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Much has been made in the past several years about the many linkages and comparisons of the United States — indeed the 21st century West in general — and the Roman Empire. In general, these comparisons focus on the lessons of what brought down the Roman Empire, and how we may be repeating or reinventing them.

And indeed, such comparisons can surely be made. But as the Jewish people prepare to commemorate the solemn day of Tisha B’Av (9th day of the Hebrew month of Av), marking the destruction of the First and Second Temples and a host of other calamities, I thought one of the primary lessons from this day, albeit somewhat revised, may actually provide a better guide for understanding the elites and even the middle classes of our world (and I include myself in this category). And I am thinking primarily about those in the United States and Israel, the two places I have experience living in recent times.

That is, we learn on Tisha B’Av that the Second Temple was destroyed because of “sinat chinam,” or “baseless hatred” among the Jewish people. Today, although you will find plenty of baseless hatred among Americans and Israelis, I see the bigger issue facing both societies — the one that I see as much more likely to result in future tragedy — as that of a concept I will call “adishut chinam,” or “baseless complacency.”

First, a quick bit of background. As I mentioned, Tisha B’Av is a day commemorating a series of tragic events in the history of the Jewish people. The first such event derives from the Book of Numbers in the Old Testament and is one of the roots of, not only of the length of the Exodus, but of all of the tragedies that have followed on Tisha B’Av. As summarized in Wikipedia:

On this day, the Twelve spies sent by Moses to observe the land of Canaan returned from their mission. Two of the spies (Joshua and Caleb) brought a positive report, but 10 of the spies brought an “evil report” about the land that caused the Children of Israel to cry, panic and despair of ever entering the “Promised land”. For this, they were punished by God that they would not enter, and that for all generations the day would become one of crying and misfortune for the descendants of the Children of Israel, the Jewish people.

Eventually, though, the Jewish people entered the Land of Canaan and began the process of creating the Land of Israel. King Solomon built the First Temple, which was destroyed in 586 BCE by King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. The Jewish people subsequently returned to the Land of Israel, and building of the Second Temple began in 516 (then massively expanded by Herod). The Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE.

And what we learn from rabbinic teaching is that the destruction of the Temples did not solely derive from military defeats at the hands of enemies; rather, they were manifestations of failings within the Jewish community itself: sins and sinat chinam. As this lovely lesson puts it (n.b.: “mikdash” is the Hebrew word for “Temple”), these are not separate concepts, but two sides of the same root problem:

The gemara tells us that the first Mikdash was destroyed because the people were involved in three major sins - idolatry, murder, and immorality. The second Mikdash was destroyed because of ’sinat chinam’ - pointless hate. The gemara concludes that we must therefore understand that sinat chinam is equal in its severity to those three cardinal sins.

Similarly, sinat chinam that was predominant at the time of the second Mikdash, reflects the same basic fault in society. Sinat chinam is a direct consequence of selfishness, a direct result of man being totally involved in himself, his interests, his needs, his life.

I would like to suggest that the gemara in Yoma is not simply doing a symmetrical equation between the three cardinal sins and sinat chinam; it is informing us that even though externally the causes of destruction of the first and second Batai Mikdash appear to be different, they are in fact one and the same. The flaw that eventually leads to the three cardinal sins is the exact same flaw that leads to sinat chinam. When man is in the center, when man can see no further than himself, then man is in fact god - when this is the reality of society, there can be no Mikdash, because implicit in the definition of Mikdash is that Hashem is G-d, that Hashem is the center of everything, that we all look to Hashem, and that is what guides our lives.

