Building a Fence Around American Values

Americans who have longed to see the terrorism of September 11 foster some rethinking of our country's policies have often been silenced by their fear of appearing to lend justification to the attacks themselves. For religious activists in particular, public outrage at Jerry Falwell's and Pat Robertson's finger pointing served as early warning that religious interpretations of this fundamentalist terrorism would seem obscene to most people. Religious counsel has therefore rarely strayed beyond consolation, remembrance and "God Bless America. "

There is a Jewish religious principle, however, that deserves to be mobilized as a patriotic framework for voicing progressive criticisms of the Bush administration's policies in light of these awful events. That principle is "making a fence around the Torah" (s'yag l'torah) - which essentially means conscientiously avoiding practices that could unintentionally lead to violations of Torah law. S'yag l'torah derives from the injunction in Leviticus (18:30) to "guard My guarding by not doing the abominable practices that were done before you," and a warning in Deuteronomy (2:8) to "make a parapet for your roof, so that you do not bring bloodguilt on your house if anyone should fall from it." The principle is most famously articulated in the opening words of Pirkei Avot: "Be deliberate in judgment, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around the Torah."

Traditionally, s'yag l'torah has been used to restrict personal behavior, especially the behavior of Jewish women, whose unbound hair, unleashed voices, and unfettered existences would allegedly pose intolerable sexual stimulation to men. The principle has become a mainstay of ultra-Orthodoxy and should be renewed only with caution. The critical question is whether we define the central concerns of Torah to be only personal piety or to include community-wide justice. If the latter, then s'yag l'torah can help propel a critique of those heedless policies and technologies that endanger the American "Torah" - our country's most essential values, defined in the Declaration of Independence as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

LIFE: Current fears about nuclear bombs as likely tools of terrorism, and nuclear power plants as likely targets, reveal how atom-splitting trespasses against the "fence around life." Critics of nuclear technology have long pointed to the extraordinary national security precautions and international policing that would be needed to curb proliferation and control the technology's potential for environmental disaster. Yet the current administration came into office pursuing the revival of nuclear power and unilaterally abrogating the ABM treaty. September 11 has produced no rethinking of these high-risk policies. Reducing dependence on imported oil may be a short-term important policy goal, but as the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 19:3) instructs, "Do not make the fence taller than what is fenced in, lest it fall down and crush the saplings." The recent approval of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as a burial site for deadly radioactive waste is the most blatant violation yet: Poisons that will persist in the environment for longer than human recorded history are to be stored without scientific confidence and without even a commitment to halt their production.

LIBERTY: The concepts of military tribunals and the suspension of civil liberties for non-citizens have gained support from a frightened public, but President Bush's and Attorney John Ashcroft's lack of accountability, commitment to clear time-limits, and recognition of the historic gravity of their actions make them seem deeply transgressive against the "fence around liberty" known as the Bill of Rights. Pirkei Avot warns judges to "be patient in judgment." For capital crimes in particular, the Talmud urges a truly exhaustive analysis involving 23 rabbis. The proposed military tribunals, by contrast, undermine the already less-than-exhaustive capital criminal process we have in place.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS: Scholars of American political philosophy have long understood this to be a felicitous way of describing the pursuit of economic well-being - a pursuit that the attack on New York City seriously damaged by deepening the recession and wrecking the tourism and travel industries. The Bush/Cheney response has been "business-as-usual" Republicanism. They launched a bail-out of the airline industry without building a fence around job security; they've watched the stock market collapse without building a fence around Social Security (by killing proposals for privatization). They've warned about bio-terrorism without establishing a fence around health-care access for all. They're ducking and dodging during the Enron debacle without establishing a fence around business ethics.

The political embodiment of s'yag l'torah requires a government with real regulatory power and the inclination to use it. By contrast, an unfenced, uncovenanted capitalism seems to be the only faith of the current administration.