One of my friends and I frequently disagree about a fundamental aspect of human nature. He thinks that people are drawn to wickedness; that given the choice, most people would do the wrong thing most of the time. I tend to view people more favorably or, as he might put it, more naively. Our debate is as old as time.
In our Jewish tradition, the exemplars of this dispute are Hillel and Shammai, the greatest sages of their generation. They lived in the first century B.C.E. in the land of Israel. The Talmud records a variety of halakhic (Jewish legal) disputes between them.
For some two and half years, Shammai and Hillel argued about a matter that gets at the very heart of the human condition: given our propensity towards violence and evil as well as the deplorable nature of so many of our desires and actions, is it ultimately a good thing that humanity was created in the first place? Might the world be a better place if human beings weren’t in it?
Shammai and his disciples argued: “It is preferable for humanity not to have been created than to have been created.” Hillel and his disciples took the opposite position. The matter was debated and put to a vote of the sages. The outcome is interesting and even surprising. The sages concluded: “It would have been preferable had humanity not been created than to have been created. However, now that humanity has been created, our task is to examine our actions and seek to correct them.”
The consensus is that we are deeply flawed morally. This should not come as a surprise to us as Jews or as human beings. Our Jewish tradition reminds us of this regularly. It especially does so on Yom Kippur when we beat our chests and recount the alphabet of woe which describes our behavior: “We are arrogant, brutal, careless, destructive, egocentric, false, greedy, heartless, insolent…” The list goes on in Hebrew and in English, recounting letter by letter just how awful we are – collectively at least.
As human beings, we need only open a newspaper or reflect on the history of our species to know that when it comes to wickedness, whatever evil one may imagine a human being to be capable of, we have been, and can be, far, far worse.
I’ve been reflecting upon this quite a bit since October 7. In real-time, through social media, we were able to witness some of the violence and cruelty of the Hamas terrorists and, as we later discovered, everyday Gazans. In the days, weeks, and now months since then, we’ve seen how quickly much of the world has re-framed what happened, and how they’ve done so in the most insidious, manipulative, and duplicitous ways. Our hearts break as we reflect upon the suffering of the families of the hostages and those of the fallen, upon the wounded soldiers, and upon the innocents in Gaza; including infants and children who have suffered so much because of the intentional cruelty, venality, and indifference of the Hamas regime.
No doubt that Hillel and Shammai, living under the oppressive Roman occupation of the land of Israel, witnessed countless acts of human depravity during their lifetimes. None of that which we saw on October 7 would likely surprise them other than this: because of the technology at our disposal, we were able to witness these crimes even without being physically present when they occurred. We saw the glee and even pride on the faces of the perpetrators. Hillel and Shammai concluded that it would have been better had humanity not been created. How can we not conclude the same?
But the argument is moot of course because here we are. For better or for worse, we exist. Our focus must then be on improving ourselves individually and collectively so that we might someday be worthy of this gift of being.
When I despair on account of the sad state of our world and the degree to which our own poor choices have made it so, I find inspiration in the stories of those moral heroes who prove that we are capable of so much more. We have the potential to be far better than we currently are. I think of the stories of bravery I have read and heard over the past nine months. The story of Ben Shimoni who gave his life to rescue others from the Nova music festival. The story of Amit Ben Shlomo who risked his life to save his friend, Roee. The story of everyday “superheroes” such as my cousin, Yuval, who dropped everything to return to his duties in the IDF reserves. The stories of campus upstanders like Yasmeen and Naomi or Israel advocates like Amanda. There is no shortage of these stories, no end to the tales of compassion, empathy, kindness, and courage that we are capable of as human beings.
Part of the human story is most certainly that “alphabet of woe.” But, there is also the story of our goodness, our kindness, and our capacity to transcend our own self-interests to become what the sages described as “just a little less than angels”.
Whatever your thoughts are on this argument, here we are. We exist. Our task is to be better. Our task is to be worthy of having been created. I’m grateful to those same sages for giving us exceptional tools that help us to accomplish just that.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi