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26 Old Mill Road, Great Neck, NY 11023 (516) 487-6100 Shabbat Announcements Terumah 5782
due to our own efforts, but equally and essentially the precedent in the past. It will happen, he says, when people
result of God’s blessing. exist solely in and for themselves, leaving the pursuit of
the common good to the government. This would then be
The building of the Tabernacle was the first great project what life would be like: Above this race of men stands an
the Israelites undertook together. It involved their immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone
generosity and skill. It gave them the chance to give back to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate.
to God a little of what He had given them. It conferred on That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and
them the dignity of labor and creative endeavor. It brought mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that
to closure their birth as a nation, and it symbolized the authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but
challenge of the future. The society they were summoned to it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual
create in the land of Israel would be one in which everyone childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice,
would play their part. It was to become – in the phrase I provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their
have used as the title of one of my books – “the home we happiness such a government willingly labors, but it
build together.”
chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that
From this we see that one of the greatest challenges of happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and
leadership is to give people the chance to give, to supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures,
contribute, to participate. That requires self-restraint, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry,
tzimtzum, on the part of the leader, creating the space for regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their
others to lead. As the saying goes: A leader is best when inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care
people barely need to acknowledge him. When his work is of thinking and all the trouble of living?
done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: ‘we did it ourselves.’
Tocqueville wrote these words almost 200 years ago, and
This brings us to the fundamental distinction in politics there is a risk that this is happening to some European
between State and Society. The state represents what is societies today: all state, no society; all government, little
done for us by the machinery of government, through the or no community. Tocqueville was not a religious writer. He
instrumentality of laws, courts, taxation and public makes no reference to the Hebrew Bible. But the fear he
spending. Society is what we do for one another through has is precisely what the book of Exodus documents. When
communities, voluntary associations, charities and welfare a central power – even when this is God Himself – does
organizations. Judaism, I believe, has a marked preference everything on behalf of the people, they remain in a state
for society rather than state, precisely because it recognizes of arrested development. They complain instead of acting.
– and this is the central theme of the book of Exodus – that They give way easily to despair. When the leader, in this
it is what we do for others, not what others or God does for case Moses, is missing, they do foolish things, none more
us, that transforms us. The Jewish formula, I believe, is: so than making a Golden Calf.
small state, big society.
There is only one solution: to make the people
The person who had the deepest insight into the nature of co-architects of their own destiny, to get them to build
democratic society was Alexis de Tocqueville. Visiting something together, to shape them into a team and show
America in the 1830s, he saw that its strength lay in what them that they are not helpless, that they are responsible
he called the “art of association”, the tendency of and capable of collaborative action. Genesis begins with
Americans to come together in communities and voluntary God creating the universe as a home for human beings.
groups to help one another, rather than leaving the task to Exodus ends with human beings creating the Mishkan, as a
a centralized government. Were it ever to be otherwise, ‘home’ for God. Hence the basic principle of Judaism, that
were individuals to depend wholly on the state, then we are called on to become co-creators with God. And
democratic freedom would be at risk. In one of the most hence, too, the corollary: that leaders do not do the work
haunting passages of his masterwork, Democracy in on behalf of the people. They teach people how to do the
America, he says that democracies are at risk of a work themselves. It is not what God does for us but what
completely new form of oppression for which there is no we do for God that allows us to reach dignity and
responsibility.
Great Neck Synagogue
26 Old Mill Road, Great Neck , NY 11023
516-487-6100

Rabbi Dale Polakoff, Rabbi
Rabbi Ian Lichter, Assistant Rabbi
Rabbi Yehoshua Lefkowitz, Intern Rabbi
Dr. Ephraim Wolf, z”l, Rabbi Emeritus
Yitzy Spinner, Cantor
Eleazer Schulman, z”l, Cantor Emeritus
Rabbi Dr. Michael & Zehava Atlas, Youth Rabbi & Youth Director
Mark Twersky, Executive Director
Dr. James Frisch, Assistant Director
Jordan Wolf, President
Dov Sassoon, Chairman of the Board