Standing Up for Each Other
Rosh Hashanah poses a question that is at once deeply personal and profoundly communal: Can we change?
The holiday’s prayers and our selichot insist that we can. We are not prisoners of habit, reputation, or past mistakes. Yet the Torah reading that ushers us toward the new year adds another dimension to teshuvah. Recently we read in parashat Nitzavim: “You are standing today, all of you, before the Lord your God, the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers – all the men of Israel.” (Deuteronomy 29:9) On the last day of his life, Moses convenes the people and then identifies every segment of society: leaders, women, children, strangers, and laborers.
Why does the Torah add “all of you”? The covenant is not entrusted only to leaders. Every person stands before God, and everyone bears responsibility for the community.
The Kli Yakar explains that this covenant established the principle of mutual responsibility. Before this moment, someone might have witnessed another going astray and concluded, “That is not my concern.” A covenantal community cannot live that way. We are not only responsible for our own conduct, but also accountable for helping others find a better path. Sometimes that requires criticism. At other times, encouragement. Often, it requires both.
This teaching comes alive in the unlikely relationship between President Chester A. Arthur and Julia Sand during a challenging moment in our country’s history in the Fall of 1881.
As described in the engaging Netflix series, Death by Lightning, Arthur rose through New York’s Republican political machine and became the “poster child” for the spoils system, in which government jobs were awarded for political loyalty rather than merit. When President James Garfield was shot in July 1881, by a disgruntled office seeker, Americans recoiled at the prospect of Arthur succeeding him. Few believed that a man shaped by patronage could rise above the system that had advanced his career.
Julia Sand disagreed. A thirty-one-year-old woman whose poor health left her largely homebound, she held no office, possessed no political influence, and had never met Mr. Arthur. Yet she wrote him anyway.
“The people are bowed in grief … not so much because he is dying, as because you are his successor,” Sand wrote. “But making a man President can change him! … If there is a spark of true nobility in you, now is the occasion to let it shine.”
Her letter combined rebuke with faith. “It is not the proof of highest goodness never to have done wrong,” she asserted, but rather “to pause and ponder, to recognize the evil, to turn resolutely against it” and devote the future to a higher purpose. Echoing the words of the Mahzor, she argues that our past has certainly shaped us, but it does not have to imprison us.
Arthur could have ignored this unknown correspondent. Instead, he kept her twenty-three remarkable letters and even visited her home in 1882. We cannot know precisely how much influence Sand had on him, but the President’s actions suggest that her words mattered.
Most importantly, Arthur changed course. The former defender of patronage became a champion of civil service reform. In 1883, he signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, beginning the replacement of political patronage with a merit-based federal employment system.
His transformation recalls the Rambam’s definition of complete teshuvah: a person encounters the same situation in which they previously sinned, possesses the power to repeat the mistake, yet chooses differently because they have changed. (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 2:1).
When Arthur occupied the nation’s highest office, he had more power than ever to reward allies and perpetuate patronage. But he turned against the system that had elevated him. Standing in essentially the same place, he made a different choice.
Yet Arthur is only half the story. Julia Sand reminds us that one need not possess power, position, or prominence to help change the world. All she needed was the courage to speak honestly and the generosity of spirit to believe that another person could become better.
On Rosh Hashanah, the shofar calls each of us to wake up. Sometimes we must awaken the best within ourselves. Sometimes we must awaken the hidden potential in someone else.
“You are standing today, all of you.” These words ring true today of all days and remind us that “All of Israel is responsible for one another.”
May we be blessed in the new year with the humility to change, the courage to speak up, and neighbors, friends, and family who will help us reach our potential.
Shanah Tovah U’metookah!
Dedicated in memory of all those lost on 9/11.
