[Jewish Life] Is With [Jewish] People

Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross, Jewish Congregation of Marco Island

After World War II, Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog set out to preserve a detailed profile of day-to-day existence in the Jewish villages of eastern Europe. The marvelously affirmative title they chose for their study: Life is With People. Only incidentally does that statement define us humans as gregarious creatures; more to the point, it summarizes shtetl life as a Venn diagram of interactions between neighbors.

In the process, it speaks of the fundamentally interdependent nature of the Jewish experience — because the simple fact is, you can’t be Jewish alone. Ours is the only religion in the world that is, first and foremost, a national ethnic group with a shared language, world-view, and history. So it is that, while other world religious philosophies involve individual conviction, Judaism self-articulates in the broadest organic terms of our common peoplehood. Jewish pietists, secularists, skeptics, agnostics, atheists are all equally Jewish, associated with and identified as part of what King David summarizes as ךמע ‘amcha “Your People.”

“It is only by means of two or more witnesses that any matter is established.” Deuteronomy19:15

As a result, everything in Jewish life is corporate, communal, and collective. That is why our Yom Kippur prayers are addressed to ונכלמ וניבא Avinu Malkeinu, “our Parent and Sovereign,” and why our confessionals are couched in the first-person-plural sense of acknowledging the shortcomings of which we, as a whole, are accountable. Self-identification as Jewish involves bearing testimony to other Jews, in the process both seeking their corroboration and reciprocally substantiating the involvement of us both. Because Jewish life is with Jewish people; you can’t be Jewish alone.

At the other end of Jewish history, some 3,500 years ago, the Tribal representatives sent to reconnoiter Canaan discovered lush fruits confirming that The Promised Land was, indeed, “a land flowing with milk and honey.” But those fruits were so very substantial that bringing them back to the Israelite encampment took two people, one at either end of the pole. The cooperation of these two men (from different Tribes) articulated the core value that Jewish life is with Jewish people; you can’t be Jewish alone.

That organizing principle is enshrined in Deuteronomy 19:15, wherein the Torah declares that “it is only by means of two or more witnesses that any matter is established.” So it is that Jewish marriage happens neither by the vow of the couple nor the officiation of the rabbi, but rather by the two corroborative witnesses who sign the k’tuvah marriage deed, and by the assemblage who yells “mazzal tov” when the glass breaks — because you can’t be Jewish alone.

The children engendered by that marriage are inducted into the community not by the rabbi or moheil pronouncing the baby’s name, but by the congregation bearing witness to that name, and accepting into their midst the person bearing it — because you can’t be Jewish alone.

The status of a convert as One of Us is established not by rabbinical fiat, but by that person’s incorporation into the congregation in which they have apprenticed — because you can’t be Jewish alone.

Dealing with bereavement requires a minyan to bear witness to our unbroken faith (and, by their presence to say “Amen” to our recitation of Qaddish, to assure us we are not alone in the wake of our loss) — because you can’t be Jewish alone.

Our synagogues and culture centers and communal institutions are all part of the social and spiritual infrastructure of corporate Jewish life. Let us dedicate ourselves to their success, during the New Year 5786, just begun, with a new Yom Kippur confessional acknowledging what Velma Kelly in Chicagosang to Roxie Hart: “I simply cannot do it alone.”