Everyone who is entered in the records, from the age of twenty years up, shall give God’s offering: the rich shall not pay more—and the poor shall not pay less—than half a shekel when giving God’s offering… (Exodus 30:14-15)
Each and every member of the tribe is required to contribute to the collective, and each member’s contribution is identical to every other.
In the second pillar, in this week’s
parasha, Vayakhel-Pekudai, “the Israelites, all the men and women” whose hearts are so moved, are invited to bring “freewill offerings” to God, anything that might be of value “for the work that God, through Moshe, had commanded to be done.” (Exodus 35:29) In this case, the Israelites are invited, at their discretion, to share their particular and idiosyncratic gifts, including both precious objects and distinctive skills and talents.
On the one hand, our ancestors were subject to a compulsory tithe that leveled social distinctions, and, on the other, they were entreated to bring voluntary offerings that acknowledged and elevated each individual’s unique capacity to contribute.
These distinct-yet-complementary ways in which civic responsibility is woven into our narrative as Jews have been at the forefront of my mind over the past couple of weeks as I’ve been serving on a jury, that quintessential form of American civic participation. Particularly in this moment when our democratic norms and institutions are so threatened (witness the titles of some books being published in just these first few months of 2018:
How Democracies Die,
Can it Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America,
The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom is in Danger & How to Save It,
Why Liberalism Failed), it feels especially meaningful to be participating in one of America’s most important civic institutions. Important for three reasons:
First, ever since the 2016 election, there’s been a lot of hand-wringing (much of it deserved) about how the coastal elites have neglected Middle America and how important it is for all of us to get out of our comfort zones and have authentic encounters with people who are different from us. This is, of course, true. But it’s also true that I don’t need to visit my parents’ suburban neighborhood of Shoreview, Minnesota, to have an encounter with someone different from me. The members of my jury pool included an HVAC technician, a literary agent, a software developer, a security guard, a legal secretary, a journalist, and a home health aide. Their collective experiences with the criminal justice system included arrests for shoplifting and for underage drinking, for battery and for jumping a subway turnstile. In
voir dire, one of them shared the story of her grandfather’s murder by his wife; another related how his trust in the police was tested by his own experience of stop-and-frisk; and another told stories of his three uncles’ years of service in the NYPD. There’s something profoundly humanizing about this ephemeral yet intimate encounter with the myriad humans with whom I share even my small slice of the world in Brooklyn, New York.
Second, I’m struck by the visceral way in which jury service—and its commitment to fair judgment by fellow citizens—evokes our Jewish tradition of
כל ישראל ערבים זה לזה /
All of Israel is responsible one for another. It’s almost banal to say, but no less true for that: We’re all in this together, and we’re all responsible for one another. In the words of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.: “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” And as the second-century Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai taught (
Vayikra Rabbah 4:6), each of us must ensure that the whole ship, and not just our own seat on it, is seaworthy. Jury service captures this awesome responsibility as much as anything I can think of in Jewish life.
Finally, in listening to the judge’s initial charge to us, the members of the jury, I couldn’t stop thinking of the parallels to the process of
halachic interpretation and discernment: As with a great
chavrutah, we would be given a shared text—the evidence of the case—and through the interactions of our various heuristics, our values, our diverse experiences, we would arrive at the “truth” of the case through collective interpretation and discernment, a “truth” that would not exist in any objective sense outside of our deliberative process. The judge concluded her instructions by saying, “In this case, I am the judge of the law, and you are the judges of the facts,” evoking the Talmudic injunction לא בשמים היא,
It [the Law] is not in heaven. Here, again, is a concrete case in which this American civic institution echoes our own tradition, placing human judgment at the center of the application of justice.
Reflecting this symbiosis of Jewish and American sensibilities, each morning as I’ve entered the jury room, I’ve recited Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz’s
b’rachah, based on a passage in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Brachot 37a:
Rabbi Yirmiyah said: The one occupied with the needs of the community is like one who is occupied with matters of Torah):
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְשָֽׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו, וְצִוָּֽנוּ לַעֲסוֹק בְּצָרְכֵי צִבּוּר
How full of blessing you are, ETERNAL ONE, our God, majesty of the Universe, who has consecrated us with Your commands, and commanded us to immerse ourselves in the needs of the community.
