... All of Israel are one soul, as in "...all the men of Israel, united
as one man..." (Judges 20:11), so if one sins, all are responsible
(guarantors) for each other. What is this like? Like when people are
traveling in a boat and one of them takes out a drill and starts to
drill under his seat; his companion says, "Fool, you are drilling under
your own seat but the water will enter and we will all be lost."
-Otzar Hamidrashim Yelamdenu 225
The
punch line of the above story, "all Israel are responsible for each
other," is often quoted to support our philanthropic and political
obligation to help our fellow Jews. Note, however, that that is not the
original intention. Rather, the point is that we are morally
responsible for each other, i.e., we'll all get punished for each
other's sins. So I have an interest in preventing you from sinning,
since I am responsible for your behavior, not just for my own. In this
interpretation the slogan is less popular – but it is the idea that
drives the attempts of the Ultra-Orthodox to impose their view of
halachah on the rest of us. If all Israel are responsible one for the
other, then my violation of, say, the halachah of Shabbat reflects on
and affects all Jews, and my Ultra-Orthodox neighbor feels that it is
his obligation to do whatever he can to prevent this harmful behavior on
my part. Not because he is wicked, or power-hungry, or hates Reform
Jews, but because he feels a sense of responsibility for me and is
concerned about my insistence on drilling a hole under my seat. If only
I would keep all the mitzvoth, we would be able to sail on safely to
redemption. So he will use all the methods at his disposal, including
political manipulations and even force, to keep me from drilling that
hole.
But what can you do, it seems that one man's drill is another's life
preserver. And when my Ultra-Orthodox neighbor insists that his son
cannot serve in the army because it will corrupt his culture and keep
him from the Torah study and mitzvot that have kept us afloat in
history, he looks to me like someone who is drilling a hole under his
seat that will take us all down.
Perhaps this same logic, by the way, is at play in Diaspora Jews'
criticism of Israel's policies and/or actions: not because they are
self-hating, or post-Zionist, but because when Israel is perceived to be
"sinning" they are, willy-nilly, responsible: When we Israelis drill
holes under our seats, Diaspora Jews get a sinking feeling.
The problem with this sense of people-wide responsibility is that it
runs up against our modern commitment to pluralism and freedom and
individual responsibility. The term "Jewish Peoplehood" has taken on
the positive aura, in Jewish discourse, of "motherhood and apple pie:"
With or without a clear definition, it is in any case understood as
something positive. But if it really is to have content, then we have
to come to terms with the above midrash: does "peoplehood" merely
require us to care, in the abstract, about the welfare of our fellow
Jews, and feel empathy for their suffering and pride in their Nobel
prizes? Or does it mean we are obligated to share our resources with
them when they are in need? Or does it mean that we are responsible for
their moral failings, and they for ours, which obligates us not only to
reprove them – but to wrest the drill out of their hands?
And what of the danger that in our struggle to grab that drill, we will capsize the boat?
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