For me, the most amusing moment of the Debate this past week, didn’t happen during the debate but during the commercials. It began as many campaign commercials do, with a anthem like score. The voice over begins: “It’s a new day in America.” Cue sunrise. “Today more people will go to work,” film of tradesmen and women working, return home to their families,” cue slow motion returning soldier hugging his wife and kids, “and sleep more soundly than ever before.” (Cue an f-16 flyby fading into a rainbow coalition of children waving big American flags as they run across a field). “All because one man refuses to settle. (Cue the soaring Bald Eagle) Putting people before politics.” (Cue short clips of Americans of every race, ethnicity, color, etc.) “That man is Frank Underwood.” (Cut to actor “House of Cards” actor Kevin Spacey, seated at the desk in the oval office. He looks up, closes a binder, which as it slams shut, cuts short the music. With unmistakable gravitas, he says). “America. I’m only getting started.” Followed by a picture of Frank looking up to his right, against a waving American flag: “This is Frank Underwood and I approved of this message.”
When it dawned on me that this was not a real commercial I was struck by another thought: Why does a fictional president, albeit it one with more than a few character flaws, as the show “House of Cards” reveals, come off so much more appealing than the current crop of presidential contenders? This isn’t unprecedented. If you watched “West Wing” you know that Martin Sheen as President Bartlett was a paragon of virtue and moral rectitude. And with lines written by Aaron Sorkin, he was devastatingly witty as well.
In the real world, we are living in times when those who aspire to high office most often fail to inspire. Partisan politics aside, as they should be on Shabbat, Donald Trump’s candidacy is part farce and part the face of the frustrated. Trump has successfully tapped into the hurt and the fears of those whose jobs have moved on, who are economically, at best, on a stagnant footing. He is ringing their bell, so to speak. And they are responding. And far more scary than he, is the reaction of millions of his followers, a rage expressed as thunderous applause and the desire to, “take our country back again.”
Lest you ever think that the harsh words of a Donald Trump don’t have an effect, witness the poor 12 year old Sikh boy in Arlington, Texas who last week had the class bully tell the teacher he had a bomb in his backpack. The teacher told the principal, who called the police, who came and snatched the 12 year old and held him in communicado for three days before anyone contacted his parents. Oh, and by the way he has a life threatening heart condition. The boy was expelled, is under house arrest wearing an ankle collar, and waiting to find out if he is going to be charged as a minor or an adult. For what? I can’t tell you.
Trump’s overheated, self centered and self-righteous words are an assault on what we call in Judaism the value of Derech Eretz. The phrase “derech eretz” literally means the “way of the land” or “the way of the world” but, in a Jewish context” it comes to mean “common decency.” “Derech Eretz in a standard of behavior for fulfilling our basic responsibility as human beings, to be a mentsch.
What is derech eretz? To speak kindly, give praise, respect others opinions, respect their time and space, be considerate, watch your mouth, think the best, listen and pay attention, no road rage. Instead of raising your hand or your voice, derech eretz insists you raise your own dignity and the dignity of others. Behave as though the world depends on your humanity and decency. Conduct yourself as if every interaction with others is an opportunity to bring holiness into the world.
The duty of derech eretz is so important that our ancestors imagined it coming into existence twenty-six generations before the giving of the Torah, at the moment when the first human beings were expelled from the Garden of Eden. They said: derech eretz kadma l”torah, which means derech eretz is before the Torah, but, in fact can mean Derech Eretz is more important than the Torah. In a way, they saw derech eretz, a system of highly principled, decent behavior, as a necessary precondition in creating the path that bring us to the Torah. In other words, unless we have derech eretz as a regulator on our behavior from within, until we feel obligated to act decently on our own, we won’t be open to feeling commanded by the mandates of wider moral behavior.
At the root of derech eretz it the Torah’s assertion that every person is created in the divine image, and as such, is deserving of our best behavior. You don't hit your spouse. You stand before your elders. You don't curse. You turn off your cell phone when appropriate. You don’t text when someone is speaking to you. You don’t “bully” a classmate. You say “please” and “thank you” and “excuse me” and “I'm sorry.” You don't litter. You don't cheat and lie and steal. You don’t gossip.
On Israeli buses and trains there is a sign directing you to give your seat to someone older than you. But it says all that in three words: “Mipnei seivah takum” – “Rise Before the Elderly” – and everyone knows those words because they come from the Torah. There is a right and wrong manner of behavior rooted in our tradition and heritage, rooted in our being created in the image of the Divine.
There is nothing more spiritual than this realization and, in a very real sense, there is nothing Judaism tries more to teach.
Donald Trump may well be the current poster child for what derech eretz isn’t, but the challenge of derech eretz applies to us, within the Jewish community. Consider what happened last summer over the Iran Nuclear deal. Jews who opposed the deal, such as Senator Chuck Schumer were accused of advocating for Israel to the detriment of the United States. Jewish proponents, including many who work for the Obama administration, have been accused of being “court Jews” selling out their brethren to curry favor with the administration, rather than being acknowledged as supporting the deal as the best solution to a problem that has vexed successive presidents from both parties.
