Like many of you, I am outraged by the drag decision on Roe vs. Wade. Millions of women will be hurt and many of them will die. But as horrible as this decision is, it raises an even bigger question: What is the definition of justice?
The term “conservatism” was invented in England, and it was centered around a particular philosophy: that the purpose of laws and governments is to protect the property rights of the wealthy. And I guess, by that definition, the Court is doing its job. It’s keeping white men in power and destroying the rights of women.
But Judaism teaches that there is a difference between ownership and possession. The things that we possess – our money, our power, even our souls – are not really ours. They are merely lent to us so that we can use them to repair God’s world. That is why the Hebrew words tzedek, justice, and tzedakah, giving money to the poor, are related – because the money is not really ours. It is merely placed in our hands so that we can help others.
Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l, perhaps the greatest rabbi of the twenty first century wrote:
“One of Judaisms most distinctive and challenging ideas is its ethics of responsibility, the idea that God asks us to become, in the rabbinic phrase, his ‘partners in the work of creation’. The God who created the world in love calls on us to create in love. The God who gave us the gift of freedom asks us to honor and enhance the freedom of others. God, the ultimate Other, asks us to reach out to the human other. More than God is a strategic intervener, he is a teacher. More than he does our will, he teaches us to do his. Life is God’s call to responsibility.”
Sacks goes on to add:
“Judaism is a complex and subtle faith, yet it has rarely lost touch with its simple ethical imperatives. We are here to make a difference, to mend the fractures of the world, a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as it takes to make a place of justice and compassion where the lonely are not alone, the poor not without help, and the cry of the vulnerable and those wronged are heard.”
This is the Jewish definition of justice.
Our hearts must cry out to every woman in this country and to everyone who will be hurt if Alito’s approach continues – the blacks who have lost their voting rights, the LGBT and interracial couples whose marriages will be destroyed, and the generations who will grow up in ignorance because books have been burned.
I’ve said again and again that all of us can change the world. But this time, we must do it together. Write your senators and congressmen. Write the president. Protest. It is time to fight for justice.