Rabbi Dr. Aryeh Cohen, “Here I Am! A Political Theory of Action”
(Contemporary) American professor of Rabbinic Literature at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies
. . . My interest is in articulating a theory, or a narrative, of how people move from the couch to recognizing an injustice to doing something about it. There are two distinct moments. The first I’ll call the moment of Righteous Indignation. There is a great word for this in the Rabbinic tradition: taromet. The word taromet shares a root with the word for thunder: ra’am. Taromet is the reaction which is sanctioned by a court when a person has been harmed in a way that is not legally actionable, and yet she has been morally wronged. Taromet or righteous rage does not carry with it any legal remedy, aside from communal vindication in one’s outrage. In a culture in which there is a shared morality, this is not an insignificant matter, and might even lead to the offending party making restitution in some manner. However, that restitution is not enforceable by a court. Therefore: righteous indignation.
The contemporary occurrence of taromet is the moment when you recognize
that your understanding of justice has run up against an immoral situation. When workers are legally paid a salary so low that they cannot afford to feed and shelter themselves. When workers are treated in such a way as to impact their dignity. When straight people can marry but gay folks cannot. When undocumented immigrants and their children are exploited for their work but are disenfranchised politically, and ultimately criminalized. In whatever issue, taromet, righteous indignation, occurs when you are forced to compare your understanding of justice with the reality of a situation, and you find that the reality does not stand up to scrutiny. You are then moved to indignation or even rage. Legitimately.
At that moment you are faced with the next question. What am I willing to do about this? The answer to this question can be anything from “nothing” through clicking
on an email to joining a demonstration, to voting, to participating in an act of civil disobedience. Deciding to take that action is the “Here I am” moment. “Here I am!” is Moses’ answer to God’s call from the burning bush. The Biblical Hebrew hineni is a contraction of two words. The first, hineh, is a word that signals presence or
presentation. (Often it is used to signal a scene change in Biblical narrative.) The second is ani, or I, me....“Here I am to respond to your suffering.” The hineni moment is the move from “wow, this sucks, somebody should do something” to “I am one of the people who have to do something.”
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Which issues or experiences cause you to feel righteous indignation? When you feel righteous indignation, what is your response?
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Have you experienced a moment when you have said (either to yourself or to others), “Hineni. Here I am, ready to take action”?
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If/when you decide to take action, what types of action are you likely to take, and why?
Issue Brainstorming and Reflection
List the social action issues that are important to you.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, Chesed, Tzedakah, and Tzedek: What’s the Difference?
Working In Groups - describe a chesed response, a tzedakah response, and a tzedek response to the situation.
Situation
You’ve been employed for more than a year and, overall, you’re happy with your job, your coworkers, and the office environment. Lately, you’ve been staying late a lot, as you’re in the middle of a massive project, and the deadline is approaching quickly. You find yourself in the office late several nights a week. As it happens, you have come to know the cleaning woman, who is there after-hours. Usually, you smile and say hello (she’s an immigrant and doesn’t speak your language), but don’t think much about her or her life. After a few weeks of these encounters, however, you notice that she wears the same t-shirt under her uniform every day. As the winter turns blustery, you find yourself thinking about the cleaning lady while you wait for your bus in the cold. You’re pretty sure that her t-shirt couldn’t possibly be warm enough. On a particular Tuesday you walk down the corridor to the restroom and notice the cleaning woman pulling a half-eaten sandwich out of the garbage. The next day you speak to the janitorial supervisor and discover that several members of the cleaning staff aren’t making ends meet.
Rashi on Vayikra 25:35
You should grab hold of him: Do not allow him to go down and fall, for then it will be hard to pick him up. Instead, grab hold of him the moment he falters. To what is this comparable? To a load on a donkey – all the while it is on the donkey, one [person] can grab it and set it aright, [but once] it has fallen to the ground, even five [people] cannot set it aright.
