Study with Rabbi Perlin (3/26/2020)

March 19, 2020

Study with Rabbi Perlin during the Covid-19 Pandemic – Thursday, March 26, 2020  @1 P.M.

Collective Belonging – A Sacred Responsibility?*

Babylonian Talmud – Tractate Ta’anit 11a

Our rabbis taught: When Israel is in trouble and one of them separates himself from them, then the two ministering angels who accompany every person come and place their hands upon his head and say, “So and so who separated himself from the community shall not behold the consolation of the community.”  Another (Baraitha) taught: When the community is in trouble let not a man say, “I will go to my house and I will eat and drink and all will be well with me.” … But, rather a man should share in the distress of the community, for so we find that Moses, our teacher, shared in the distress of the community…

Mishnah Avot 2:4

Hillel said: “Do not separate yourself from the community.”

 Soncino Talmud Commentary on this passage Nezikin Book 4, p. 14

(7) Identify yourself with the community in everything except wrong-doing. (i) Participate  in its sorrows as well as its joys, cf. Isaiah 66:10 “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her!  Join in her jubilation, all you who mourned for her.”  (ii) Do not lead a selfish life or that of a recluse. (iii) Do not act independently of, or contrary to, what is the norm accepted by the community as a whole.

 Babylonian Talmud – Baba Batra 8a

[How long must one reside in a town before being considered a citizen?] The Gemara asks: And do we require that one live in a city for twelve months for all matters? But isn’t it taught in a baraita: If one lives in city for thirty days, he must contribute to the charity platter from which food is distributed to the poor. If he lives there for three months, he must contribute to the charity box. If he lives there for six months, he must contribute to the clothing fund. If he lives there for nine months, he must contribute to the burial fund. If he lives there for twelve months, he must contribute to the columns of the city i.e., for the construction of a security fence.

Rabbi Toba Spitzer, “Peoplehood” Reconsidered (2006)

You can’t tell people to “belong” when they don’t feel a sense of connection, any more than you can tell someone to “believe” in something that is alien to their experience or tell people to “behave” according to Jewish law when those laws are no longer relevant to their lives….while Jewish civilization in a broad sense continues to develop and grow, a sense of “belonging” is not, to my mind, the driving factor behind these creative impulses…..But even with all that, I do not want to give up on “peoplehood.” I just want to think about it differently. I would suggest we start by remembering that Kaplan never argued for community for community’s sake alone. He understood that Jewish peoplehood was in the service of something greater. And that something was “salvation”……The Jewish people then, are a collectivity, a civilization that “makes for salvation” both for its members, and as part of a larger human project of liberation and fulfillment.

Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book 20, Chapter 9

 The Roman Emperor Claudius entrusted the king of Judea, Agrippa II (28-92 C.E.) with the care and maintenance of the Temple in Jerusalem. According to the ancient historian Josephus, when repairs were completed, the leaders of the Jewish community attempted to set up a vast public-works project to keep the temple workers employed so that they would not become needy. Although Agrippa rejected one project, he did allow an alternative.

  1. Klagsburn’s Voices of Wisdom, p. 335

And now it was that the Temple was finished [repairs and rebuilding of the courts around it].

So when the people saw that the workmen were unemployed, who were above 18,000, and that they, receiving no wages were in want, because they had earned their bread by their labors about the Temple…they persuaded him (Agrippa II) to rebuild the eastern cloister…

But, King Agrippa, who had the care of the entire Temple committed to him by Claudius Caesar, considering that it… would require considerable time and great sums of money…, denied the petitioners their request about that matter; but he did not obstruct them when they desired that the city might be paved with white stone.

*With gratitude to Rabbi Dr. Lisa Grant of HUC-JIR who coined the title for a class I took with her last April, in New York, and provided me with a few of the resources on this handout.