Sermon for Yom Kippur Morning: On Areivut, Individualism and the Community
Written by Rabbi Josh Levy — 28 September 2020
Why can’t we just be allowed to take our own risk?
This was the question posed by Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England, in his address just last week.
It is a question that feels pretty central as we think about how we – as individuals, as a community, as a nation – should respond to the continuing challenge of pandemic.
It’s a question which feels especially important as people start to push back against the need for more regulations as winter approaches; with research showing that only 20% of those with a positive covid test choose to self-isolate; as we experience what the Harvard epidemiologist William Hanage has called ‘a dangerous outbreak of forgetfulness’.
This was Chris Whitty’s answer:
“The problem,” he explained, “Is if I as an individual increase my risk, I increase the risk to everyone around me and then everyone who’s a contact of theirs, and sooner or later the chain will meet people who are vulnerable. So you cannot… just take your own risk… you’re taking a risk on behalf of everybody else. It’s important that we see this as something we have to do collectively”.
***
There is a great deal that we have learned about ourselves over the last six months.
That we are more resilient than maybe we realised.
That we are more compassionate too. Evidenced in this community by the huge numbers of volunteers who came forward to create a network of care for one another.
But perhaps the greatest learning is that to which Chris Whitty spoke – how interconnected we are.
That chain, that web, of interdependence which connects us, all of us.
For much of the last 40 years, throughout my adult life, Western political discourse has privileged the idea of the strong individual.
One of the primary concerns of government – at least economically, if not always socially – has been individual freedom. The all-pervading idea that the individual has the right to be the maker of their own world.
When thinking about how we make decisions, policy makers have often assumed that the driver of human behaviour is egoism, self-interest (rational or otherwise), realisation of our own self-fulfilment or that of those in our own immediate sphere.
But what the experience of the last few months has told us, unequivocally, is that we cannot conceptualise ourselves only as individuals. We must place ourselves within a far wider set of connections. We have a far wider set of responsibilities.
We are dependent on each other, even beyond our own immediate families, our narrow communities. Our choices are choices that we make on behalf of others too; our ability to survive depends on the response not just of us as individuals but as a society, indeed beyond our national borders; and our success, to be true success, depends on concern for all of us.
***
This wider interdependence is something that Judaism has always recognised.
It is expressed in the concept of areivut – interconnectedness, mutual responsibility.
Most famously in the rabbinic maxim: “kol yisrael areivim zeh ba-zeh”. Variously translated as ‘All of Israel are sureties for one another’, ‘responsible for one another’, ‘interconnected to each other.’
Areivut is a concept that has particular resonance on Yom Kippur. Today, in particular, we don’t think of ourselves only as individuals, but sit within a wider web of responsibility.
In its context in the Talmud (1), the phrase kol yisrael areivim zeh ba-zeh is part of a conversation about the implications of individual sin. It is linked to a verse in Leviticus – one of the curses that Leviticus states will befall the people if they do not follow God’s commandments. “V’chashlu ish b’achiv” the verse states (1) “a person will stumble over their fellow.” The Talmud explains that this means “b’avon achiv” – that we stumble over the sin of one another. Thus ‘kol yisrael areivim zeh ba-zeh’. That is, the behaviour of each of us impacts on the other, and each of us is responsible for the behaviour of the other.
This idea of areivut, interconnectedness, expresses itself in the vidui, in our confessions on this day. In each of our services we recite a litany of confessions all in the plural: ashamnu (we have trespassed) al chet shechatanu (for the sin that we have committed). We confess as a people, for ourselves, for our community, and for others beyond our community. We confess sins that we have not personally committed, recognising that we are affected by, and are responsible for, those sins when they are committed by others who we do not even know.
It is important to recognise that this does not imply a diminution of our individuality. It is not that our individual importance is not recognised, far from it. Few traditions have placed more value on the intrinsic importance of the individual human being. A full Jewish life is to fulfil both parts of Hillel’s saying: Im ein ani li, mi li – If I am not for myself, who will be for me? AND uch’she’ani l’atzmi ma ani – But if I am only for myself, what am I?” (3)
So, while we could use the plurality of our confession to hide from our individual failings, the idea is that it should do exactly the opposite. In recognising our interdependence we also recognise our individual importance, our individual contribution to the whole.
A beautiful analogy can be found in a Torah scroll. To be kosher, each letter in a Torah scroll must stand on its own with space around it. It cannot blur into the letters either side without making the scroll pasul. At the same time, no letter in a scroll stands alone. Each one must be part of an identifiable word. And, to really stretch the analogy, each word only makes sense, only makes a difference as part of the whole. And in Torah every word matters. To the rabbis, every word is read in connection with every other. No word is redundant or unimportant.
***
Areivut, interconnectedness, that balance of the individual and the collective, this is the fundamental idea with which we now need to grapple – as we learn how to live with this virus, as we consider our behaviour over the coming year. We exist within a web of responsibility; must be deeply conscious about our impact on one another.
We read another expression of this idea in our study passage in the Heart service this morning. A parable taught by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (4) about a group of apparently unconnected people on a ship. One of them takes a drill and starts drilling underneath his seat. When the others say: “What are you doing?” he replies “What difference does it make to you? I am drilling under my seat”.
As an expression of areivut, it is perhaps the perfect parable for our time. For, of course, the water will flood them all.
What this parable teaches us, is how fragile the balance is. How easily broken it can be. It is a perfect example of what Stephen Jay Gould called ‘The Great Assymetry’ (5) – the ability of individual destructive acts to dismantle that which a web of responsibility has built.
Or, as Chris Whitty put it, a bit more prosaically, “you cannot… just take your own risk… you’re taking a risk on behalf of everybody else.”
***
As we live through this particularly compelling demonstration of our interdependence, I’d like to invite us to also pause for a moment. To think about what else it might mean for us to really think about ourselves as connected. As truly responsible for one another – beyond our families, beyond our friendship groups, out into the wider concentric circles of our lives? What might it look like if we really understood ourselves as being responsible for the impact of our behaviours on those we do not know? How would our lives change for the better if we really privileged areivut as an ideal?
I began by acknowledging the flourishing of care in this community and in wider society that accompanied this crisis. That is also an expression of areivut.
Areivut is what has kept us coming together as community in this ‘adventure of the soul’ even though we are physically distanced.
Areivut is what has made it such a delight to welcome to our services people from around the world, creating new webs of connection. And it is areivut which means that we are proudly here this year for those who cannot have a prayer experience in their own synagogues, building new community across denominational divides.
Areivut might make some of our decisions more complex, but it is also the thing that fills our lives with great joy – the knowledge that we care about others, and that they care about us too.
It is why we made the idea the centrepiece of the special song that we commissioned for this year. Areivut – mutual connection and responsibility – has the capacity to sustain us, to give our lives beauty and meaning. As individual selves we find our fullest expression in our relationships with others.
***
Why can’t we just be allowed to take our own risk?
What the experience of the last few months has taught us is something that Judaism has always known – that we cannot conceptualise ourselves only as individuals.
Today, on this most apparently personal of days we actually focus on the fundamental interdependence in our lives – the bonds of relationship and the consequences of our behaviour on others.
Never has that been more important.
Because each of us by our actions has the capacity to transform the lives of others for the better – those close to us, and those who we do not even know.
And, equally, each of us might be the one poised with the drill under our seat that floods the boat for all.
1. Babylonian Talmud Shevuot 39a
2. Leviticus 26:37
3. Pirkei Avot 1:14
4. Leviticus Rabbah 4:6
5. Science, Vol 279, February 1998