Head of School Blog Post

As I was reflecting on this special occasion, and what I wanted to say today, I thought about my recent trip to Japan, where I had the privilege to travel over the winter break. On my journey, what struck me most was the Japanese sense of collective responsibility.

In Tokyo, the city streets were immaculate and free of garbage. Even though 28 million people live there – a city three-times the size of New York  – people walk around and feel totally safe. Hardly anyone locks their bicycles. People are very aware of others, and a distinct quiet pervades public spaces.

Japan is a very different country, with a very different culture, than ours in the United States. Here, we have a lot of diversity, difference of opinion, and debates. We’re loud and boisterous. And where Japanese culture sustains collective uniformity, American culture promotes individualism.

We travel to gain new perspectives on our own homes. That’s what happened to me. In Japan, I started to think about collective responsibility.

What does it mean for each of us to take collective responsibility? At JDS? In the Jewish community? In the United States? As Jews? In Israel? In the world? At this time in history?

Ultimately, each of you will answer these questions for yourselves, over the course of long, full and meaningful lives. Today, as we mark the occasion of your high school graduation, and the beginning of your time beyond JDS’s school walls, I want to share some ideas to ground your thinking for the next stage of your journey.

In Judaism, there are two concepts that both conflict with and complement each other. The first is achrayut, or individual responsibility. The second is arevut, or collective responsibility. We talk about these two values a lot at JDS.

The Talmud contains the most well-known and explicit formulation of Jewish collective responsibility. The word arev means guarantor—your fate as a Jew is tied to mine as a Jew. In the Talmud, we learn כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל עֲרֵבִים זֶה בָּזֶה, All of Israel is responsible one for another. Our Covenant as Jews is entered collectively, across generations and differences.

The root of our other value, achrayut, or individual responsibility, comes from the Hebrew word acher, meaning other. Judaism calls on us to answer for our own individual actions, to take personal responsibility with the other in mind.

The Mishnah in Sanhedrin teaches, “for this reason each person was created individually, to teach that whoever saves a single life is as though they saved an entire world… and each person must also say: For my sake the world was created.”

These texts of our tradition speak directly to the relationship between individual responsibility and collective responsibility.

Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik writes of two distinct covenants that the Jewish people have in his famous essay Kol Dodi Dofek, “The covenant of fate makes us a community, but the covenant of destiny calls upon each individual to act.”

There is a well-known example from the Torah of not taking responsibility: Cain abdicates his responsibility completely for murdering his brother Abel. In an attempt to elicit Cain’s confession, God asks and Cain responds infamously.

אֵ֖י הֶ֣בֶל אָחִ֑יךָ וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ לֹ֣א יָדַ֔עְתִּי הֲשֹׁמֵ֥ר אָחִ֖י אָנֹֽכִי׃

“Where is your brother Abel?” And Cain says, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

While Cain is the antithesis of achrayut, the paradigm for achrayut is Miriam. When her mother made the fateful decision to put baby Moshe in a basket and leave it in the Nile River, Moshe’s older sister Miriam watched from the reeds. Scholars have pointed out the parallel language to Cain’s in the Torah. When Miriam stood to watch baby Moshe the Torah says she did so ״לדעה מה יעשה לו״ – “To know what would be done to him.”

Miriam is the opposite of Cain, she hides in the reeds of the Nile to watch over Moshe’s safety…Miriam is her brother’s keeper.

What do these ancient texts mean for us, today, living in this critical time, in this country? What is the difference between the Jewish teachings on responsibilities and American ideals of rights?

In Judaism, we expect people to take responsibility, achrayut, for their individual actions. And yet, Judaism also imparts an equal emphasis on collective responsibility, on arevut, and our shared responsibilities to each other.

Israeli society often reflects this model of Jewish obligations more than the one of American rights. Mandatory military service is framed as collective responsibility, and the national discourse emphasizes mutual obligation.

The United States’ history, culture and law, by contrast, emphasizes individual rights and the centrality of the individual. American law is all about the rights that Americans hold. Individuals are free to choose, and forge their own paths.

At its heart, the difference is about orientation. American ideals begin with the individual and ask: What am I entitled to? What may not be taken from me?

Jewish teachings ask: What is demanded of me? What do I owe other people and the community? The basic unit of Jewish ethics is not a right but a mitzvah—a commanded responsibility.

One does not say, “I have a right to food,” but rather: we are commanded to feed the hungry.

One does not say, “I have a right to dignity,” but rather: humiliating another person is forbidden.

Most importantly, in Judaism, the concepts work together. The idea is that we are collectively responsible for each other, that we should always be thinking about and acting with the collective in mind, and we are also individually each responsible for the collective.

Today, on your graduation, my charge for you is to carry the meaning of these texts into your own lives, in ways that will be different for each of you.