When Your Brother Does Wrong

Parshat BeHaalotcha (Numbers 8:1–12:16)

Several weeks ago, on Shabbat afternoon, we had a fascinating discussion. How should we respond when we learn through the media that our fellow Jew has behaved improperly or even immorally? Should we jump to condemn and separate ourselves from the crime lest it reflect badly on the entire community, or should we respond with love, as the Torah commands, “Love your fellow Jew as yourself”?1

All too often, we react with instant condemnation upon hearing the allegation of a fellow Jew’s crime. Our justification is that we must not give our critics an opening to paint all Jews with the same brush.

We might claim that we do so for good reasons, but the litmus test is how we feel in our hearts. Do we love the fellow that we condemn, or could we care less if he spent a lifetime in jail? Do we feel pain as we are forced to denounce his actions, or do we do it with equanimity and even a bit of self-righteousness? Have we dragged him down because we had no choice, or did we do it to pull ourselves up and make ourselves look good by comparison?

Love Your Fellow

The Torah’s commandment to love our fellow requires at the very least that we shed hot tears when we are forced to condemn another. It requires that we do so with reluctance, and only in extreme cases, where it is absolutely necessary. It also requires that once we have condemned another, we treat him as family by reaching out to help him in any way we can.

But that is hardly all this commandment requires. “Love your fellow” requires that we feel as if we are condemning ourselves. This is the height of irony. Our reason for public condemnation is to disassociate ourselves from the crime and avoid being painted by the same brush, yet internally we must take responsibility for our fellow’s crimes.

How could a fellow Jew have stooped so low without us noticing his slow but steady decline? Even if we don’t know the sinner in question, we are still not absolved. Had we expressed our true love for the Jews we do know, it would surely have inspired them to express their true love for the Jews they know, who in turn would continue to pay it forward. If it is true that all of society was once separated by six degrees, the advent of the Internet and social media has brought us even closer. There is no doubt that our positive influence upon our friends could eventually have reached the Jew in question. Can we truthfully say that we treat everyone we know with genuine love, and that we are concerned about their worries and fears? If the answer is no, we are somewhat responsible.

One Piece

Furthermore, the Torah teaches us that the entire Jewish nation is a single unit. If one piece is defective, the entire unit is impacted. Just as the arm cannot claim to be unaffected by the leg’s illness and the leg cannot claim to be unaffected by the arm’s amputation, so can no Jew remain untarnished by a fellow’s sin, nor can we claim to be unaffected by the condemnation of our fellow. We are one body.

We learn this from the Torah’s description of the menorah, the candelabra in the ancient Temple. The Torah says, “This was the form of the menorah: hammered work of gold, from its base to its flower it was hammered work.”2 The menorah was a single piece of gold, hammered into 49 components. There were cups, flowers, buttons and branches. Each was distinct from the other, but they were all of a piece.

From the base to the flower, they were one. The base is at the bottom; the flowers were (among other places) at the top. The base represents the “simple” Jew, and the flowers represent the scholarly, pious and righteous Jew. Further, the Hebrew for “flower,” perach, has the same etymological root as the Hebrew word for “soaring,” pore’ach. The holy Jew’s rituals are performed with such passion and enthusiasm that they soar heavenward and touch the Divine. You would think this kind of Jew has little in common with the basic Jew at the very bottom, yet the Torah tells us they are of a single piece.

“Love your fellow Jew” doesn’t just require us to love another, but to feel that this other is part of ourselves, a limb of our body. Just as the legs may trip and fall, causing the arm to break, we are affected by the sin of our fellow.

One Circle

If you look carefully at the verse describing the the menorah, the final words seem redundant: “This was the form of the menorah: hammered work of gold, from its base to its flower it was hammered work.” Why repeat the words “hammered work”?

The first mention of the menorah being of hammered work reminds us that we are separate limbs of a single body and that we require and depend on each other, as we have discussed till this point. The second mention of being hammered from a single piece takes us to a much deeper level.

At this point the Torah wants us to recall that before we became separate parts, we were a single ball of gold. Before we became separate limbs, we were a single embryo. Just as the same life-force that animates the arm flows through the leg, so is part of me in you and part of you in me. A fault in you may have originated in me, and by the same token, a strength in me may have originated in you. If I rise and you fall, we are still part of the same organism; we share the same vitality and character.

With this mindset, it is nearly impossible to condemn another without feeling that we are condemning ourselves. Sometimes circumstances require our condemnation of another, but it should be as traumatic as confessing our own sin and as condemning our own behavior. For we are hammered of one piece.3

Footnotes 1.Leviticus 19:18. 2.Numbers 8:4. 3.This essay is based on Likkutei Torah, Behaalotecha 32d–33a, and Sefer HaMaamarim 5730, p. 247.