On Account of the Pathways of Peace: A Jewish insight to the vexing issue of Ideological Purity vs. Civility

 Can we elevate the Pathways of Peace above ideological purity?

A couple years ago, Trey Grayson was serving as the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s Secretary of State, and was named the President of Harvard’s Institute of Politics.  One of his political contacts across the aisle e-mailed him with her congratulations.  Expressing her concern about the uncivil tenor of political partisanship, she wrote in her note “After you get settled, I would love to talk about what we can do to promote centrism and moderation. I am one of only 12 Dems left in a GOP district (the only woman) and think that we need to figure out how to tone our rhetoric and partisanship down.”  The next day the writer of this note was in her home district to meet with constituents.  In a Tucson parking lot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was nearly assassinated by Jared Lee Loughner, targeted less for her considered positions than the fact that she dared hold her own views in opposition to someone else.  The mood of the times seems to be marked by intolerance for anyone else's view differing from one's one, independent of type, stripe, or hype. Clearly the nature of our political discourse and civic conversation is at a discouraging low and uncivil level, and it seems that it has been on this downward trajectory for years. This strident partisan commitment to ideological purity has eroded our political and civic discourse to the point where it is seemingly impossible to disagree without being disagreeable.

Here’s an interesting little civics quiz.  Can you identify the president responsible for all the following results while in the Oval Office:

1. tripled the national debt
2. raised taxes 11 times
3. expanded the size of the Federal government so much that his successor cut tens of thousands of jobs
4. supported the “socialist” Earned Income Tax Credit
5. negotiated with terrorists in Tehran
6. sought to eliminate US nuclear weapons stockpiles
7. gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants
8. approved protectionist trade barriers
9. As a governor, he signed the nation’s most liberal abortion rights law which permitted abortions not just in cases of rape and incest, but even when a doctor deemed the birth was likely to impair the physical or mental health of the mother, or when there was a "substantial risk" that the child would be born deformed.
10. Was such a “tree hugger” that he signed into law a) the million-acre Washington Wilderness Bill; b) the 850,000-acre Oregon Wilderness Bill; and legislation creating c) the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument; and d) the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area against the wishes of a coalition of developers.

That president was none other than President Ronald Reagan.  Yepper, it was the Gipper, Ronald Reagan who did all this apparently wacky, liberal stuff.  For all his lionization as the conservative icon of the ages, President Reagan was a pragmatist. With enough political will, pragmatism and strategic compromises, anything is possible.  Reagan applied pragmatism with great skill and success, so much so that his historical role as the great compromiser is almost buried under his memory as a beacon for conservative politics and policies.

There seems to be little appreciation for pragmatism these days.  In fact, President Ronald Reagan’s son Ron Reagan believes that the Gipper's record would win him a RINO (Republican in Name Only) label in today's Republican Party. "He couldn't get nominated by the Republican Party or elected by the Republican Party because he is too far to the left," the president's son joked speaking about his recent book, My Father at 100.  "He would be very stressed by all the vitriol and all the attacks, much of it directed at the White House."  Stuart Spencer, a GOP strategist who stood by Reagan's side for virtually his entire political career observed in an LA Times interview, "He had a strong set of core values and operated off of those starting with his first run for governor. But when push came to shove, he did various things he didn't like doing, because he knew it was in the best interests of the state or country at the time…People that pragmatic now are what they call RINOs."

Ideologues pushing for party purity to the exclusion of getting the country’s work done are found on both sides of the aisle.  The unwillingness to move beyond the extremes and back to a center has Washington held in dismay and disgust by so many Americans of all types.  The lack of civility that party purity seems to require is certainly a problem, and not just in Washington, DC.  It has been contagious and has seeped into nearly every arena of our lives, and with disastrous results.  Just consider the screed in our public discourse, on our televisions, in the blogs, vlogs, on Facebook and in tweets du jour, in our workplaces and in our playing places; it seems that common decency is now an uncommon virtue. I am talking about a culture of intolerance that is systemic, and likely the single biggest unifying force in America today. It starts with government. In traveling and talking with friends, family and colleagues around the country there is a deep sense that the public is disgusted with the impotence of the Federal Government to get the people’s work done because of partisanship. Beyond that this lack of civility goes into the marketplace, where job seekers are not treated with dignity, and job holders are flat out threatened with instantaneous replacement if their employer feels so inclined. In our play grounds, the business of sports at the pro and college levels and the shrill parental advocacy for players younger than high school makes the concept of “play” all but laughable. In our pray-grounds congregants call up clergy at home, yell and scream and otherwise act abusively, and are rarely if ever held accountable for their abusive assaults. Even in our homes all too often there is no respite from the general sense of impatience and lack of graciousness that otherwise pervades our world.

