Mutual Responsibility in the Jewish State
MUTUAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE JEWISH STATE
Based
on a Shiur by HaRav
Summarized
by
Translated
by David Strauss
Without a doubt, the simplest application of mutual responsibility –
arevut – is charity and assistance to others. References to mutual responsibility
appear, however, in purely halakhic realms as well. In this shiur, I wish to discuss
some of the halakhic contexts in which the idea of mutual responsibility arises,
and their special application in Eretz Yisrael.
MUTUAL RESPONSIBILITY WITH RESPECT TO MITZVOT
One of the most prominent contexts in which mutual responsibility
constitutes a halakhic – and not only a moral – factor is the well-known
statement of Rashi. The Gemara
(Rosh
Ha-shana 29a)
states that “Even though one has fulfilled his own obligation, one can discharge
the obligation of others,” and Rashi (ibid., s.v. Chutz), explains: “For all of Israel are responsible for
one another regarding mitzvot.”
According to Rashi, one can discharge another person’s obligation
regarding blessings and mitzvot based on the principle of mutual
responsibility. This novel idea of
Rashi assigns clear halakhic content to the principle of responsibility,
connecting each individual Jew to his fellow Jew’s fulfillment of
mitzvot.
In the Gemara (Sota 37b), the concept of mutual
responsibility is explicitly mentioned as part of the discussion of the various
covenants that God has made with Am Yisrael, the nation of Israel.
What
is the issue between them? Rav
Mesharsheya said: “The point between them is a guarantor (arva in
Aramaic, arev in Hebrew) versus a guarantor’s
guarantor.”
Rashi
comments (ad loc.):
According
to Rabbi Yehuda Ha-nasi, one must count six hundred thousand for every one, and
in each one of these, there are [another] six hundred thousand. They are all guaranteeing each other,
not only for their [personal] obligations, but for their guarantees.
According to this, the Tanna’im disagree whether every Jew is
responsible solely for his fellow’s observance of the mitzvot, or perhaps
also for the guarantee that his fellow accepts for the observance of every other
member of the Jewish people. An
example of this would be if we take three random Jews, Reuven, Shimon and
Levi. If Reuven recites
Kiddush on Friday night, while Shimon and Levi do not, Reuven has failed
as a guarantor, according to
Rashi (ad loc.) explains the logic of the guarantee under discussion and
concludes:
“To
learn and to teach, to observe and to do” – All the mitzvot require these
four: “And you shall learn them, and you shall observe them, to do them”
(Devarim 5:1); and it is written, “And you shall teach them to your
children” (ibid. 11:19), etc. Thus, there are four commands for every
mitzva. (Sota 37a,
s.v. Lilmod)
That is to say, if one has not been careful about “And you shall teach
them,” and therefore a fellow Jew fails to fulfill a certain mitzva,
there is also a certain shortcoming in one’s own commitment to “and you shall
observe them, to do them” and one’s own fulfillment of the
mitzvot!
It is important to note two different elements in the words of
Rashi:
1)
Every person has a certain responsibility based on the law of
arevut to help his or her fellow Jew fulfill the
commandments.
2)
This responsibility is not only towards the other, but rather it impacts
upon the very nature of one’s own fulfillment of the
mitzvot.
AREVUT FOR SINS
Even though we have seen that there exists a principle of mutual
responsibility with respect to the fulfillment of mitzvot, the assertion
that “all of Israel are responsible (arevim) one for the other” appears
in rabbinic writings in a very negative context.
The Gemara (Shevuot 39a-b) states:
Regarding
all sins in the Torah, a person is punished for what he did, and here [regarding
an oath taken in vain], he is punished for what he did and for what the whole
world did…
And
regarding all the sins in the Torah, this is not so? But surely it is written: “And they shall
fall, each upon his brother” (Vayikra 26:37) – each person because of the
sin of his fellow. This teaches
that all of Israel are responsible one for the other!
That
is where they can object, but they failed to do so.
According to the Gemara, a person is liable to be punished for a sin
involving an oath taken by his fellow, whereas in the case of all other sins
committed by his fellow Jew he is only liable for punishment if he could have
objected but failed to do so. What
is special about the sin of a false oath that its punishment is always
collective? An answer to this
question may be found in the words of the Rambam (Hilkhot Shevuot
12:1-2), which explain why Chazal categorize the sin of taking a false
oath as a “severe” transgression:
This
transgression is among the more severe ones, as we explained in Hilkhot
Teshuva, because even though it does not carry the punishment of excision or
judicial execution, it involves a desecration of God’s sanctified Name, which is
the greatest of sins.
We see, then, that an oath taken in vain involves the desecration of
God’s Name. This may also be the
reason that the penalty for this sin is collective — that is to say, punishment
for each and every element of the system called Keneset Yisrael — in the
wake of whose actions God’s Name has been desecrated.
We thus see another halakhic dimension of the concept of mutual
responsibility, which casts responsibility upon each and every individual for
the sins committed by his or her fellow Jew.
INDIVIDUAL
RESPONSIBILITY AND COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY
After having seen that mutual responsibility exists both in the realm of
positive commands and in the realm of prohibitions, let us try to understand
upon whom this responsibility rests.
