Uniformity and Difference

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Friday, September 9, 2011

I sometimes get phone calls from people who are coming to our services for the first time and want to know what to wear. I am sympathetic with their questions. I know how uncomfortable it can be feeling that you were the only one who didn’t get the message that everyone is dressing much more formally or informally than you expected. It’s nice for clothes to be expressive of our personalities or values, but we are more comfortable if we are not dressed too differently from everyone else.

A common American stereotype is that of the rugged individualist, who listens to his or her own inner drummer, and goes his or her own way. But, as Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson points out in an article about this week’s Torah portion, there are limits to our American toleration of individualism. “If you move too far out of the mainstream”, he writes, “you will be regarded as an eccentric, or worse yet, a kook”. We pride ourselves on our tolerance as a nation, and yet are deeply uncomfortable with differences.

Ancient people wondered why there were differences between individuals and between groups of people. Children will often ask about this spontaneously, much to the embarrassment of the adults around them.

In Biblical tradition differences between peoples enter the world with the story of the Tower of Babel. Modern scholarship associates the Tower with the Ziggurats of ancient Babylonian. Imagine the impression those tall mountain like buildings must have made on people from more distant less developed areas, like Canaan.

While some read the Biblical story of division among peoples as a punishment for human over-reaching, it can also be understood as a necessary consequence of the Bible’s basic outlook towards individuality.

When humans are created in the Bible, we are told that they are created in the divine image, but of course an essential teaching of Judaism is that there is no image of the divine. Later the rabbis of the Talmud marvel that humans are all created in God’s image and yet each of us is unique.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Orthodox Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, believes that respect for difference was one of Judaism’s contributions to the world. Judaism put forth the view that “we are all in God’s image and we are all different.”

He follows the view of his Orthodox predecessor, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch who taught, “the division of humanity into many languages and cultures, is the necessary precondition of human freedom and dignity.”Sacks reads the statement at the beginning of the Tower of Babel story, that everyone spoke one language and had one common speech, as suggesting that this was something the powerful Babylonians insisted on, repressing the particular languages of the many peoples of their empire. Only with God’s intervention, is each nation, culture and faith, given its own integrity. For Sacks, this is the Jewish origin of a multicultural perspective- that is “the human condition is universal.. but the expression of that condition is particular”. That is why for the Jewish people, the God of Israel could be the God of all the world, without the religion of Israel being the religion of all humanity.

In this week’s Torah portion we find the instruction, do not plow with an ox and a donkey together (Deut 22:10). On the pshat level, the simple reading of the text, this is an important teaching about the prevention of cruelty to animals, tzaar baalei chayim. The ox and the donkey are mismatched and if they pull together, one will be dragged and the other pulling more than its weight. But read metaphorically, this verse has been understood as an instruction concerning respect for individual differences and for differences among groups of people. The ox should not be forced to try and conform to being a donkey, nor should the donkey have to try and conform to being an ox. Similarly, people should not be forced to be that which they are not, but should be appreciated in their distinctiveness.

There are many ways that we can reflect on the lessons we have learned as a society since the 11th of September ten years ago. Some of the lessons we have learned are about loss and grief, heroism and love. Some have to do with understanding that the United States is not an island, but part of a larger world. Others relate to the importance of assessing possible outcomes when problems are left undressed and allowed to fester. But the biggest practical change that I have seen in our local community over the past ten years has been a willingness to talk about and explore religious and ethnic differences within the United States. In part this has been a response to the intolerance which was also a reaction to 9-11 and in part it has been a reflection of a larger ongoing process of immigration and global mindedness that has brought changes to all of our communities. But the healthy part of this response has been a willingness to see that religious diversity is no longer just Protestant, Catholic and Jew and that being alert to diversity now includes sensitivity to the appropriate gym clothes for observant Muslim students, along with the food served to Buddhist and Hindu work associates. The many different religious and ethnic groups in the United States want to be respected and understood as both uniquely themselves and as part of our common community.

Our local Jewish community relations council was a sponsor of an event on Wednesday evening that included 30 different religious groups from across the South Bay. On Sunday a member of our congregation will represent the Jewish community at a Sikh Temple in the morning, while I will speak in the afternoon at the Muslim Community Association, and another member of the congregation represent us in the evening at a Methodist church’s interfaith observance. In these ways we prevent the victory of the terror of 9-11 and begin to move toward a better tomorrow. In this way we affirm our tradition’s commitment to the dignity of difference. “Humans may wish to impose uniformity, but God makes space for difference.”