Responsibility - Rwanda

1 - Sharing a Fate: Passengers in a Boat

1. Can you think of a modern application of this principle? How do we extend this to the universal?

2 - Our Next Act Can Change the World

1. Do you think Rambam is being literal when he puts this much weight on one act?
2. The Butterfly Effect: can you use the same principles for mitzvot?

BUTTERFLY EFFECT: wikipedia definition:

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic non-linear system can result in large differences in a later state.

The term is closely associated with the work of mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz He noted that the butterfly effect is derived from the metaphorical example of the details of a tornado (the exact time of formation, the exact path taken) being influenced by minor perturbations such as a distant butterfly flapping its wings several weeks earlier. Lorenz originally used a seagull causing a storm but was persuaded to make it more poetic with the use of a butterfly and tornado by 1972. He discovered the effect when he observed runs of his weather model with initial condition data that were rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner. He noted that the weather model would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome.

The idea that small causes may have large effects in weather was earlier acknowledged by French mathematician and engineer Henri Poincaré. American mathematician and philosopher Norbert Wiener also contributed to this theory. Lorenz's work placed the concept of instability of the Earth's atmosphere onto a quantitative base and linked the concept of instability to the properties of large classes of dynamic systems which are undergoing non-linear dynamics and deterministic chaos.

The butterfly effect concept has since been used outside the context of weather science as a broad term for any situation where a small change is supposed to be the cause of larger consequences.

3 - Do Not Be a Bystander

1. What is a bystander?
2. How is this modern language similar to the language used by the Torah?
3. Do you think this verse is only referring to a case where your fellow’s life is at risk?

BYSTANDERS: UHSM definition:

Dictionaries define “bystander” as “a witness to events,” “one who is present but not taking part in what is occurring.”

KEY FACTS

1. “Bystanders” is a catch-all term that has often been applied to people who were passive and indifferent to the escalating persecution that culminated in the Holocaust.

2. After the war, many ordinary Germans and Europeans claimed that they were “not involved,” that they were “bystanders” to the events of the Holocaust. Use of the term “bystander” to avoid any responsibility for what happened, however, obscures the many different levels of individual involvement at all levels of society.

3. Reviewing the use of “bystander” as a general category leads to a more nuanced exploration of the full range of behaviors and what people did—or did not do—to facilitate the persecution and mass murder of other human beings.

4 - Esther Takes Responsibility

1. Why was Esther reluctant to take responsibility and step into this role?
2. What was Mordechai’s argument that convinced her?
3. How can this episode speak to you in your life?

5 - If I Am Only For Myself, What Am I?

1. According to Hillel, is it bad or good being “for yourself”?
2. How do we find a balance between these two things?
3. What do you think the meaning behind the final phrase is and how does it connect to the first two parts of the Mishnah?

6 - Completing the task

1. Is it not a failure if you don’t complete the task?
2. Is failure a bad thing? Can it be good?
3. Why might this be the most important piece of advice for leaders and activists?

Resolve to Follow a System, Not Achieve a Goal - From Cal Newport author of Deep Work

Because…We all suffer from a chronic shortage of will-power. Systems are easier to follow than ambiguous goals. Why? Systems eliminate the need to think or plan, which represent the real choke point in will power exertion.

It’s easy to resolve to “lose 10 pounds,” “get a 4.0 G.P.A.,” or finally “write that brilliant, original screenplay...” But it’s also easy to quickly learn to ignore something so damn vague. Two weeks later, when you’re busy, and stressed, you’re not going to think about what you might do that day to help get closer to your goal.

Instead…Resolve to follow a highly specific system that spells out what you do at what times and on what days. For example, instead of resolving to lose 10 pounds, resolve to go the gym, on Tuesday and Thursdays, in that one hour gap between your 9:00 am and 11:00 am class. Instead of resolving to write a screenplay, resolve to spend three hours, first thing when you wake-up each Saturday, in the same library working on your draft.

7 - A Palace in Flames

1. What does the palace represent?
2. What do the flames represent?
3. What is humankind’s calling with regard to the palace in flames?

Avraham and a Palace in Flames

Avraham sees a palace. The world has order, and therefore it has a Creator. But the palace is in flames. The world is full of disorder, of evil, violence and injustice. Now, no one builds a building and then deserts it. If there is a fire there must be someone to put it out. The building must have an owner. If so, where is he? That is the question and it gives Avraham no peace…

From time immemorial to the present, there have always been two ways of seeing the world. The first says, There is no God. There are contending forces, chance and necessity, the chance that produces variation, and the necessity that gives the strong victory over the weak. From this perspective, the evolution of the universe is inexorable and blind; there is no justice and no judge, and therefore there is no question. We can know how, but we can never know why, for there is no why. There is no palace. There are only flames.

The second view insists that there is God. All that is exists because He made it. All that happens transpires because He willed it. Therefore all injustice is an illusion. Perhaps the world itself is an illusion. When the innocent suffer, it is to teach them to find faith through suffering, obedience through chastisement, serenity through acceptance, the soul’s strength through the body’s torments. Evil is the cloak that masks the good. There is a question, but there is always an answer, for if we could understand God we would know that the world is as it is because it would be less good were it otherwise. There is a palace.