For those unfamiliar with the day of Tisha B’Av, it may sound like another version of Yom Kippur, as observant Jews fast for 25 hours and consider the concept of sin throughout the day. But this post from Jewlicious contrasts the two quite nicely, as well as answers the key question of how we solve the problem of sinat chinam:

However, whereas Yom Kippur focuses on individual sin, Tisha B’Av focuses more on collective sin
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Sinat chinam is an interesting concept. It encompasses things like envy, greed and self-glorification. It encompasses treating others with contempt. It implies a lack of reason in a religion that almost always demands and insists upon reason. …

According to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Israel’s first chief Rabbi, the second Temple, destroyed by sinat chinam, senseless hatred, will only be rebuilt by ahavat chinam, love without reason.

So taking off on all of these ideas, what I would like to propose is that, although sinat chinam may be rampant in our societies, what we suffer more from is adishut chinam, or baseless complacency. That is, we have no reason to be complacent about our existences, about our societies, or about the conflicts that they are engaged in. But for the large majority of the mainstream of both Israeli and American societies, we are turned inwards, concerned essentially with our own existences and security, unwilling to engage in the larger issues that face us and even moreso that face our neighbors. Thanks to technology and legal systems and economic systems and governments that enable us, invite us, all but command us to stay within our individual orbits, we feel no need to engage with or understand those around us.

In the United States, this is not hard to discern. Consider how often people really engage with the near-existential issues that our society faces. How often do people move beyond listening to or reading a news story (if they even get that far) about Iraq to attempt to engage with any of the possible solutions? How often do people move beyond the loud fracases on either side of the immigration debate to understand the real, individual lives that are at stake? Or the “what do we do about terrorism” debates? How many times do people move beyond basic assumptions about poverty to comprehend the existence of those who remain poor in our affluent country? How often do we remove ourselves from the center of our lives?

And, lest I be considered too preachy, let me be the first to put myself in the “just about never” categories of the above questions. Family, work, kids, friends, hobbies, house maintenance, etc. It’s all too much sometimes. The problems of the world are out there somewhere, away from me and my family. And, for better or for worse, given the options, I essentially prefer it that way.

Like me, I believe most Americans do not avoid the problems of our day out of hatred or spite. We do so out of fatigue, out of scheduling concerns, and, ultimately, out of complacency. We believe that these problems need to be solved somehow, by someone. But that we just don’t have the time to engage in solving them, and in the end, because the problems are just “out there,” they won’t come to our door any time soon. So we can let someone else worry about it because, well, my house needs to be cleaned, I have some work to, my kids need to go to the park, and we haven’t had a babysitter in over a month. It may not be true that I can let someone else deal with the bigger problems we face, that may be baseless, but unless something forces me to, will I do so myself?

Then my family came to Israel for 3 months, and my complacency became so apparent when reflected in what I have experienced here. What has been remarkable to me about this summer in Israel is the complacency that “security” has brought. Like in the U.S., there is so much to be non-complacent about here, even leaving aside the Palestinian conflict.

Consider this. At present, on the grounds of the Knesset and Supreme Court in the past week, you can find a tent protest (and signs around town) from some the settlers disengaged from Gaza in 2005, a similar protest by Bedouin complaining of home demolitions and a variety of conditions, and some of the refugees from Darfur who have been alternately jailed, released with unclear conditions, or sent back to Egypt.

(If you have not been following this last story of the Darfur refugees in Israel, you should be – the notion of Israel imprisoning or turning away refugees from a genocide is something hard to fathom.)

Those are just the problems that have risen to such degrees that people have organized around them to this level. The list of societal issues certainly goes on and on.

Then consider the Palestinians. In 1997 and 1998, when last I spent significant time here, the conflict was on people’s minds in Jerusalem and throughout Israel all of the time. Obviously, the primary concern of Israelis even then was terror, and an overarching sense of fear and dread about the next suicide bombing. But the immediacy of that violence also led to, I would argue, a greater awareness and understanding of what was happening in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Perhaps it was only because people wanted to know why the security measures weren’t working, but ultimately they wanted to know what was happening over there because it impacted what was happening over here so directly and tragically.

