The Weaponization of Achdus
Following Teaneck’s municipal election this past November, two members of the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County (RCBC) penned an article calling for the Bergen County Jewish community to unite around the Bergen County Jewish Action Committee (BCJAC).
The RCBC, an umbrella organization for Bergen County Orthodox rabbis, had forged a “partnership” with BCJAC, a small local advocacy group formed in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks in Israel, to “allow for greater collaboration and strategy as it relates to our planning of rallies, community events and local advocacy, as well as more streamlined communication to the community.”[1]
The municipal election’s outcome was considered positive and a testament to BCJAC’s work in mobilizing the Teaneck Jewish community to vote. Thanking them seemed appropriate.
But these RCBC members seemed to write for a different reason.
The article, In Gratitude to BCJAC, And the Road Ahead in Confronting Antisemitism, begins by extolling BCJAC’s virtues and accomplishments. Had these two RCBC members done only that—and signed off after their article’s eighth paragraph—the piece would have been perfectly reasonable and non-controversial.
But it wasn’t. They continued—and adopted a surprisingly combative tone.
Since the sale of Yosef, through the sinat chinam [baseless hatred] which caused the destruction of the second Beit HaMikdash [Temple], and in the leadup to October 7, internal divisions have always been the Achilles heel of our People. When we are divided or apathetic, we are weak and ineffective…In this critical hour, let us all rise to meet this moment to lend our collective strength to BCJAC.[2]
Putting aside the questionable parallels (how is not enthusiastically supporting an advocacy group’s work “sinat chinam,” and does it really recall October 7th?), the tone seemed out of place. A picture on the cover of the local Jewish paper showed the victorious candidates, together with members of BCJAC, literally toasting their victory. Wasn’t the election a communal success? Why did these RCBC members choose, instead, to mark the moment by being combative? What bee was in these RCBC members’ bonnet?
In truth, from BCJAC’s perspective, and from the perspective of RCBC members apparently more focused on BCJAC gaining total control over the community’s political decision-making than winning elections, the win was incomplete—if it could even be called a “win” at all.
In the lead up to the election, BCJAC’s endorsements had sparked controversy. Dissenters provided their own set of endorsements, and where those endorsements diverged from BCJAC’s, many community members chose to follow the dissenters over BCJAC. As a result, Kevin Gibbs, who BCJAC endorsed for Board of Education but who dissenters argued was unqualified, lost; and former mayor Michael Pagan, who BCJAC sought to unseat on the Township Council but who dissenters argued the Jewish community should support, won.
In fact, not a single candidate endorsed only by BCJAC won. Each candidate who won had also been supported by the dissenters.
If anything, then, the election’s outcome suggested growing doubt within the community about BCJAC’s judgment and reliability to guide the Jewish community’s election strategy.
With that context, these RCBC members’ message meant something very different.
It was not “gratitude to BCJAC,” but a shot across the bow against BCJAC’s detractors. It was not a call for Jewish community members to come together and find common ground, but to close ranks around one group, or viewpoint, to the exclusion of others.
It reminds me of a small wooden plaque my father, a corporate lawyer, used to bring with him to add levity to negotiations: “Be reasonable. Do it my way.”
Is that unity? Or the misuse of unity by some against others?
***
In his seminal work Mishnah Torah, Maimonides says that moderating one’s characteristics is critical to righteousness. That “the straight path is the midpoint temperament of each and every trait that man possesses.”[3]
Maimonides’ middle path or “Golden Mean” is notable because it applies to all traits: the bad and the good. And although Maimonides speaks only of general human traits—happiness, depression, anger—I would argue that his principle extends also to Jewish values like Achdus (unity).
Like character traits, Jewish values do not exist in a vacuum but in a context of competing priorities. Without balance, even good values go bad, and can become dangerous and destructive.
Two stories in Genesis illustrate this with respect to the concept of unity.
The first takes place in the aftermath of the Great Flood. We are told that humanity “had the same language and the same words” and was moving eastward. They settled, apparently as a unit, in a valley in the land of Shinar, and learned to forge bricks.
Humanity’s rapid progress apparently worried them. So they embarked on a peculiar project: “come, let us build us a city, and its tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.”
What was their worry? What was their solution? And how did their solution remedy their worry? The text is admittedly unclear.
But what is clear is that God was determined to stop them: “they are one people with one language; if this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they do will be out of their reach.”
God plans to “go down and confound their speech, so that they shall not understand one another.” In so doing: “God scattered them…over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.”
God’s reaction seems puzzling.[4] Did the people do something wrong or was God acting preemptively (and to what)? Was this divine punishment, or divine intervention and redirection? How (if at all) did God’s actions solve the problem?
There are also big-picture questions. How (if at all) does the story relate to the immediately-preceding story of the Great Flood? And was the episode a step forward or backward for humanity in its march towards progress?