Therefore there are no flames.

The faith of Avraham begins in the refusal to accept either answer, for both contain a truth, and between them there is a contradiction. The first accepts the reality of evil, the second the reality of God. The first says that if evil exists, God does not exist. The second says that if God exists, evil does not exist. But supposing both exist? Supposing there are both the palace and the flames?

. . . Judaism begins not in wonder that the world is, but in protest that the world is not as it ought to be. It is in that cry, that sacred discontent, that Avraham’s journey begins . . . the easy answer would be to deny the reality of either God or evil. Then the contradiction would disappear and we could live at peace with the world. But to be a Jew is to have the courage to refuse easy answers and to reject either consolation or despair. God exists; therefore life has a purpose. Evil exists; therefore we have not yet achieved that purpose. Until then we must travel, just as Avraham and Sarah travelled, to begin the task of shaping a different kind of world . . .

What haunts us about the Midrash is not just Avraham’s question but God’s reply. He gives an answer that is no answer. He says, in effect, ‘I am here,’ without explaining the flames. He does not attempt to put out the fire. It is as if, instead, He were calling for help. God made the building. Man set it on fire, and only man can put out the flames. Avraham asks God, ‘Where are you?’ God replies, ‘I am here, where are you?’ Man asks God, ‘Why did you abandon the world?’ God asks man, ‘Why did you abandon me?’ So begins a dialogue between earth and heaven that has no counterpart in any other faith, and which has not ceased for four thousand years. In these questions, which only the other can answer, God and man find one another. Perhaps only together can they extinguish the flames . . .

God gives His word to man, and man gives his word to God. God teaches, man acts, and together they begin the task of tikkun olam, ‘repairing, or mending, the world’. They become, in the rabbinic phrase, ‘partners in the work of creation’.

Radical Then, Radical Now, pp. 54-56

8 - A Chosen Nation, but Chosen for What?

1. What does the word segulah actually mean?
2. What do you think the verse means? What is the connection between being a segulah and a ‘kingdom of priests’?
3. What does being a ‘light to the nations” mean and how does it connect to the term segulah?

9 - The Birth of Responsibility

The Bible begins with four stories: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, and the Tower of Babel. What are they about? Why are they there? The story that dominates the Bible – God’s covenant with the children of Israel and its tempestuous history – does not begin until Genesis 12 with God’s call to Abraham to leave land, home and his father’s house. What then is the function of the first eleven chapters? To what genre do they belong? They are more than history. They represent a search for meaning in history. They are, in fact, a philosophical drama in four acts, a sustained and tightly constructed exploration of the concept of responsibility.

1. How is being a “role-model nation” fulfilling the Jewish call to responsibility?
2. Is it enough just to “be different” to show humanity about diversity?
3. According to these texts, what does it mean to be a “Chosen People”?

To be a Jew is to be alert to the poverty, the suffering, the loneliness of others. Karl Marx called religion ‘the opium of the people’. No religion is less so than Judaism. Opium desensitises us to pain. Judaism sensitises us to it.

No Jew who has lived Judaism can be without a social conscience. To be a Jew is to accept responsibility. The world will not get better of its own accord. Nor will we make it a more human place by leaving it to others – politicians, columnists, protestors, campaigners – making them our agents to bring redemption on our behalf. Life is God’s question; our choices are the answer.

To be a Jew is to be a blessing to others. That is what God told Avraham in the first words he spoke to him, words that four thousand years ago set Jewish history into motion. ‘Through you,’ He said, ‘all the families on earth will be blessed.’ To be a Jew is not to ask for a blessing. It is to be a blessing. Judaism is about creating spiritual energy: the energy that, if used for the benefit of others, changes lives and begins to change the world. Jewish life is not the search for personal salvation. It is a restless desire to change the world into a place in which God can feel at home. There are a thousand ways in which we help to do this, and each is precious, one not more so than another.

When we give, when we say, ‘If this is wrong, let me be among the first to help put it right,’ we create moments of imperishable moral beauty. We know how small we are, and how inadequate to the tasks God has set us. Even the greatest Jew of all time, Moshe, began his conversation with God with the words, ‘Who am I?’ But it is not we who start by being equal to the challenge; it is the challenge that makes us equal to it. We are as big as our ideals. The higher they are, the taller we stand.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks - From Renewal to Responsibility

10 - The love for people must be alive in the heart and soul, a love for all people and a love for all nations, expressing itself in a desire for their spiritual and material advancement… One cannot reach the exalted position of being able to recite the verse from the morning prayer, ‘Praise the Lord, invoke His name, declare His works among the nations’ (I Chron. 16:8), without experiencing the deep, inner love stirring one to a solicitousness for all nations, to improve their material state and to promote their happiness.

Abraham Isaac Kook, ‘The Moral Principles’ (Middot ha-Rayah). English version in Abraham Isaac Kook, The Lights of Penitence, Lights of Holiness, The Moral Principles, Essays, Letters and Poems, transl. Ben Zion Bokser (London: SPCK, 1979), p. 136.

