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

up being determined by a common enemy can bring people together, even if only to prevent that enemy from becoming the author of their fate: there are no atheists in foxholes and no non-Jewish Jews in a pogrom. The idea that we can’t escape from one another is elaborated in two separate Talmudic comments on the biblical verse, “Each one will stumble over his brother” (i.e., each other, Lev. 26:37, translated literally). The first says, “Each [will stumble] over the sin of his brother, which teaches that they are all responsible one for the other” (Sanhedrin 27b), while the second goes on to explain, “All of Israel are responsible [or: are guarantors] for each other” (Shvuos 39a).

This idea of responsibility is generally interpreted in two ways. The most obvious is that Jewish people watch out for each other; that tribal loyalty, if you want to put it that way, will always override personal feeling should you come upon a fellow Jew in distress. The sorts of institutions mentioned above excited the envy and admiration even of medieval Christians, hardly a Jew-loving bunch, to the point where “if the Jews can do it, why can’t we” became a common literary motif. The fourteenth-century English poet William Langland expresses this sentiment in Piers Plowman, one of the seminal works of Middle English literature:

A Iew wolde noght se a Iew go Ianglyng for defaute

For alle the mebles on this moolde, and he amende it myghte.

Allas that a cristene creature shal be unkynde til another!

Syn Iewes, that we Iugge ludas felawes,

Eyther of hem helpeth oother of that that hym nedeth,

Whi ne wol we cristene of cristes good be as kynde?

So Iewes shul ben oure loresmen, shame to us alle!

[A Jew would not see a Jew crying out for want

For all the goods in this world, if he could do anything about it.

Alas that one Christian creature should be unkind to another!

Since Jews, whom we consider the confederates of Judas—

Each of them helps the other with that which he needs,

Why are we Christians not as liberal with Christ’s goods?

Shame on all of us, that Jews should be our teachers.]

A society of this type demands that its members learn to put the interests of the community as a whole ahead of their private preferences and demands; if you can’t see why someone else’s desires might be more important than your own or why the needs of the community subsume and surpass those of any particular member, then you become a liability, no matter how much you might otherwise have to offer.

On the other hand, your willingness to help look out for others means that they will help look out for you. One of the standard questions in ethics courses when I was in university had to do with a man whose wife was desperately ill. The drugs that would cure her cost far more than the man was able to afford, and the local pharmacist was unwilling to arrange a schedule of graduated payments or give him a deal on the price. The question was: Is the man justified in breaking into the pharmacy and stealing the drugs? Is this right, or should he stand helplessly by while his wife dies of her disease?

This is not a Jewish question. In the kind of community we’re talking about, the husband would go to the sick benefit or free loan society in his town (or in the closest one large enough to have one); he could appeal to the local rabbi or rabbis either for help with raising funds or, if the druggist was Jewish, for applying moral and community pressure on the druggist, who, if nothing else, might have children whom he’d like to see married one day. If the cost was too great for the local community and the druggist wasn’t Jewish, recourse, often through rabbinic intervention, might be had to similar organizations in larger towns and cities, philanthropists, or—more commonly—druggists elsewhere who might offer a better price.

So deeply ingrained was the idea of relying on these institutions that one-stop, geographically based versions of them were among the earliest organizations founded by East European Jewish immigrants in America. Some of these landsmanshaften or “societies of compatriots” still exist; just take a look at the section names in any large Jewish cemetery. After World War II, these landsmanshaften also undertook the publication of memorial books for the Jewish communities of the now Jew-less towns whose names they bear. Class-conscious versions of these locally based organizations—workers’ benevolent and mutual aid societies—played a significant role in the American labor movement; the socialists, the Orthodox, and the indifferent were all still thinking Jewish.

The landsmanshaften can help clarify the earlier metaphor of the sandlot ball game. Imagine that you’re on your way to the library to study for an exam that you’ll be writing in two weeks’ time. As you’re walking by the landsmanshaft, though, one of the nine people inside calls you over and explains that they need a tenth for a minyan, and since you seem to know what he’s talking about, it’s going to be you. You protest: you’ve got an exam, you don’t come from that town, neither did your parents or grandparents; you’re a girl (this would have worked until fairly recently), you’re not a girl, whatever, but all to no avail. You have no choice and you end up having to go inside for anywhere between fifteen and forty-five minutes, depending on the time of day. Afterward, they offer you a shot of whiskey and wish you luck on the exam.

This is Judaism in action. If the exam was about to begin, they’d look for someone else, after detaining you just long enough to make sure that someone else comes along. Otherwise, though, there is no choice involved; the commonweal always comes first and you go in whether you feel like it or not. Refusal to participate in a minyan—where your grudging attendance