Modeling Our Values Through Jewish Wisdom
The High Holy Day season, this time of cheshbon hanefesh (soul accounting), calls on us to pause and ask the hardest of questions: Have we lived up to our values?
The same is true for organizations. We have found that if we, as professionals or lay leaders, are to move our missions forward with integrity, our institutions must also embrace this practice of cheshbon hanefesh with curiosity, courage and willingness to grow. It is with this conviction that we created the Torah of SRE, a new source sheet from SRE [Safety, Respect, Equity] Network that grounds our values of inclusion and belonging in the wisdom of Jewish text. We knew that safety, respect and equity are fundamentally Jewish values, but somehow the Jewish language used to talk about these values was yet to be named. If we are asking the Jewish community to live by these values, how are we rooting our own work in Jewish values? …Our goal was to ground the values of safety, respect and equity in classic Jewish texts, as well as modern Jewish voices….
We chose a central text that encapsulates these concepts and allows us to think more deeply about them: “You have been told, Human Being, what is good, and what God seeks from you: Only to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
This verse is hardly a revolutionary choice for a justice-focused organization. In fact, it is widely known and often used in justice circles, as it truly speaks to the basic behaviors necessary to be a good person. However, we wanted to show how, instead of simply quoting this text, we could dive deeply into every section of the verse and ask challenging questions.
For example, is there actually a place for humility in justice work? What is the rela- tionship between justice and kindness? Can these two values work together or are they fundamentally at odds?
We also confronted a challenge that often arises with God-language. Would these texts resonate with people who have different beliefs about God? We added a “God disclaimer” to openly acknowledge that not everyone believes in the concept of God, and that those who do have radically different under- standings of the Divine; at the same time, we retained the God-language, because it serves as a powerful short- hand for envisioning a world where every person’s dignity is seen and valued. We learned that with this clarification, people could talk about God without feeling threatened, ashamed or pressured to believe any specific thing.
It was important to us to offer both classic commentaries on this verse, as well as contemporary voices that represent the diversity of the Jewish community. We centered the voices and interpretations of women, and of Jews of Color, Jews who identify as LGBTQ+ and Jews of Sephardi/Mizrachi heritage. We included voices that are too often marginalized in the Jewish textual conversation. In doing so, we modeled a profound truth: Torah and Jewish text can be defined broadly, and should be placed into the hands of everyone within our community.
When we root our work in our Jewish texts as well as our Jewish identity, we strengthen not only our organizations, but our collective capacity to create a Jewish communal landscape—and a world—that is safe, respectful and equitable for all.
—RABBA YAFFA EPSTEIN and GUILA BENCHIMOL, eJewish Philanthropy
