During the hineni prayer at Yom Kippur, the cantor is swept up in the emotions of the service.  He bursts into tears as he cries out that “I, Cantor Shrein, am unworthy.” The rabbi is so moved that he joins in: “I, Rabbi Rabinowitz, am too unworthy.” The synagogue president is swept up: “I, Raphael Refua, physician, congregation president, am unworthy.” At the back, a congregant now stands and proclaims, “I, Bernie Derechberg, of Derechberg Dry Cleaning, am unworthy.” The cantor looks at the rabbi and president, sighs, and says, “Hey, look who thinks he is unworthy.”

Let us turn now to this week’s Torah reading (Parashat Ekev). Israel is warned that in times of peace and prosperity, it should not become proud and take all the credit for itself. Israel should not forget the partnership with God that has led it to times of abundance and tranquility. God’s instruction is instead: “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep the commandments of the LORD, and His statutes, which I command you this day for your good?” (Deuteronomy 10:12–13, JPS Tanakh).
(Hebrew: וְעַתָּ֣ה יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל מָ֚ה יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ שֹׁאֵ֖ל מֵעִמָּ֑ךְ כִּ֣י אִם־לְיִרְאָ֞ה אֶת־יְהֹוָ֤ה אֱלֹהֶ֙יךָ֙ לָלֶ֤כֶת בְּכׇל־דְּרָכָיו֙ וּלְאַהֲבָ֣ה אֹת֔וֹ וְלַעֲבֹ֞ד אֶת־יְהֹוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶֽׁךָ׃ לִשְׁמֹ֞ר אֶת־מִצְוֺ֤ת יְהֹוָה֙ וְאֶת־חֻקֹּתָ֔יו אֲשֶׁ֛ר אָנֹכִ֥י מְצַוְּךָ֖ הַיּ֑וֹם לְט֖וֹב לָֽךְ׃)

Smugness can go beyond the belief that your material standing is due to your own talent and effort. It can extend to a belief in your individual or collective righteousness. The Torah reminds us that Moses was the humblest of men (Numbers 12:3, JPS Tanakh: “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all the men that were upon the face of the earth.”).
(Hebrew: וְהָאִ֥ישׁ מֹשֶׁ֖ה עָנָ֣יו מְאֹ֑ד מִכֹּל֙ הָֽאָדָ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֖ר עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הָאֲדָמָֽה׃)

The prophet Micah reframes the essence of God’s wishes as: “He hath told thee, O man, what is good, and what the LORD doth require of thee: only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6:8, JPS Tanakh).
(Hebrew: הִגִּ֥יד לְךָ֛ אָדָ֖ם מַה־טּ֑וֹב וּמָֽה־יְהֹוָ֞ה דּוֹרֵ֣שׁ מִמְּךָ֗ כִּ֣י אִם־עֲשׂ֤וֹת מִשְׁפָּט֙ וְאַ֣הֲבַת חֶ֔סֶד וְהַצְנֵ֥עַ לֶ֖כֶת עִם־אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃)

Kohelet—in English translation, Ecclesiastes—warns against being too righteous: “Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself over wise; why shouldest thou destroy thyself?” (Ecclesiastes 7:16, JPS Tanakh). Meaning? Your extremism will make you miserably strict with yourself, rather than enjoying your brief stint under the sun. A sense of superior righteousness can also cause you to harm others: to shun, censor, or punish those you regard as feeble in their rectitude.

But God Himself does not appreciate those lacking in self-confidence. The generation that left Egypt must stay in the Wilderness; they did not have enough belief that, in partnership with God, they could cross the river and reconquer their own homeland. The Torah can be read as praising Abraham’s willingness to follow orders at the Akedah, the binding of Isaac; yet it can also be read as questioning Abraham’s servility in not resisting. The same Abraham who argued with God to save a few righteous men in Sodom and Gomorrah cannot stand up for his own son? This contrast raises questions about the balance between obedience and moral courage. God is referred to as the “Fear of Isaac” (Genesis 31:42, JPS Tanakh), suggesting the profound impact of the Akedah on Isaac. How traumatized was the son by his father’s apparent willingness to make him a human sacrifice? Moses, the humblest of men, argues with God again and again to spare the Israelites the dire consequences of their faithlessness and lapses into idolatry.

An easy way out is to join in what Roger Simon has insightfully described as the contemporary narcissism that can destroy everything, including Western civilization (I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already, 2016). Alan Dershowitz has said recently that the biggest problem for American Jews is American Jews. I believe he means those parading their Jewish identity—regardless of whether they join in any meaningful way in its collective life—while condemning Israel beyond any rational measure. “Look at me; I have surmounted my parochial upbringing, I am a citizen of the world.” And implicitly, “I am not one of those Jewy Jews or Zionists that you hate.”

Bracing self-criticism has always been an essential part of Judaism; our biblical figures are all portrayed as flawed. Our most famous King David is upbraided by the prophet Nathan for his exploitation of his position in the service of his lust. The Deuteronomic vision—and much of the Bible—is that Israel’s conquest and suffering is the consequence of its people’s spiritual failings. But the Bible does not portray the conquerors as admirable. The Assyrian conquerors are not praised as having a just grievance.

As for our current execration as Jews by the outside world, the most insightful thing I have ever heard about the consequence of the Shoah is this: the West will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust (attributed to Zvi Rex). To reconcile its own bad conscience, it is more than self-gratifying to say: “See, when the Jews acquire their own state, they too are Nazis.”

In the movie The Prisoner (1955 film starring Alec Guinness as the Cardinal and Jack Hawkins as the Interrogator, based on the experiences of Cardinal József Mindszenty), a Roman Catholic cardinal is broken by various forms of pressure and manipulation. He resists the pressure with courage and endurance—until he is ultimately broken by the shrewd interrogator from the communist regime. The trick: convince the Cardinal that his resistance to the Nazis, and now the Communists, is prideful. The Cardinal succumbs to the pressure to confess to crimes he never committed by the worry that, instead of resisting evil, he is promoting his own self-righteousness.

Maimonides addresses this balance in his Mishneh Torah, teaching that true humility (anava) is the middle path between arrogance and self-abasement (shiflut). He writes that one should be “exceedingly humble in spirit” yet avoid excessive self-effacement, maintaining a secure sense of self-worth rooted in God’s love (Hilchot De’ot 2:3). This balance allows us to act with confidence in our abilities while remaining humble, recognizing that our strengths are gifts from the Divine to serve a greater purpose.

All around us, however, we are surrounded by members of the contemporary ideological clergy—public intellectuals, academics—who are extreme in the other direction: utterly lacking in any consciousness that they might be parading their supposedly superior virtue at the expense of those who are genuinely vulnerable, including us, the Jews that are left in this world; one out of every five hundred human beings on this planet, possessed of one state. The God of the Bible chose to take “the smallest of people” and place them in the most vulnerable place you can imagine: connecting three continents.

Here and now, to survive as a genuinely committed Jew, you have to believe that our people will somehow continue despite the physical threats and defamations that menace us on all sides. You have to believe that we are worthy of continuation—not merely as a cultural artifact, but as a continuing source of conscience for all of humanity. At the same time, you have to remember that the essence of the Jewish historical experience was being enslaved in Egypt, and identifying with the stranger and the vulnerable. A sane life as a Jewish individual and as our people involves some fraught, uncertain, but necessary combination of self-belief and humility. So it has been for us, so it still is, and so it must be.