originally printed in the CBT Summer Newsletter June, 2025
Have you ever noticed how quickly that which is current becomes passé? One week we extoll the bounties of crypto and gold, the next week we are lamenting as the market pulls us under. One week the words “constitution” and “habeus corpus” are understood, and the next month they are forgotten. I offer these thoughts from Rabbi Gunter Hirschberg, who spoke years ago about our American values.
“On this night when we pray for a world in which good people can have “naches” (pleasure), we should include a prayer for America. I am thinking of those Americans, who because of recent developments see their lives changing, and not for the better.”
Rabbi Hirschberg, who fled as a teenager from Nazi Germany, recalled life in Berlin. “We weren’t allowed to forget our Jewishness, not for one minute.” Neither was he allowed to forget his ethical origins. He recalled the influence of his “rebbe,” who spoke Yiddish and asked his students, “Children, if you have no compassion, what makes you a Jew? To this day I associate being Jewish with a moral stance, with the words of the beloved Rebbe, about “rachmones”—compassion.”
When I think of our country, when I reflect on the injustices involved in the budget cuts, when I think of the children who will have less to eat in the richest country in the world, then, my friends, it isn’t a political issue with me. It’s a moral issue.
Is it my imagination, or is it true, that even we Jews are no longer as concerned with human dignity and the rule of law?
Jewish morality is based on two brief sentences in the Talmud from Rabbi Hillel the Elder. The first is, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” But this sentence is not meant to stand by itself. It must always be coupled with the next. “If I am only for myself, then what am I?” “What does it mean – ‘what am I?’ It means, “What is my nature? What is the quality of my life? What do I stand for?” The conclusion to this classic teaching is, “If not now, then when?” Now is our moment to speak forcefully about the moral direction of our nation.
Shalom, Rabbi Martin Levy
