Is Jewishness Good for Anything?: Parashat Emor 5786

There's an old story about a Jewish boy from the Lower East Side who runs home bursting with excitement to tell his grandfather that Babe Ruth hit three home runs in a single game. The grandfather listens patiently. Then he asks: "Tell me — what this Babe Ruth did — is it good for the Jews?"

Versions of this story in English date back at least to 1824. Winston Churchill gave it a boost in 1921, when he declared that a Jewish homeland in Palestine would be "good for the world, good for the Jews, and good for the British Empire" — and the Jewish press seized on the phrase and made it their own. By the time Nathan Ausubel collected the Babe Ruth story in his Treasury of Jewish Folklore in 1948, the question had long since become a staple, its humor inseparable from its anxiety.

For much of the second half of the twentieth century, at least in America, that anxiety receded into something like background noise.  But the question has come back — and not as a punchline. It has become, with increasing explicitness, the operating logic of American Jewish institutional life. The scholar Miriam Udel observes that the key is the placement of the word "but": the "but" betrays an awareness that Jewish interests are sometimes oblique, if not counter, to those of the mainstream — that we must always translate every development into the currency of our own survival before we can relate to it. That awareness no longer feels optional. When major organizations make calculations about whom to align with, what to say and what to leave unsaid, which principles to enforce and which to suspend — in case after case, the reasoning comes down to some version of the same question: Will this protect us? Will this secure our standing? What can we afford to say, and what can we not afford to say?

This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Emor, offers a profound framework for thinking through these questions. The parashah focuses primarily on laws governing the conduct of the kohanim, the priests, and two interrelated concepts run through it like a double helix. The root k-d-sh — usually translated as "holy," but really meaning set apart, distinct, recognizably different from what surrounds it — appears fifteen times. And the root h-l-l — its opposite — appears nine times.

Translations often render h-l-l as "profane" or "desecrated," but the word has a more specific meaning than either of those renderings suggests. Hol, from this root, means ordinary — common, undifferentiated, indistinguishable from everything around it. The opposite of kadosh, which means set apart and distinct, is to make something hol. Not to destroy it, but to render it just like everything else — to strip away whatever made it distinctive in the first place.

The parashah is organized around this tension. The beginning of the portion says of the priests: K'doshim yihyu l'Eloheihem v'lo y'chall'lu shem Eloheihem — "They shall be holy to their God and shall not make ordinary the name of their God." And later, at the end of Leviticus chapter 22, the command is extended to the entire community: V'lo t'chall'lu et shem kodshi v'nikdashti b'toch b'nei Yisrael — "Do not make My holy name ordinary, that I may be sanctified in the midst of the children of Israel."

Rabbi Moses Maimonides, the Rambam, in his legal code the Mishneh Torah, takes these commandments and extends them into two broad categories of obligation: Kiddush HaShem and Hillul HaShem — the sanctification and desecration of God's name.

He begins with cases of coercion — situations where life and Jewish observance come into direct conflict. The general principle is that the preservation of life takes precedence over the commandments of the Torah. If a hostile actor threatens your life unless you violate a commandment, you must violate the commandment and live. Life is the precondition of everything else.

But there are three exceptions: idolatry, forbidden sexual relations, and murder. In those cases, a Jew must accept death rather than transgress — yehareg v'al ya'avor in the language of the tradition – be killed rather than violate. These three are non-negotiable because they strike at the foundation of what Jewish life is: its monotheistic commitments, its structure of ethics, its insistence on the inviolable and infinite value of human life. Surrender these core commitments, and what remains is not merely a compromised Judaism. It is not Judaism at all.

Rambam also distinguishes between a private actor who coerces you to violate the Torah and a government that orders you to do so. In the first case, you may transgress everything except those three cardinal sins in order to save yourself. In the second, even minor commandments become non-negotiable. You must refuse — publicly, visibly, even at the cost of your life.

