Personal Sacrifice

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Rosh HaShanah Morning 5766 - Tuesday, October 4, 2005

If a child was brought before you, an innocent child whose life hung in the balance, and you had the ability to save that child and didn’t respond, you would be universally condemned. But if you received an envelope in the mail, asking for money for famine relief, we would all understand your choice to respond or not, purely as a matter of personal preference.

Peter Singer, a professor of philosophy at Princeton University, argues that today when global communication makes us instantly aware of events anywhere in the world, and in a society where even those who are of average income, live well above the subsistence level, our failure to respond generously to a request for funds for a child dying of starvation in West Africa today, is morally equivalent to our sitting in our own backyards and failing to reach out a few feet to rescue a small child drowning in a shallow pool. He’s not a popular man.

Born on the exact same day as President George W. Bush, Peter Singer is the son of Viennese Jewish refugees who made their way to Australia in 1938. He first began thinking about this topic, when, having seen newspaper pictures of people starving in Bangladesh, he wondered why he was being asked on the street for his small change and not much, much more. Believing strongly that one’s philosophical conclusions should be reflected in action, Singer began to give one fifth of his income to famine relief. His philosophical argument is built on the premise that people are duty bound to relieve suffering and that “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought morally to do it.” Singer has written other articles on animal rights and euthanasia where he wanders far from a mainstream Jewish approach, but on this issue, he reminds us of basic Jewish teaching concerning suffering and sacrifice.

Events this year, especially the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina, make the question of how much one should sacrifice for those who are suffering much more than academic. Our initial response is to feel that we should do everything we can for those whose lives have been totally uprooted. And this year we have seen examples of tremendous personal sacrifice. First responders have worked night and day to help save lives. Others have taken in refugees, sent help from a distance, or been sacrificial in their giving. But most of us subdue the initial impulse to overwhelming generosity. We say, the government will help, my taxes are making a contribution, or we make a calculation, there are so many Americans, if each donates a certain amount... But what if others don’t respond? And what about less popular causes that don’t get 24/7 TV news coverage? Or needs that arise after compassion fatigue sets in? What happens to the hungry, ill and homeless when someone else doesn’t step up to the plate? Social scientists have found that people are less likely to respond when they feel there are others around who could also take responsibility, but from a moral standpoint if these other people don’t help we are not off the hook.

The question of sacrifice is not just about monetary donations in emergency situations. It is really about how we see ourselves in relationship with others. To what extent are we responsible just for ourselves and to what extent is it our duty to make sacrifices for the sake of others? Is there a limit to what can fairly be asked of us? Can a person be too generous or self-sacrificing?

Some of you may have read the same article I read about Zell Kravinsky, a 48 year old Philadelphia man, whose charitable habits became so extreme that his wife threatened to leave him. He greatly exceeded the traditional Biblical tithe, 10% of income, and even the later rabbinic advice that the generous not give away more than 20% of their property, that is of their total assets lest their family eventually become destitute. Kravinsky, clearly a very bright man, was for a time an inner city teacher. He left public school teaching and went on to earn two PhD’s but after trying unsuccessfully to find work as an English Professor, he began to dabble in real estate. Gifted at manipulating numbers, he moved from property management to commercial real estate, becoming exceedingly wealthy but continuing to live a modest middle class life with his wife, a physician working part-time, and their four children. Having made a lot of money, he then donated almost all of it, about $45 million to various worthy causes, including the Centers for Disease Control and the school of public health at Ohio University. A friend explained his actions: “He gave away the money because he had it and there were people who needed it. But it changed his way of looking at himself. “

In 2003, after reading an article in the Wall Street Journal, Kravinsky became interested in donating his kidney to someone on the waiting list for a transplant. He said he was moved to do this by the math. A donor, he concluded, has a one in four thousand chance of dying as a result of donating a kidney. His own children, given their current ages, had, over their life time, only a one in 250,000 risk of needing a kidney, and besides, he had only ten more years when his kidney would be viable for donation and his children each had three siblings who were potential donors. Meanwhile, there were 60,000 people in the United States currently on the kidney transplant list with only about 15-20,000 potential donors each year due to deaths. Only half of those kidneys would make it to transplant as family members often refuse to honor even written commitments made to donate a kidney. Over his wife and parent’s objections, Kravinsky made an undirected non family donation of one of his kidneys. His kidney ended up going to a 29 year old African American woman who was studying for a degree in social work, and who had been undergoing dialysis for the last eight years. Kravinsky feels good about the donation of his kidney but his friends complain that he makes them feel guilty and his wife and parents worry that he has gone overboard.

Kravinsky and Singer may seem a breed apart from us, Kravinksy because of the sacrifices he has willingly made and Singer for the degree of self- sacrifice he concludes that moral reasoning requires of every ethical person. Most of us make our charitable donations out of discretionary dollars, and if statistics are any indication, few of us are making great sacrifices. Even in the most generous state in the US, Utah, giving averages about 4% of income. Few of us give to the point that Singer argues ethical reasoning requires, to the point where the dollar we give has the same marginal utility to us as to its recipient.

But we do make sacrifices, most often within the context of our families. From the start, parents give up sleep for the sake of their infant’s wellbeing. Most of us place our children’s needs before our own desires and comforts, and for their sake give up personal indulgences, previously enjoyed recreational activities, and the purchase of toys for grown ups. Though it may not seem so while we are living through it, we recognize that our children are young for a limited time, and that the sacrifices we make have a large impact on their lives. The missed golf game becomes a memorable Sunday outing, and the fun enrichment opportunity you don’t participate in creates some space for relaxation in your own family.

