Comity or Isolation

 

My Future Does Not Lie in Isolation

These are strange times. Drawbridges are being hauled up, across the world and in so many ways; political, military, but also emotionally and even religiously. We are being offered the classic test of Game Theory. There is a large sum of money in the middle of a table surrounded by people. If no-one presses the big red button for a minute everyone gets a share of the large sum, but if one person presses the button, they get a smaller fraction, but no one else gets anything.

 

Can we, should we, restrain ourselves from leaping towards the button? We all, surely, have that fear that, if we don’t move first, someone else will and we’ll be left– in the Israeli idiom – as a “Friar” or sucker. The Game Theory challenge is a good one. It’s not a test of selflessness or a willingness to place the rights of the other above mine, it’s a test of the ability to have faith in the collective and the notion of a greater good if we can find a way forward by behaving as a community as opposed to a collection of individuals.

 

And so to Yitro.

 

This week’s Torah portion contains the Ten Commandments; the single most specific, intimate moment of election of our people. The Rabbis, and much of later Biblical text, see it as a moment of isolation from the other nations of the world. “You,” says God, “are the one I want.” And we respond, “Our God is One God.” There is much in Jewish life that can feel isolated; we don’t eat the same food, pray in the same language, hold the same things dear as so many others. And there is so much in Jewish history that has scarred, again and again, our willingness to have faith in a broader vision. It’s been hard to believe in, in that phrase from Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the value of a “comity of nations.”

 

But the week’s Torah portion opens with a reminder of the dangers of the isolationist position. Moses is visited by his father-in-law, the Priest of Midian. An outsider.  He looks at how Moses is providing leadership and shares, “This thing you are doing – your way of running this society – is not good.” Moses has taken too much on his own shoulders and, Yitro warns, “Navol Tibol, you will be surely worn away.” Yitro, the outsider, helps Moses see that his own best interests lie in sharing a burden, having and more importantly instilling faith and those around him.

The purpose of fighting against the scarred game theory urge to press the big red button as fast as possible, is because my self-interest demands it. If I pursue only my own interests, isolated from cultivating a sense of “comity” – a belief that nations and individuals can do more by acting with courtesy and in community – I will surely be worn away.

Shabbat Shalom