I’d like for us to consider an ancient Jewish value that the rabbis called Mipnei Darchei Shalom; literally translated as “on account of the pathways of peace.”  This concept is daring and bold.  You will see that it pushes exactly at the places where you’d otherwise expect a preference for theological purity, or a narrow Jewish focus.  Instead, the primacy of the pathways for peace wins over our discomfort and trump tradition’s expectations.

Talmud Gittin 61a:

One doesn’t remove leftover produce, fallen produce, or the produce in the corners of the field from the hand of a non-Jew on account of the pathways of peace.  The overarching value underneath the Torah’s workfare provision of ancient agricultural Israel was the idea of an individual’s human dignity. Ancient Israelite society insisted to dedicate these gleanings, dropped harvest, and un-harvested corners of one’s fields for indigent Israelites. The ancient rabbis affirmed that even if a person from outside the community took this food earmarked for the desperate, then he needed it.  At that point how could the concern for human dignity be limited to tribal boundaries?  The pathways of peace are apparently more precious than tribal purity.

The rabbis taught: One provides subsistence money to impoverished non-Jews along with impoverished Jews. One visits the ill of the non-Jews with the Jewish ill and buries the Gentile dead with Jewish dead on account of the pathways of peace.  This ancient rabbinic teaching presented by the Talmud has an interesting history.  The Babylonian rabbis presumed from the outset that Jewish and Gentile society interacted to some degree; at the very least impoverished Gentiles knew to show up requesting support from Jewish sources.  The absolute parity in the early treatment of Jew and Gentile will actually not become the later standard rabbinic value as codified in Jewish law.  Even so, it is an important statement regarding the rabbis’ values when considering allocating limited Jewish financial resources to the Gentiles around the Jewish community.  This was voluntary funding within the community in addition to an often heavy tax load to the government.   One visits the ill of the non-Jews with the Jewish ill and buries the Gentile dead with Jewish dead on account of the pathways of peace.  Visiting the ill in the ancient world was an act that tempted death.  It visited that place of not-life and not-death, that place where the not-yet-dead could spread their imminent death to the healthy. Equally frightening was contact with the dead.  This contact passed along the worst type of spiritual pollution.  Here in the two most extreme circumstances—physical life and death, and the spiritual equivalent of the same—the rabbinic tradition insists that the pathways for peace are more important than our religious predispositions.  The pathways of peace are apparently even more precious than spiritual purity.

Tosefta Gittin Ch. 3, 13-14 (Lieberman; translation Greenspoon)

[In the case of] A city that has both Jews and Gentiles: the communal officers disburse to Jews andGentiles on account of the pathways of peace. We provide subsistence money to Gentile poor along with Jewish poor on account of the pathways of peace. We offer eulogies for and bury Gentile dead on account of the pathways of peace.  We offer comfort to Gentiles in mourning on account of the pathways of peace.

This ancient rabbinic tradition is perhaps the most radical of them all.  Here it is not simply burying the Gentile dead that is obligatory for Jews.  The eulogy is the most intimate element in the religious services; we can and should stand up for our friends when invited to do so.  We not only bury them, we offer comfort to their non-Jewish families no differently than we are obliged to do for other Jews.  Listen to this again, because it is beyond radical.  When it comes to grieving Gentiles, we treat them absolutely not differently than we do members of our Jewish family.  Here the value goes beyond even essential human dignity.  It seems to me that the overarching value here is hesed, absolute gratuitous acts of kindness.  It is no big leap that the pathways of peace are kept open by acts of hesed.  The rabbis might be suggesting that once we can identify the human faces of relationships, theological purity no longer seem so clear, or so clearly compelling.  The pathways of peace are apparently even more precious than purity of a theological party line.

It seems that coming to positions of compromise of principals in order to advance a larger, more fundamental human need is perfectly acceptable with plenty of ancient rabbinic precedent. We can apply this wisdom to every aspect of our lives:  our families and homes, our colleagues and workplaces, our friends and our play places, our neighbors and civic places, our faith community and religious places.  We might lose some of the certainty that attends theological purity, but what we have to gain with increased civility and tolerance in the public sphere and our private lives is so worth it.  Come and join me, and even in our disagreement let us together walk peaceful paths.