How to Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck) by Wex, Michael (summer reading list txt) 📕

These are things to which no limit has been set: the size of the corner parts of fields that are left open for the poor; that of the offering of first-fruits to be brought to the Temple; the number of times one can go to the Temple during the year; the amount of charity and other good deeds for which neither repayment nor recompense is sought; and the study of the Torah.

These are things whose fruits are eaten in this world, even while their dividends are paid in the next. And they are as follows: honoring your father and mother; giving charity and performing similar beneficent acts; getting to the synagogue early both morning and evening; hospitality; visiting the sick; providing for [poor] brides; escorting the dead to burial; devotion in prayer; bringing peace between a person and his fellow and between man and wife—and the study of Torah is equal to them all.

(PEAH 1:1; SHABBOS 127A)

Aside from the study of Torah and getting to the synagogue on time, the only strictly ritual activities mentioned depend on the existence of the Temple and have not been performed by anybody for the last couple of thousand years. All the others are the kinds of apparently colorless good deeds that would appear not to need any support or authorization from a canonical text. You don’t need to have heard of the Ten Commandments to treat your parents well, nor do you need to own a pair of phylacteries to make a charitable donation. So what are these doing here? Why doesn’t the text mention things like eating kosher food, keeping the Sabbath, circumcising male babies, and all the other things for which Jews are so well known?

The answer, strange as it sounds, is because these instructions aren’t really intended for individuals—or, at least, not for isolated individuals. Although Judaism is all about what you do, it’s also about who you do it with. It is a stubbornly communal religion that revolves in large part around the idea of having nine other Jews around to form a community. Traditionally, these were all males, and any settlement that did not have at least ten male Jews aged at least thirteen years and one day was considered a random collection of Jewish families living in close proximity to each other, but did not qualify as a congregation.

One of the main differences between a community and a group of individuals was that once the community made itself known to the secular authorities (to whom the Jews often had to appeal for the right to settle in the first place), it was permitted a fair degree of autonomy and was allowed to set up whatever institutions and organizations it needed to keep itself going. As historian I. A. Agus puts it:

The professional rabbi was entirely unknown in the Rhine communities of the early Middle Ages…. Religious as well as secular authority was vested in the “community” which acted as legislator, judge and administrator. When a serious religious problem arose, some residents of the town were inclined to decide one way, while others disagreed, thereby displaying the lack of a centralized religious authority…. [These Jews] were therefore left to their own devices, and were forced to organize every phase of their social, economic, and political life on the basis of their own law.

Even later, when each town would have at least one professional rabbi, we must never forget that these rabbis were community employees who could be fired if the community found them unsatisfactory in any way. In every case, the community decided what kind of institutions to maintain and how much money—or what percentage of the money that they had—to devote to them. A list of typical institutions reads like an embodiment of the list of mitzvahs in the prayer that we just quoted. In a community of any size, you’d find most, if not all of the following:

bikker khoylim—visiting and providing necessities for the sick

hakhnoses kale—wedding clothes and provisions for indigent brides

khevre kadishe—funeral and burial society

hakhnoses orkhim—hostel for travelers with no money for an inn (generally a bench in the study house)

moës khitin—Passover food for those who can’t afford it

gmiles khasodim—free loan society

talmud toyre—free Hebrew school for children whose parents cannot afford tuition

malbish arumim—free clothing for the indigent

beys yesoymim—orphanage

hekdesh—poorhouse

moyshev zkeynim—home for the aged

Of the eleven different funds and institutions listed here, the first seven are referred to directly in the text of the prayer, while the last four all fall under the more general rubric of gmiles khasodim (defined here as the free loan society), interpreted more literally as “good deeds for which no repayment or recompense is sought.” Helping those in need wasn’t just a nice thing to do, it was what God wanted the entire community to do. Failure would bring trouble—big trouble, little trouble, some kind of trouble—with the Imageless Being Upstairs, and the fact that everybody had to recite the prayer every morning of their lives helped to make sure that no one was going to forget it: while you might prefer not to have to depend upon such undesired largesse, at least you know that the only way you’re going to starve is if there is no food for anybody else, either.

And finally we get to the point: traditional Jewish society was based completely on the idea of mutual cooperation, of everybody looking out for everybody else. Think of London during the Blitz or New York City immediately after 9/11, then imagine that tragic solidarity and disaster-born benevolence continuing for centuries. That was Jewish life in much of Europe before 1939, when the assailed were finally exterminated.

If nothing else, life in a constant state of siege—even when the siege is cultural rather than physical—helps to encourage strong feelings of in-group solidarity. The idea of sharing a common destiny that could end