ayah, Peah)
Then you shall say before the Lord, your G-d, “I have removed the holy [portion] from the house, and I have also given it to the Levite, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, according to all Your commandment that You commanded me; I have not transgressed Your commandments, nor have I forgotten.” (Devarim 26:13)
[A]ccording to all Your commandment that You commanded me – That is to say, “I have given everything in its proper sequence. I did not give terumah before bikurim, nor ma’aser before terumah, nor ma’aser sheni before ma’aser rishon.” This is a reference to the law stated by the Sages that the Torah prohibits giving tithes out of sequence. (Rashi, based on Mishnah Ma’aser Mishnah)
Obligations and responsibilities need a proper structure. It is not enough to merely ‘check everything off the list.’ Many positive ethical values bring tremendous good at the proper time, but result in destruction and harm when they are implemented prematurely. Thus, we must make sure that we have a proper hierarchy of values, and that primary values are not trampled underfoot in the hasty pursuit of relatively less important matters.
If this seems overly abstract, let us consider the concentric circles of interpersonal responsibilities. A person has primary responsibility to his own family, and after that to his nation, and only after that to all of humanity. When this hierarchy is maintained, tremendous good comes to the world and G-d’s plan for humanity is advanced. Even if a person or generation is unable to make progress on all of these levels, every step is valuable in G-d’s eyes and has merit.
Many times, values of lesser importance do not need to be entirely set aside. Other times, the generation in which a person lives is entirely unprepared, and so certain spiritual ‘fruits’ must be left to ripen. At the end of history, humanity will succeed at rectifying all levels of its existence. With the perfection of spiritual and physical reality, poverty, warfare, sickness and death will become a thing of the past. Humanity’s inner yearning to help others and perform chesed will no longer have any outlets within human society. At that point, it will be our responsibility to turn toward the animal kingdom, to uplift and refine the natural world until it is permeated with love and kindness. As Isaiah (11:7) declares in his Messianic vision, “A wolf shall live with a lamb, and a leopard shall lie with a kid; and a calf and a lion cub and a fatling [shall lie] together, and a small child shall lead them. And a cow and a bear shall graze together, their children shall lie; and a lion, like cattle, shall eat straw.” Man will take his rightful place as the beneficent ruler of the entire natural world, and Divine hashgacha will be poured out over all of G-d’s creations.
This is a beautiful vision, but the time has obviously not yet arrived for it to be implemented. We still live in a broken and imperfect world, a world that overflows with the bloodshed of war, a world that is full of falsehood and devoid of pure knowledge of G-d, full of injustice and oppression of the poor. In the face of all of this brokenness, we must focus on the areas of our primary responsibility, beginning with our own families and our own nation. It is hasty and foolish to skip over these areas and pour one’s energies into fixing all of humanity, just as one cannot build the upper stories of a building without a robust foundation. The inevitable result will be terrible physical and spiritual suffering for humanity, far in excess of whatever meager improvements once manages to achieve.
In our times, it is similarly shortsighted to turn aside from human welfare altogether and focus on the advancement of the animal world. How can anyone with a pure conscience allocate their chesed to a horse or camel, a dog or a pig, when their family, their fellow citizens and fellow human beings cry out in suffering in our imperfect world?
According to our Sages, this is the lesson taught by vidui ma’aser. It is not enough simply to give everything that one owes. One must follow the proper sequence, and ensure that their obligations and responsibilities are structured properly, in accordance with a Divine hierarchy of values.
Food for Thought
Rav Yehuda Amital (Commitment and Complexity, pg. 79): In all spheres there are differences of degree and level. There are major issues and minor issues. Even when it comes to major issues, there are different levels of importance. In the realm of sanctity, too, there is the Kodesh (Holy), and there is the Kodesh ha-Kodashim (Holy of Holies). The world of values is likewise structured like a ladder: there are the more important values, and there are less important values. A person’s stature and wisdom are measured by his ability to live by a scale of values whose order is established in accordance with the truth of Torah: “a ladder that is placed on the ground and whose top reaches the heavens” (Bereishit 28:12). This is the ladder of G-d; the righteous shall ascend it.
Rav Chaim Vital: There are many people who do abundant chesed with others, but are not generous or giving with their spouse or other members of their family. Such people expect tremendous reward in Gan Eden. But when they get there, they will find that all of their chesed is regarded as empty and not worth anything.
