The man who kept nine commandments
As a teenager, I stayed in a small European country for a summer with my family, where I met a rabbi who brought kosher food to a Jewish man convicted of murder. The rabbi’s kids — who often joined their father on visits to the prison — whispered to me that they had nicknamed the inmate “the man who kept the nine commandments.”
I always found this strangely touching. The family wasn’t delusional; they knew what the man had done and didn’t excuse it. But still, they felt obligated to help him retain a connection to his faith and remind him of his humanity in spite of his actions and circumstances.
As the Israelites prepared for their entry into Israel at the end of Sefer Bamidbar, God commanded them to build six cities that “shall serve you as a refuge from the avenger.” These cities were places where people who had murdered someone mistakenly or accidentally could go to establish their safety from vengeful members of the departed’s family. They ensured no one would be punished before standing trial, and they also acknowledged a fundamental truth about our world — that even kind people can commit despicable acts or end up in horrifying circumstances. These cities also revealed a fundamental principle of the Jewish people: that all Jews are areivim zeh ba’zeh, responsible for one another.
Sometimes people make deeply flawed choices. Sometimes circumstances are far from perfect. But through it all, Jews are responsible for other Jews. We make space for them. No matter if they live among us or apart. If they’ve hurt us or disappointed us. If they want anything to do with us.
We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Whether we like it or not.
But that’s increasingly hard to remember, lately.
***
Every so often, I ask myself why I still use social media. In their infancy, virtual spaces like Facebook and Twitter served a social good, allowing people who sought community to connect over vast distances. But today, they are filled with expressions of hate. Anyone who has opened one of these apps can attest to how frequently they encounter hostile takedown posts or comment wars.
Spreading hate has never been this easy. The anonymity turns otherwise-kind people into merciless commenters, and the technology lets people share their fears, heartbreaks, and dissatisfactions to audiences exponentially larger than a town crier or telegram could have reached as recently as a few decades ago.
This isn’t a uniquely Jewish problem. But for Jews, it’s especially dangerous. These platforms provide antisemites with opportunities to attack us — and they also give us the opportunity to destroy the best defense we have against these antisemites: our communities.
Hate is an awful thing to see, but it’s especially heartbreaking to watch hate tear people in the same communities apart. When we start rejecting fellow Jews over political views, synagogue affiliations, or even meme choices, we put Jewish continuity at risk. To paraphrase Martin Niemöller, when they come for those Jews, we won’t speak out — and someday, when they come for us, there may be no one left to speak out at all.
That doesn’t mean we stop disagreeing, or that we ignore harmful rhetoric or illegal behavior. It just means we can’t destroy our nation while we do so. We need to operate with the assumption of connection and commitment to one another.
In the words of one of my teachers, it’s better to call someone a “bad Jew” than to write them off as a “non-Jew.” We don’t have to approve of someone’s beliefs to recognize their place in the Jewish story. We don’t have to endorse their actions to affirm that they are still part of us.
***
As the Jewish people prepared to enter the promised land and face new foes, God commanded them to create spaces that ensured every member of the nation — even those who had killed others — had a place to go, to belong, and to feel safe. By doing so, God set a precedent for how we should engage with members of our communities. It’s something we should remember, even (or maybe especially) when we are in virtual spaces.
After all, if we can find room in our community for the man who kept nine commandments, I’m sure we can make room for people whose opinions are a bit different from our own.