It follows from the gemara in Sota cited above that the
responsibility that mandates protest rests on each and every individual member
of Am Yisrael. Nevertheless, the gemara in
Shabbat 54b implies that the obligation of protest (mecha’a) falls
first and foremost on the elders and the leaders of the
congregation:
Whoever
can prevent his household [from sinning] but does not, is liable for [the sins
of] his household; [if he can prevent] his townspeople, he is liable for [the
sins of] his townspeople; if the whole world, he is liable for [the sins of] the
whole world…
This
is as Rabbi Chanina said: Why is it written (Yeshayahu 3:14): “God will
enter into judgment with the elders of His people and its princes” - if the
princes sinned, how did the elders sin? Say instead: [He will bring punishment]
upon the elders, because they do not prevent the princes.
This passage implies that the greater a person’s influence upon his
environs, the greater his responsibility to reprimand those who would listen to
what he says. It therefore appears
that even though the obligation to protest applies to each and every individual,
each person’s obligation is determined according to his or her own level and
standing.
However, beyond the individual responsibility about which we have spoken
thus far, a more general responsibility applies to each individual member of
Am Yisrael: societal responsibility. This responsibility should arise in
every society, but it seems that it becomes sharpened when we are dealing with
Jewish society in Eretz Yisrael, the
land of Israel. In order to
understand this responsibility more precisely, let us examine the concept of
arevut that is familiar to us from civil law.
The Rishonim and the Acharonim note that there are two
kinds of monetary arevut:
1)
A guarantor who accepts upon himself to pay a debt in the event that the
debtor himself fails to pay, even though he himself has no essential connection
to the debt.
2)
A guarantor who plays an active role in the transaction transpiring
between the borrower and the lender.
Such a guarantor is seen as if he had received the money from the lender
and then given it to the borrower, and this is the reason that he becomes liable
for the debt (see Tosafot, Bava Metzia 71b, s.v. Matzo, who
suggest such an approach; other Rishonim agree).
Parallel
to these gradations, it seems that also with respect to the arevut in
mitzvot and sins discussed above, there is room to distinguish between
two levels:
1)
individual arevut that results from the obligation of each member
of Am Yisrael by force of the assembly at Mount Gerizim and Mount Eival
(Devarim 27; Yehoshua 8:30-35);
2)
collective arevut for the spiritual state of the Jewish people
that stems from its status as a single nation and entity; this is unconnected to
any obligation assumed by Am Yisrael
(such as that at Mount Gerizim and Mount Eival).
This
distinction regarding the nature of arevut explains the Talmudic passage
in Sota cited above. The
Sota passage concludes that the mutual arevut of Am Yisrael includes arevut for
keeping the covenants that we accepted upon ourselves at the assembly at Mount
Gerizim and Mount Eival, and in the continuation it tries to clarify exactly how
many covenants obligate each member of Am Yisrael. It seems that if mutual responsibility
stems from the personal obligation that each member of Am Yisrael has
accepted upon himself at Mount Gerizim and Mount Eival (arevut of the
first type), we should open the contract, examine the details of the obligation,
and see precisely how many covenants each person of Am Yisrael
accepted. Were the mutual
responsibility a collective responsibility, stemming from the very fact that
that Am Yisrael constitutes a
single national organism (arevut of the second type), then the number of
covenants that were entered into at that assembly should be irrelevant to the
discussion about the nature of the mutual responsibility.
AREVUT IN
ERETZ YISRAEL
We noted earlier that the level of communal responsibility of each member
of Am Yisrael goes up when we
are dealing with Am Yisrael
living in Eretz Yisrael. It seems that the reason that the level
of arevut is higher in Eretz
Yisrael is threefold:
-
Living in Eretz Yisrael creates many new needs and missions (development of society, the state and the like), and thus the need for mutual responsibility grows.
-
The ability to create mutual responsibility grows when the Jewish people are living in their own land and in their own state, and thus in such a situation the demand for arevut grows accordingly.
-
Eretz Yisrael, because of its nature and sanctity, demands a higher level of arevut.
The
third element arises from a passage in Vayikra
(18:26-30):
You
shall therefore keep My statutes and My laws, and you shall not commit any of
these abominations: neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that
sojourns among you. For all these
abominations have the people of the land, who were before you, done, and the
land is defiled. Then the land will
not vomit you out also for defiling it, as it has vomited out the nations that
were before you. For whoever shall
commit any of these abominations — the persons that commit them shall be cut off
from among their people. Therefore
shall you keep My commands, that you not commit any one of these abominable
customs, which were practiced before you, and that you not defile yourselves by
them; I am the Lord, your God.
(18:26-30)
These verses teach us that there is a special dimension to the observance
of mitzvot in Eretz Yisrael,
and so too, le-havdil, to the commission of sins in Eretz Yisrael. As we saw earlier, sins involving the
desecration of God’s Name bear collective punishment. Thus, it might be suggested that all
sins committed in Eretz Yisrael (and
not just the transgression of taking a false oath) involve a desecration of
God’s Name, and thus the punishment for sins committed in Eretz Yisrael is collective. Le-havdil, mitzvot
performed in Eretz Yisrael involve a
sanctification of God’s name, and thus they give rise to collective
reward.