And finally, Rambam moves his argument away from extenuating circumstances into the mundane patterns of life. He writes:

"There are other deeds which are also included in the desecration of God's name, if performed by a person of great Torah stature who is renowned for his piety — deeds which, although they are not technically transgressions, will cause people to speak disparagingly."

Not technically transgressions or violations of Jewish law, strictly speaking. Just actions like not paying a bill promptly. Jesting immoderately. Failing to greet people cheerfully. Losing one’s temper in public. All of these acts are technically legal according to Jewish law, and yet all are still considered to be desecrations of God's name when done publicly by a particular kind of person.

What these scenarios have in common is less about the actions themselves, since they are not strictly speaking illegal, and more about the impact they have on other Jews who may be watching.

The underlying concern is whether God is rendered significant or insignificant in the eyes of people who are supposed to view God as significant, particularly one's fellow Jews. When someone whose Jewish identity is visible and relied upon by others behaves in ways that are indistinguishable from the surrounding culture — especially when they violate not just the letter but the spirit of what Jewish tradition demands — they teach every Jew watching that Jewish values are, in the end, not that important.

Rambam understands that we often learn what is worth doing by watching what other people do. So when visible embodiments of Jewish tradition act publicly in ways that are contrary to what Judaism actually demands, the Jews who are watching would likely conclude that Jewish tradition doesn't actually produce a code of conduct, a seriousness of moral purpose, that would not otherwise exist; that Jewishness, in the end, is nothing particularly special. And if so, why bother?

That is why the focus of these rules isn’t whether a particular act is good or bad for the Jews, but rather about sanctifying or desecrating God's name, specifically. The point is that Judaism, in its own self-understanding, is not an end to itself. Instead, it’s a means through which the Jewish people bear witness to something larger than themselves: to the reality of a God who demands justice, who insists on the sanctity of every human life, who despises self-interest dressed up as sanctimony. When that witness fails, what is damaged is not merely the community's standing. What is damaged is the credibility of the claim at Judaism's center: that there is a God, that God makes demands, that those demands are meant to lead to a particular way of being in the world, and that this particular way of being is meant to lead us all toward repairing the world.

And while Rambam singles out Torah scholars as those who must be particularly on guard about their public behavior, the operative principle is actually broader: anyone whose Jewish identity is visible enough that other Jews use what they see as a data point about what Judaism is and what it demands. In our time, that category should, I think, be understood to extend beyond prominent rabbis to include Jewish institutions that present themselves as guardians of Jewish values, Jewish public figures whose Jewishness is part of their public identity, and even the state of Israel, insofar as it presents itself, and is perceived by the world, as the Jewish state.

The positive image Rambam offers is equally precise. Kiddush HaShem, sanctifying God’s name, happens when a person or institution whose Jewishness is visible "speaks pleasantly with others, is humbled by them and does not humble them in return, honors them even though they disrespect him, does business faithfully" — such that "all praise him, love him, and find his deeds attractive." Such actions demonstrate that Jewish life is worth the effort -- that the tradition, which demands of its adherents a distinctive set of behaviors, actually produces something meaningful and real -- and consequently lead people watching toward the tradition rather than away from it.

The categories of Hillul HaShem and Kiddush Hashem land with particular force in our time. Jews and Jewish institutions are being called to make consequential choices: about whom to align with, what to say and what to leave unsaid, which values to insist upon and which to hold more loosely in the interest of security or influence. About how to respond to wars waged, and humanitarian crises caused, in part in our name; to political forces that offer protection with one hand and demand compromises with the other.

And while reasonable people might disagree on the policy conclusions that might be drawn from these legal categories, they nevertheless challenge us to focus less on the question of what is good for the Jews, and more on whether, when Jews look at choices being made in Judaism's name — by our institutions, by our leaders, or by the Jewish state — will we see something that makes Judaism look spiritually demanding and morally righteous? Or will they see a tradition that, when the pressure is sufficient, quietly rearranges its values to fit its interests?