Now, fewer Israelis are engaged because they simply don’t feel like they need to know or care anymore. At least, as with Americans and Iraq and Afghanistan, not more than keeping up with the news. The long-term impact of the occupation – settlement construction, road construction, the Separation Wall, military activity, near-total separation of Israelis from Palestinians and of many Palestinians from other Palestinians — and the many failures of the Palestinian leadership and factions have come close to dividing the Palestinian people from themselves. As a result, with their division, with their decreased impact on Israeli society, Israelis enjoy the simple luxury of being able to not think about them very much.

The construction of the Separation Wall is a perfect example. When you live in Jerusalem, it is all around you. You catch glimpses from so many spots in the center of town. But relatively few have gone to Abu Dis or any of the other neighborhoods to see it up close. So few have worried about the long-term impact of this kind of separation, have engaged to try to minimize the impact on daily life. The notion of solidarity with those impacted by the Wall or occupation as a necessity because of the understanding that they will someday impact Israeli life one way or the other is, for the most part, gone.

And it makes sense. The problems are somewhere else, the economy is humming, and, for now, for once in such a long time, they don’t need to think about the conflict all that much. I can understand that kind of reaction; after all, I have benefited from and experienced it all summer with my family.

But ultimately this is simple complacency. Because, in the end, we know the problems still exist and that the current “solutions” are merely temporary. Yet because we don’t need to deal with them now, we can hope someone else will, and pray that they will just go away altogether. And all the while, we can turn inwards and try to forget the rest.

And in those hopes may well lie the seeds of our future crises.

To help me tie this back to sinat chinam, here is a fascinating passage from a 2001 Jerusalem Post article on sinat chinam:

What they [the Jews on the Exodus who believed the spies] doubted was their own worthiness. They realized that even after entering the Land they would be dependent on G-d’s beneficence. Feeling unworthy of His love, they concluded that G-d sought to kill them at the hands of the Caananite nations.

All sinat chinam derives from similar feelings of unworthiness. Those who lack any confidence in themselves live their lives in constant comparison to others. They cast a critical eye on others so that they might feel better about themselves. The impulse to speak derogatorily of others reflects low self-esteem, which finds salve only in putting others down.

Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, founder of the Mussar Movement, once witnessed a boy pushing a playmate down in order to make himself taller. Reb Yisrael predicted that nothing would ever come of that boy. Had he tried instead to make himself taller instead by jumping up, said Reb Yisrael, there would have been hope.

Today we are all little boys pushing down our playmates.
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Sensing our own failures, we console ourselves that everybody else is doing worse. Our entire society is made up of people lacking a sense of positive achievement, who can sustain themselves only by cataloguing the failures of others.
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The Torah cure for sinat chinam is to stop judging ourselves in comparison to others. For viewing others we need a benevolent eye that accentuates the positive. The critical, judgmental eye is best reserved for ourselves.

So, too, do we remain little boys today. Perhaps we may not all be little boys pushing down our playmates. What I see is that Americans and Israelis are societies of people who do not notice that our playmates have been pushed down. We do not pick them up off the ground and help rub out their clothes, maybe see if we can find an adult to help mediate.

We do not understand that our complacency, our contentment to turn away and play with our own things, enables the pushers to continue their pushing. Eventually, though, those who seek to push others down will get around to all of us who remain complacent. One way or the other, unless we work together, unless we decide that it’s time to engage, to act, to fix, then they will eventually push everyone down. And we will have another tragedy to add to the list on Tisha B’Av.

As we saw, the cure for baseless hatred is baseless love. So I believe the cure for baseless complacency must be baseless engagement. Not just engaging when it’s in your interest to do so, or when it involves an issue you happen to be connected to. But engaging on whatever possible, whenever possible. Even in very small ways. Anything to let those who would seek to push our societies down know that people do care, that we understand what they’re doing.

We must let them know that, although we will not simply fight them back with their methods and just try to push them down before they get to us, we will move beyond our complacency and work with those who have been pushed.

If we don’t, if we remain complacent, then we will have no one to blame but ourselves.