Esti Rosenberg (Eulogy for Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, A Life Steady and Whole pg. 81): The heaven your ladder reached was one of Torah learning, of awe, faith and virtue, of morality, kindness and astounding humility, of sensitivity and greatness in intense Torah study – all combined with gemilut hesed in the fullest. And indeed, you have now arrived in the heavens. As your many students looked up to you from afar with an uplifting sense of awe, they feared not living up to your expectations. Your conduct and deeds… your integrity and your modesty, all often seemed far beyond their reach.
But to us, your children, our spouses, and your grandchildren, you were a ladder set firmly on the ground. You were a person of smiles and simple fatherly compassion; a scholar who learned Torah in his study but was always happy to interrupt to listen to our silly stories about our friends and was deeply involved in our lives. You measured the kitchen cabinets and the new washing machine; booked family vacations months in advance; were interested and involved in all our financial concerns, and found time to come to performances of my youth group and at school. People saw you and could not believe their eyes. They could not believe that you washed dishes on Friday nights and made Tonny her soft-boiled eggs. You prepared the soda siphon and made pudding for all of us with impressive ceremony. You boucded your grandchildren on your knees and even yelped playfully with them. We knew and felt how enormously privileged we were.
Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh Deah 251:3): When it comes to tzedakah, one’s parents take precedence over others, as do one’s other relatives. One’s household takes precedence over the poor of one’s city. The poor of one’s city take precedence over the poor of another city. And the inhabitants of the Land of Israel take precedence over those who live outside it.
Aruch haShulchan (ibid): If we understand these words literally, it implies that there is no requirement to give anythingto groups lower on the hierarchy until those that take precedence have been addressed. But it is well known that every wealthy person has many poor relatives (and all the more so every poor person). How can it possibly be that a poor person without any rich relatives will die of hunger?! It seems clear to me that everyone, whether rich or poor, must give to poor people who are not relatives; the hierarchy of tzedakah means only that one must give more to those who are relatives.
Daniel Gordis: [Note for context – Daniel Gordis, one of the most articulate voices in the Jewish world, became embroiled in a dispute during the recent Gaza war. With his two sons serving in the IDF and poised on the border of Gaza for an imminent invasion (that never took place), Gordis was deeply troubled by a missive written by Rabbi Sharon Brous to her congregation, which Gordis considered “even-handed” to the point of “betrayal.” He wrote a response in The Times of Israel] Universalism, Cynthia Ozick once noted, has become the particularism of the Jews. Increasingly, our most fundamental belief about ourselves is that we dare not care about ourselves any more than we can about others…
This inability to distinguish ourselves from the mass of humanity, this inability to celebrate our own origins, our own People and our own homeland, I argue in my latest book, The Promise of Israel, is dysfunctional. Do we not care about our own children more than we care about other people’s children? And shouldn’t we? Are our own parents not our responsibility in a way that other people’s parents are not?…
That an utterly universalized Judaism is almost entirely divorced from the richness of Jewish heritage and the worldview of our classic texts is bad enough. But on weeks like this, with hundreds of thousands of Israelis sleeping in bomb shelters and many millions more unspeakably frightened, it’s become clear that this universalized Judaism has rendered not only platitudinous Jews, but something worse. It bequeaths us a new Jew utterly incapable of feeling loyalty. The need for balance is so pervasive that even an expression of gut-level love for Israelis more than for their enemies is impossible. Balance has now bequeathed betrayal.
… As I read Rabbi Brous’s missive, I couldn’t stop thinking about my two sons, both in the army, each doing his share to save the Jewish state from this latest onslaught. What I wanted to hear was that Rabbi Brous cares about my boys (for whom she actually babysat when we were all much younger) more than she cares about the children of terrorists. Especially this week, I wanted her to tell her community to love my family and my neighbors more than they love the people who elected Hamas and who celebrate each time a suicide bomber kills Jews. Is that really too much to ask?”
Questions for Discussion/Food for Thought
- As Torah Jews, how can we make sure that we have a proper hierarchy of values?
- See the Shulchan Aruch in “Food for Thought” above. Does it support Rav Kook’s point about having a hierarchy of values? (Make sure to see the Aruch haShulchan’s commentary, also excerpted above.)
- Rav Kook says that “terrible physical and spiritual suffering” are the result of pursuing ambitious universal goals before rectifying one’s family and particular nation. What do you think he is referring to?
- Rav Kook talks about three levels – the family, the nation, and humanity. Are there any other intermediate ‘levels’ that should be added to the hierarchy of priorities?
- How can we focus on our energies on our families and Jewish communities without losing sight of our responsibilities to the broader society that we are part of?
- Why does Rav Kook disapprove of vegetarianism?