Interpretations abound. The story’s classic interpretation is that this primordial skyscraper was the manifestation of human rebellion: “They had declared: What right has [God] to select the celestial sphere for Himself and assign the terrestrial sphere to us? Let us ascend to the firmament and attack Him.”[5]
Others offer a more restrained view: “[w]hat is an example of a gathering not for the sake of performing the commandments? The assembly of the men of the Generation of the Dispersal [those who built the Tower of Babel].”[6] Not negative, but lacking a positive spiritual component.
What commentators generally agree upon, however, is that building the tower was an act of unity that was not good, and itself necessitated divine correction.
I would submit that the story teaches us that even unity demands moderation.
The societal pendulum had swung too far. The world went from one extreme of chaotic individuality—a place where “each individual had perverted his own path”—to the other extreme of uniformity and monotony.
The post-flood generation understood that too much individuality can lead to a world “filled with iniquity,” so they pushed in the opposite direction. But they failed to appreciate that there is also danger in too much unity. That a world without individuality and dissent is not a pathway to spirituality but the opposite. It leads to meaninglessness—to a world figuratively (if not literally) dotted with nonsensical edifices—and eventual abuse.
Societies which squash individuality run the risk of going off the rails. Without those willing to go against the grain, “nothing that they do will be out of their reach.”
Which brings us to Genesis’s second story about the danger of unity: the sale of Joseph.
In their article, the RCBC members cite this story as demonstrating the dangers of “internal division.” I respectfully disagree. The story reinforces the necessity of principled dissent, and profoundly rejects the wagon-circling that these RCBC members seem to favor.
Joseph’s sale, while tragic, could have been worse. Joseph’s brothers’ initial plan was not a sale, but murder: “Let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits, and we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him.”
But that did not happen. Something stopped the brothers, united as they may have been, from carrying out their initial plan.
That something was Reuben and his willingness to dissent.
The brothers’ unity was bad. Unity meant fratricide. It meant destruction. It needed to be stopped. Standing by was not an option. So Reuben spoke out. In so doing, Reuben saved everyone—Joseph and his brothers—from a far greater disaster.[7]
***
Recent events in Teaneck recall these biblical episodes.
An Orthodox candidate[8] who was young, vibrant and charismatic, with deep communal ties and a strong professional pedigree, declared her candidacy for the New Jersey State Assembly in October. She had a running mate and the support of a major gubernatorial candidate. All of which these two RCBC members, by virtue of their positions, were keenly aware of in November when they penned their article and purportedly called for communal unity.
One would have expected BCJAC, the organization these RCBC members championed as an agent of unity, to at least make a reasonable attempt to try to partner with the Orthodox candidate already in the race. To do everything in their power to avoid the “internal divisions [that] have always been the Achilles heel of our People.”
But they did not.
Instead, BCJAC and their affiliates spent months putting together an alternative slate, and waged a deeply divisive and costly campaign that ultimately ended in failure.
Did these RCBC members make any attempt at peace? Did they dissent? Apparently not.
To the contrary, both signed the alternative slate’s petition.[9] They never met with—or even attempted to meet with—the Orthodox candidate that BCJAC sought to undercut.
In the months that followed, they—and sadly, too many of their RCBC colleagues—at best bore silent witness to extraordinary negativity unleashed by the organization they empowered and promoted, all while waving the banner of “unity” they unfurled. But it was not unity to bring people with different views together. It was unity weaponized by one group to shut out another.
Ironically, the result was precisely what these RCBC members predicted: “When we are divided…we are weak and ineffective.” A community that could and should have found a way to come together and win, got in its own way and lost.
The fact is that, throughout it all, those to whom our community should have looked to for leadership, who should have seen what was happening, who should have spoken out, as Reuben did, and said “we are better than this,” did not. They simply stood by.
The result was political fratricide. The local Jewish community cannibalized its own candidates and lost a winnable election.
What happened should prompt a reconsideration of the RCBC/BCJAC “partnership,” and whether it remains good for the Jewish community. At this point, is it serving the entire Jewish community, or one faction seeking to control others? And is it bringing the Jewish community together, or weaponizing the very notion of Jewish unity against fellow community members and tearing the community apart?
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[1] https://jewishlink.news/an-open-letter-to-the-bergen-county-jewish-community/
[2] https://jewishlink.news/in-gratitude-to-bcjac-and-the-road-ahead-in-confronting-antisemitism/
[3] Hilchot Deot, 2:4.
[4] In Genesis Rabba (38:6), Rabbi Elazar remarks that “the [story]’s explanation was not provided.”
[5] Tanchuma, Noach 18:6.
[6] Avot DeRabbi Natan 40:17
[7] I am not opining on whether Reuben’s act was sufficient, which is a subject of debate with some commentators arguing that Reuben could and should have done more.
[8] Readers should note that I am Tamar Warburg’s husband and managed her campaign.
[9] See line 5 on page 45 (of 130) and line 35 on page 79 (of 130) of the Stern/Carroll petition.