Derech Eretz was completely absent. U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, was subjected to death threats and compared to Jewish concentration camp guards for his championing the deal. Congressman Jerry Nadler was called a kapo: a Jew who collaborated with Nazis in the World War II death camps, who, as one writer said, has “blood on his hands.” Another said he had “facilitated Obama’s holocaust.”
The firestorm of words between the two camps became a fight over who is welcome under the American Jewish tent. It not only threatened to destroy the American Jewish community from the inside; it also played into the hands of those who doubt Jewish loyalty towards the US. Furthermore, the war of words between Jews created the perception that the Iran issue revolves around Israel, obscuring the fundamental fact that Iran’s nuclear ambitions present a problem for everyone.
During those weeks of excruciating conversations and arguments, I recalled the words of Israeli Poet,
Yehuda Amichai, who wrote:
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.
But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined House once stood.
Yes, sometimes being right is a pyrrhic victory.
So what are we to do? How can we restore a sense of derech eretz to our relationships with each other? Rabbi Shammai, the venerated teacher who taught with Rabbi Hillel, though rarely agreed with him, taught the following: (1:15): V’heh-vay m’kabayl et kol HaAdam b’sever Panim Yafot receive every person with “sever panim yafot,” a pleasant countenance. Sever panim yafot means more than a sheyne punim, a pretty face. "B'sever," from the word savar, meaning "to turn one's body toward the person you are greeting, by way of showing more interest); show them your "panim" - show them your face (don't look around); and makes sure it is "yafot" - present that face beautifully. Or, as Avot of Rabbi Natan teaches, “Always greet every person with a smiling face.
Beyond smiling, listen to others with a listening heart. This is at the core of Judaism as we say the Shema. The Shema teaches that while intelligent people know how to talk; wise people know the importance of listening. A community where people listen is a community where people will open their hearts to one another. That is why, I think, the Shema is followed by the prayer V'ahavta (And you Shall Love). Listening is a prerequisite for love.
A powerful story about the power of striving to behave towards all with derech eretz. Near the city of Danzig there lived a well-to-do Hasidic rabbi. Dressed in a tailored black suit, wearing a top hat and carrying a silver walking cane, the rabbi would take his daily morning stroll. During his morning walk, it was the rabbi’s custom to greet every man, woman and child who he met on his way with a warm smile and a cordial “Good Morning.” Over the years the rabbi became acquainted with many of his fellow townspeople and would always greet them by their proper title and name, even the rather boorish farmer who lived near the outskirts of town. “Good morning, Herr Muller!” the rabbi would hasten to greet the man. “Good morning, Herr Rabbiner,” would come the response with a good natured smile. Then the war began. The rabbi’s strolls stopped abruptly. The fate of the rabbi was like that of much of the rest of Polish Jewry: he lost his family in the death camp of Treblinka and, after great suffering, he was deported to Auschwitz. One day, during a selection at Auschwitz, the rabbi stood in line with hundreds of other Jews awaiting the moment when their fates would be decided … life or death. Dressed in a striped camp uniform, head and beard shaven and eyes feverish from starvation and disease, the rabbi looked like a walking skeleton. “Right! Left, left, left!” the voice in the distance drew nearer. Suddenly, the rabbi had a great urge to see the face of the man with the snow-white gloves, small baton and steely voice who played God and decided who should live and who should die. He lifted his eyes and heard his own voice speaking: “Good morning, Herr Muller!” “Good morning, Herr Rabbiner!” responded a human voice beneath the S.S. cap adorned with skull and bones, “What are you doing here?” A faint smile appeared on the rabbi’s lips. The baton moved to the right – to life. The following day, the rabbi was transferred to a safer camp. In his later years, The rabbi told one and all in his gentle voice, “This is the power of a “good morning” greeting. We must always greet each other, with derech eretz.”
In truth, here is nothing more important than keeping ourselves continually predisposed to being benevolent, to being decent, to being kind, to not doing to someone else anything that would be hateful to ourselves. We should give derech eretz the highest priority in our community values, placing it twenty-six generations before everything, even before the study of Torah, even before calling ourselves a Jewish community. Judaism itself demands that in order to be a Jewish community we must first be a humane community.
Scientists tell us that we are utterly interdependent with all of creation. The science is clear and irrefutable; we’re all really one organism, everything alive and everything inanimate. When scientists get down to studying the world on the level of sub-atomic particles, there are no separate entities. It’s not even that we are all connected. We are each other in the largest sense possible. As the inestimable John Lennon put it, “I am he as you are she and you are me and we are all together.”
How do we express derech eretz with one another?
We need to remember that deep inside of us, deep in our hearts and in the marrow of our bones, generations before we were globally conscious, even more generations before we were nationalities, even more generations before we were Jewish, twenty-six generations before the torah, back to our basic selves – we were human, striving to be humane, inextricably linked to everything and everyone around us. We must live and act with derech eretz, with benevolence, kindness and decency. Life is too short to live otherwise.
