CABI Social Action

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

If I am only for myself, what am I?

If not now, when?

-Hillel, in Pirkei Avot

From the start, Judaism has called us to do the work of tikkun olam, of helping to heal the world’s brokenness. While Jews can and do argue—sometimes vociferously—over how to best implement that mandate in a vast array of ever-changing circumstances, there is no denying our tradition’s fundamental imperative toward social justice. Where some religious streams focus on otherworldly spiritual rewards, Judaism insists that we embrace this earthly life, do our part to responsibly care for the Holy One’s creation and build a society that is more peaceful, just, and compassionate.

While countless biblical and rabbinic texts speak to these sacred obligations, I’d like to highlight three of the most foundational teachings that undergird our social justice work.

The first comes in the Torah’s opening chapter and thus sets the tone for all that follows: God created humankind in the divine image, making the human in the image of God, creating them male and female. Three thousand years later, the ultimate implications of these words remain radical and have yet to be fully realized.

Every human being, regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation or religious belief is a likeness of the Holy One. By this understanding, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and prejudice of any form are not just sins against our fellow human beings but a form of idolatry, a diminishment of God.

The second teaching also comes from the Creation story, where after the description of each day’s work the Torah notes: God saw that it was good. This repeated passage points to the holiness of the entire natural world. It explicitly does not say “God saw that it was good for human beings.”

All of life is sacred and our challenge as citizens on this extraordinary planet is to live accordingly. Or as Genesis 2:15 notes: God set the human being in the Garden of Eden to work and watch over it. Jewish environmental ethics insist that we live in respectful and loving reciprocity with the rest of the Creation.

Finally, beginning in the book of Exodus—a story of political liberation that has inspired oppressed peoples over many centuries and across the globe—we have the essential lesson that God insists we learn from our difficult history: You shall not oppress the stranger, for you know the heart of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.

The Torah states this commandment thirty-six times—far more than any other injunction. Our own experience of suffering obligates us to do our part to ameliorate pain and persecution for ourselves and, critically, our neighbors and even our adversaries.

These texts—and the endless commentaries that follow from them—are, of course, ideals. Much like Thomas Jefferson’s aspirational phrase in America’s Declaration of Independence—All men are created equal—they reflect the world that should be rather than the world that is.

Both the Torah itself and the Rabbis’ writings sometimes fall short of the vision; that failure is itself an indication of the brokenness that we are called to try to heal. Still, the ideals matter deeply, especially if we do our part—individually and as a CABI community—to realize them more fully in our words and deeds.