When seeking to shape our personalities according to Torah values, we must relate to at least three levels of expectation and responsibility. These can be regarded as concentric circles, moving from the broader to the more specific:

1. The universal demands placed upon one simply as a human being;
2. The demands of a Jew;
3. The responsibilities of a ben-Torah, one who makes Torah study a central part of his life and embodies its values.

I wish to deal now with the first level.’ What are the basic, cardinal, universal values for which every person should strive? Let us open a Chumash (Pentateuch) to the chapter describing the creation of man and see what task was assigned to him. “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and to guard it.” (Bereishit 2:15)… God placed man (Adam) in the Garden “le-ovdah u-leshomrah,” to work or cultivate the Garden and to guard it. Here we have two distinct tasks. One, “le-shomrah,” is largely conservative, aimed at preserving nature. It means to guard the world, to watch it- and watching is essentially a static occupation, seeing to it that things do not change, that they remain as they are. This is what Adam was expected to do, and part of our task in the world is indeed to guard that which we have been given: our natural environment, our social setting, our religious heritage…

Here we have, then, two foci of our primary obligation: a) to guard, to have a sense of responsibility in relation to that which we have been given; and b) to work and to develop. Although Adam was commanded specifically to till and guard the Garden of Eden, I think that we would not be stretching things too far if we were to understand that this mandate applies far beyond that particular little corner of the Garden where Adam and Eve were placed. What we have here is a definition of how man is to be perceived in general: as a shomer and as an oved.

Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, By His Light: Character and Values in the Service of God, Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 2016, pp. 1-3

“Le-ovdah” is a mandate to go beyond the original state of creation. “Le-ovdah” is not meant simply to maintain the original standard; rather, we have been given the right and the duty to try to transcend it. While the former approach asserts that man was asked to maintain the world as God had created it, this answer claims that man was empowered and enjoined to create something better, as it were…

The extent to which this particular view is accepted depends on whether one adopts, to a greater or lesser degree, a humanistic perspective. Humanists talk a great deal about man placing his imprint upon the world, improving it, building it, and so on. When I say humanists, I am not talking only about secular humanists; I mean religious humanists within our world as well. Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik and Rav Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, for example, talk a great deal about the need for man to create…

A person who works is a partner to God in ma’aseh bereishit (creation). In this respect, he is imitating God. Usually we speak of imitating God by being merciful, or by performing acts of chessed (kindness), but the Midrash also tells us:

Rabbi Yehuda ben Rabbi Simon said: [The verse states,] “After the Lord your God you shall walk” (Devarim 13:5) … [What does this mandate of imitatio Dei entail?] At the beginning of the world’s creation, the Holy One occupied Himself first with planting, as it says, “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden” (Bereishit 2:8); so too, when you enter the Land (of Israel, occupy yourselves first with planting – and thus it says (Vayikra 10:23), ” When you enter the land and plant all fruit bearing trees. (Vayikra Rabbah 25:3)

Of course, the trees are symbolic of man’s contribution to this world, to nature -something which is planted by human agency, rather than something which appears spontaneously.

Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, By His Light: Character and Values in the Service of God, Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 2016, pp. 8-13

The Torah insists that there is an Ultimate Power. This world is not an accident; it came into being by the will of a Creator God. This God wants the perfection of the world and the triumph of life; God is on the side of humans. God cares and wants to help, but God wants humans to take power and responsibility as well. This concept is expressed most dramatically in the concept of brit. God entered’ into a covenant (a loving commitment) with humans. God will help, God will accompany, God will be involved in every aspect of this effort to perfect the world (the process of tikkun olam). But there must be an active human role in this battle. Human beings are partners with the Divine. God will not give us a perfect world on a silver platter; humans must take responsibility. In this conception, the process of perfection is a constant struggle – never ceasing, never “fixed”, never to be taken for granted. Ideally, this joint action-relationship steers us safely between the Scylla of human passivity in the face of suffering and the Charybdis of human arrogance that has generated the kind of runaway, megalomaniacal power that threatens the planet.

There is another powerful dynamic in the concept of brit. The covenant idea teaches that, ultimately, humans are not alone. Still, God is not blatantly manifest in the world, but must be discovered. God is not self-evidently present, but must be sought out behind-and within-the veil of reality. This hiddenness reflects not God’s lack of concern, but the way in which the Divine, lovingly, acting pedagogically as a great teacher, tries to evoke constantly increasing levels of human participation and human responsibility in the process of tikkun olam.

Biblically, the fact that God is not fully revealed is a characteristic of existence from the very beginning. However, God’s hiddenness-an expression of divine self-limitation-increases as humans become more capable and more powerful. This tzimtzum (self-limitation) is not an abandonment of humanity; it is for the sake of humanity…

In my view, this hiddenness is what the Kabbalah means by the term tzimtzum. Tzimtzum is a reflection not of the absence or weakness of God, but of God’s voluntary and loving self-limitation in order to help humans take full responsibility for their actions As time goes on, God’s increasing self-limitation means that humans take primary responsibility for the outcome of history and, thus, of the cosmic process as well.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, Living in the Image of God: Jewish Teachings to Perfect the World, New York: Jason Aronson, 1998, pp. 46-48