Thinking Global: Jewish Social Action Month

By RABBI DOV GREENBERG

Tomorrow we’ll witness and participate in the launching of the first Jewish Social Action Month, thirty days dedicated to promoting Jewish unity, peoplehood and social justice in communities throughout the world. And we at Chabad at Stanford commit ourselves along with other KolDor communities to this beautiful collective effort.

There have been times, this past year, when the problems of the twenty first century - Iraq, the Middle East, hurricanes, earthquakes, soaring energy costs - have seemed almost intractable. How do you begin to get a grip on issues so difficult to analyze, let alone solve? What can we possibly do over the next thirty days that would even make a trace of a difference in this chaotic world? Yet, within this instability one thing seems obvious to me, that what matters is not merely the critical intelligence we bring to bear, but also our fundamental vision, our starting point. And on this Judaism has something simple but quite significant to say. We repair the world in small steps, act by act, day by day. Each act mends a fracture of the world.

 

An old man was walking on the beach at dawn when he noticed a young man picking up starfish stranded by the retreating tide, and throwing them back into the sea one by one. He went up to him and asked him why he was doing this. The young man replied that the starfish would die if left exposed to the morning sun. “But the beach goes on for miles, and there are thousands of starfish. You will not be able to save them all. How can your effort make a difference?” The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and then threw it to safety in the waves. “To this one,” he said, “it makes a difference.” That story captures a fundamental idea in Jewish thought. We can’t fix the world all at once. We do it, one day at a time, one individual at a time, one deed at a time. A single life, said the sages, is like a universe. Save a life and you save a world. Change a life and you begin to change the world.

There is a name for this idea in Judaism: Tikkun olam, mending or perfecting the world. Tikkun olam, is an expression of the faith that it is no accident that we are here, in this time and place, with these gifts and capabilities, and this opportunity to make a positive difference to the world. This belief is known as divine providence: the idea that G-d is active in our live as individuals, not only, as the Greek philosophers believed, concerned with universals. We are here because someone wanted us to be and because there is a task that only we can fulfill. And we never know, at the time of the task, the ripple of consequences set in motion by the slightest act of kindness.

Fleming, so the story goes, was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby swamp. He dropped his tools and ran to the swamp. There, caught up to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the young boy from what could have been a slow and painful death.

The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman's modest home. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy the farmer had saved.

"I want to repay you," said the nobleman. "You saved my son's life." "No, I can't accept payment for what I did," the Scottish farmer replied, waving off the offer.

At that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door.

"Is that your son?" the nobleman asked.

"Yes," the farmer replied proudly.

"I'll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of education my son will enjoy. If the lad is anything like his father, he'll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of." And that he did.

Farmer Fleming's son attended the very best schools and in time, he graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.

Years afterward, the nobleman's son who was saved from the swamp was stricken with pneumonia. What saved his life? Penicillin. The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill. His son's name? Sir Winston Churchill.

Our acts make a difference, sometimes all the difference in the world. Maimonides, one of the greatest sages of the Middle Ages makes a remarkable statement in the midst of his presentation of the laws of repentance:

“Everyone should regard himself and the world as if evenly poised between innocence and guilt. If he commits a sin, he tilts the balance of his fate and that of the world to guilt, causing destruction. If he performs a good deed, he shifts the balance of his fate and that of the world to innocence, bringing salvation and deliverance to others. That is the meaning of [the biblical phrase] 'the righteous person is the foundation of the world' (Prov. 10:25), namely that by an act of righteousness we influence the fate of, and save, the world.”

This is a fascinating passage. One act, says Maimonides, can change a life, and transform a world. How so? Our acts have a chain of consequences – psychological, spiritual, and historical - that reverberate in incalculable ways but of which, for the most part, we are unaware. Could Farmer Fleming, when he did the simple act of pulling a child out of a swamp, have know that this would change the life of his own child, and that he by his discovery of penicillin, would save many others? Could Fleming have known the rescued child would one day stand alone against fascism and renew the world's faith in the superiority of righteousness and democracy? Obviously not. He could not have known it because the human future is inherently unknowable. But this we know: that each situation in which we find ourselves did not happen by accident: we are here, now, in this place, among these people, in these circumstances, so that we can do the act or say the word that will light a candle of hope and holiness in a dark world. “A little light”, said the Jewish mystics, “drives away much darkness.” And when light is joined to light, mine to yours and yours to others, the dance of flames, each so small, yet together so beautiful, begins to bathe the world in the glow of the divine presence.

 

May our commitment to and acts of social action in the next days be a wellspring for renewed commitment to Tikkun Olam for the year to come.