The gemara (Sanhedrin 43b) cites a disagreement about what
changed in the wake of the crossing of the Jordan with respect to the punishment
meted out for sins committed by an individual Jew; however, according to all
opinions cited there, something essential changed regarding punishment after
Am Yisrael entered Eretz Yisrael:
Rabbi
Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Elazar the son of
As
the Tanna’im said: “The secret matters belong to the Lord our God; but
those that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Devarim
29:28) – why are there dots over “to us and to our children,” and over the
ayin in “forever”? This
teaches that He did not punish for hidden ones until Am Yisrael crossed the Jordan; [these
are] the words of Rabbi Yehuda.
Rabbi Nechemya said to him: Did He ever punish for hidden sins? But surely it was already said:
“forever”? Rather, just as He did
not punish for hidden sins, so, too, He did not punish for sins committed
publicly until they crossed the Jordan.
The
Maharal addresses this point:
The
explanation seems to be that when Am
Yisrael entered the Land, they became one nation in totality. The proof for this is that as long as Am Yisrael had not crossed the Jordan
and had not come to the Land, they were not punished for hidden ones; this did
not occur until they crossed and became responsible for each other. We see then that Am Yisrael did not become responsible
one for the other – an arev is one who is involved (me’urav) with
another person – and they did not become connected as one nation in totality,
until they came to the Land. Then
they were together in the Land, and they had one place, namely Eretz Yisrael; through Eretz Yisrael, they became one nation in
totality. Therefore it is also
written: “[To give to you the land of Canaan,] to be for you a God”
(Vayikra 25:38) – because they have one God. (Netiv Ha-tzedaka, Chap. 6, s.v.
U-mi-zeh)
The Maharal adopts the approach found in the Talmudic passage in
Sanhedrin, which maintains that once they crossed the Jordan and entered
the Land, Am Yisrael as a whole were
punished for sins committed by individuals in private (as opposed to the
situation outside of Eretz Yisrael,
where Am Yisrael were only punished
for sins committed by individuals in public). It may be suggested that arevut
outside of Eretz Yisrael stems from
the obligation to protest based on the personal arevut that applies to
each and every individual, as we saw above. Hence, this obligation is limited to
sins committed in public, against which one has the capacity to protest. In contrast, the entry into the Land of
Israel creates an organic nation, where the mutual responsibility of each of its
members stems from the fact that the entire people constitute a single
body. In such a situation, each
individual in Eretz Yisrael is bound
by a collective responsibility for the sins of the nation, even those that are
committed in private.[1]
THE RETURN TO ZION
Thus far, we have related to the uniqueness of Eretz Yisrael owing to its
sanctity. However, it might be
inferred from the Talmud Yerushalmi in Sota (7:5) that the collective
responsibility depends on another aspect of Eretz Yisrael:
According to
It seems that it is not by accident that the Yerushalmi relates to Yavneh
as the place where the broad mutual responsibility was cancelled, because the
establishment of the center in Yavneh reflects not only the spiritual
destruction of the Jewish people at the time of the destruction of the Second
Temple, but also the political and national destruction of the Jewish
people. According to what I have
said, the cancellation of arevut regarding private individual sins stems
from the destruction of Jewish sovereignty.
According to this understanding of the Talmud Yerushalmi, there is room
to say that mutual responsibility for hidden sins will be restored when the
Jewish sovereignty is renewed, even before we merit the full redemption. That is to say, broad mutual
responsibility arises whenever there is a state in Eretz Yisrael. Of course, this understanding places on
our shoulders a heavy burden of collective responsibility.
It should be noted that it is possible that the collective obligation
that we have been discussing is connected not only to Eretz Yisrael. In this connection, there is a professor
at Yeshiva University who distinguishes between mutual responsibility in
totalitarian and democratic societies.
According to this distinction, the fact that a person lives in a
democratic country, in which every citizen is a significant factor in the
political system, turns him into an “interested party” regarding everything that
takes place in his country, and thus it raises the level of his responsibility
toward the people who surround him, even outside of Eretz Yisrael. Hence, it is possible that the
democratic system heightens the mutual responsibility that exists among the
country’s citizens.
To summarize, it follows from what we have said that since the
establishment of the State of Israel the mutual responsibility of the people
living in Zion has grown and intensified.
This casts a heavy responsibility on all of us, and our mission is not
simple. May God help us succeed in
our task.
(This shiur was
delivered by HaRav Lichtenstein during Chanuka 5768.)
[1] It should be noted that
according to Rabbeinu Tam (Sefer Ha-Yashar, Chiddushim, No. 662),
the gemara of an individual which cannot be protested: “Surely both
according to Rabbi Yehuda and according to Rabbi Nechemya, we require that it be
within his capability to protest.” Rabbeinu Tam’s position is clear, but it
seems to contradict the simple meaning of the passage, and indeed, as we already
saw, the Maharal understands it differently.