These questions are different from the classic, "Is it good for the Jews?" Rather, they’re something harder and more demanding: Is Jewishness good for anything? Is there something here — something distinctive enough, serious enough, costly enough to carry — that justifies Judaism as a distinct way of life? Or is Judaism simply another lifestyle, organized, like every other, around the pursuit of comfort, security, and belonging?

These are the questions Rambam is urging us to consider. And they are likewise questions I think we have to sit with honestly, even — perhaps especially — when there are no easy answers.

One of the most creative and iconoclastic modern Jewish leaders, Rabbi Michael Lerner, who passed away recently, observed that American Jews who had drifted away from Jewish life in our time reported doing so not because Judaism was too demanding, but rather exactly the opposite — because the Jewish community they had been offered was not demanding enough — that it was indistinguishable from the surrounding culture. "If being different in Jewish ways helped forge a spiritually deep community," he wrote, "it might have been worth the effort." But to many American Jews, the juice simply didn’t seem worth the squeeze. And so they left Judaism behind.

I fear we are accelerating that failure. When Jews who are watching look at what is being done in Judaism's name and cannot find in any of it a reason to believe that being Jewish makes a decisive difference in how one moves through the world, the conclusion they draw is not that they have failed Judaism. It is that Judaism has failed them.

And more than that: it is that the God Judaism proclaims — the God who demands justice, who insists on the sanctity of every human life, who will not be satisfied with self-interest dressed in the language of tradition — is not real. Or not sovereign. Or not worth the trouble.

That is Hillul HaShem. God's name has become ordinary. There is nothing left to set it apart  from anything and everything else.

So what would Kiddush HaShem look like — here, now, in this specific moment?

Notice what is present in Rambam’s image of the person in whom God is glorified and what is absent. There is no political platform. There is no ideological test. What is present is a quality of conduct so visibly grounded in something larger than self-interest that the people watching are drawn toward the tradition rather than away from it. A life that makes the God Judaism proclaims real.

And then there is the situation Rambam raises where power demands that you demonstrate, publicly, that your deepest commitments will bend. In that case, he says, you must refuse because the Jews who are watching need to see that Judaism makes ultimate claims — that there are things we will not do, accommodations we will not make, silences we will not keep, regardless of what it costs us. If they never see that — if what they see instead is an endless series of calculations dressed in the language of prudence — they will conclude, rationally, that there is nothing here worth the price of admission.

Ultimately, it is not good for the Jews if Judaism is not good for anything – if it does not make actual demands on us — demands that are inconvenient, that cannot be easily reconciled with the logic of self-interest. The prophet Isaiah, whose words are cited by the Rambam as a prooftext for the laws of hillul and kiddush Hashem, describes what this looks like at its best. He imagines a people whose Jewish identity is not organized around safety or reputation or the approval of the surrounding world, but rather around something larger than themselves — a commitment visible enough, costly enough, serious enough, that the world looking on finds it worth pausing over. He calls this people Yisrael asher b'cha etpa'ar — Israel, you are my servant, in whom I will be glorified.

Glorified. Not protected. Not secured. Not rendered safe. Glorified — as in luminous, as in radiant, as in so clearly organized around something beyond itself that it illuminates what is around it. A people whose conduct makes the God they proclaim visible and real. A people whose words and deeds sanctify God’s name.

When we refuse to let "Is it good for the Jews?" silence the question "Is this right?" — that is Kiddush HaShem.

When we make room in the Jewish community for the honest, painful, costly conversation about what our tradition demands of us in this specific, frightening, morally clarifying moment — that is Kiddush HaShem.

When we teach our children not only that they are Jewish, but that being Jewish makes demands — real demands, visible demands, demands that cannot be dissolved into the ambient culture without a remainder — that is Kiddush HaShem.

May we stand before God and before each other and refuse to let God’s name – and our own – become ordinary. 

May we insist, against every pressure, that there is something in this vessel of tradition worth carrying, something distinctive enough and serious enough and costly enough to be worth calling holy. May we remember who we serve, and before Whom we stand, and through this – glorify our God.

So may it be God's will. Amen.