Different generations have different attitudes towards the balance of these sacrifices. For our grandparents, the ideal mother sacrificed most of her own life for the sake of the family- perhaps most extremely caricatured in the guilt producing Jewish mother- “don’t worry about me I’ll sit in the dark”. For a while the pendulum swung the other way, with personal fulfillment being viewed as more important.

From a Jewish perspective, the halachah deals mainly with a father’s obligations to his children, including in those situations where he is no longer married to the child’s mother. It suggests that husbands make personal sacrifices in spending less on themselves and more on their wives and children’s wellbeing. One might even argue from the father’s obligation to prepare a child to earn a living, that a father is halachically obligated to pay for a child’s secular college education, especially given recent observations about the effect of a lack of college education on an individual’s life prospects. The Talmud expresses disdain for fathers who let their sons be apprenticed in trades that bring them into contact with the wrong sort of people, and then complain about the road they have gone down.

Of course it is not just about children and being a parent. The web of family relationships also calls upon us for other forms of sacrifice. A mother’s illness, a father’s loneliness after the loss of a spouse, an uncle or aunt with no children of their own who need help with a move, all of these have caused members of our congregation to make sacrifices of time and money in order to be there for those they love. We make these sacrifices in appreciation of loving relationships that have lasted for decades, and sometimes even in less than wonderful relationships where we still feel that duty compels us to respond. Sacrificing time and effort to be there for our family is meaningful to us as we want to feel connected. We believe that it’s a better world when individuals can receive support from their family and we know it’s the kind of world in which we want to live.

Perhaps then, if we expanded our definition of family, we might be more willing to make sacrifices for the greater national or world community. Conservation is an area where we are called upon to make sacrifices that will ultimately help our greater human family over a long period of time. Unfortunately I find, even with the President’s recent remarks, there is little support in the general community for even for small changes in the ways we go about our everyday lives and even less for the changes in our laws that would be necessary to transform our energy usage.

Last year as part of a class I took at Santa Clara University, I learned about the traditional decision making process of Native American communities. Before taking a significant step they went through a profound ritual in which they inquired of both past and future generations. Perhaps if we could expand our sense of family to include future generations, we would care more about what the world will be like in 100 years. This could even have an element of selfishness. I know that if I focus on what kind of a world I want my youngest daughter Shifrah’s children to inherit, I feel less comfortable in using up whatever resources I legally can, just because everyone else is doing so.

I realize it’s a hard sell. Give up your summer vacation to care for your own aging relatives- many people will do that. Take an extra half an hour a day or even fifteen minutes in order to commute by train or in a carpool to reduce the threat of global warming? I haven’t seen as much of that. Sacrifices in terms of personal mobility and even life style may be forced upon us in the future but for now the circle of caring most of us have drawn in our personal lives, doesn’t include future generations in this way.

Other kinds of sacrifices for the good of the whole are also a hard sell. Pay more taxes so that other people’s children will be educated? Give up tax cuts that increase your well being only a small amount so that others, who are unrelated to you, can enjoy a much more critical improvement in their well being? I’ve spoken about the psychologist Barry Schwartz, who has written about money and happiness. He’s shown that above a certain threshold the increase in our well being added by more income is negligible, much less than we anticipate it will be, but that at low incomes, the increase in well being due to a small amount of increased income, is quite significant. I haven’t noticed our society acting on this information. In fact the government seems intent on transferring wealth exactly to the spot where it will do the least good- to the wealthiest ½ % of the population.

We understand theoretically that educating all children today will benefit our whole community tomorrow, we have read alarming articles warning us that when some members of our society do not receive health care in the present, there are dangers to all of our health in the future, but it doesn’t seem to move us to action. We need to act as a community to create the kind of commitment to sacrifice in the present for the sake of the future that came naturally to our immigrant grandparents and great grandparents, who sacrificed themselves in significant ways for our wellbeing.

The Hebrew words in the Torah used for sacrifice focus less on the giving up of something of value and more on the purpose of the relinquishing. The animal sacrifices of the Torah are called olah, something that ascends or elevates, or korban, something that brings us close to God. Perhaps that perspective can help us understand our own sacrifices as well. It is in being a bit self-sacrificing, perhaps not sitting in the dark, but at least sharing some of our light, that we do ascend to spiritual heights and we can feel, at least for a moment or two, closer to God.

I do not want to be Zell Kravinzky or Peter Singer, they are extreme examples, but their stories have nagged at something in me for this entire year. If we take the challenge of their lives seriously and bring our charitable giving up to a serious ten percent of our income, or review the organizations we support to be sure that at least half of them will be true Tzedakah benefiting the most needy in direct ways, then I do believe that we will ascend to spiritual heights. If we demand that our government take seriously its responsibilities to future generations, and are personally making sacrifices so that we leave the world intact for those who come after us, then we may come to find that we dwell in a holy place.

In the Akedah, that very troubling text we read this morning, called by Christians the Sacrifice of Isaac, the climax of the story comes when the angels calls out to stay Abraham’s hand. Isaac is not sacrificed and God proclaims: yaan asher lo chashachtah, because you did not withhold I will bless you and your descendants. The word chashachtah is unusual and its opposite, lo chashachtah, represents a very particular type of generosity. I prefer to think that Abraham is not rewarded for blind obedience to God, or for overcoming his moral instincts. The verse explicitly states, he is rewarded for not holding back.

Let us not hold back our love and care from our families, let us not hold back our material wealth from those so much more in need, let us not hold back our commitment to leaving this world a better place for the generations that will follow us.