A further example of the power of habit-forming moral training is the law of charity, or tzedaka. Here again, we see a striking difference between the classical Jewish and Christian views. In the classical Christian tradition, charity is in essence an act of grace. Just as the Almighty forgives us even though we are all sinners, and even though we do not deserve it, so, too, do we give to the poor as an act of God’s grace, allowing ourselves to be a vessel of his goodness above and beyond anything that is deserved.

In Judaism, however, philanthropy is a law. One who is not himself poor is obligated to give one-tenth of his or her income to the needy. It is not considered an act of grace, but of mandatory righteousness. Thus is the word tzedaka related to the word tzedek, meaning righteousness or justice. Giving, according to Judaism, is an act of duty and right action. One is obligated to be a giver, and to help those in need.

The result of this has been a deeply effective tradition of philanthropy throughout the Jewish world, one that continues in communities that have long abandoned the traditional approach to Jewish law in general. Jews in the United States give well beyond their numbers, to both Jewish and non-Jewish causes. This is not because Jews are magically or genetically programmed to be nice to the needy. It is instead largely a result of the fact that for many centuries, Jews were brought up to believe that philanthropy was a mitzva, or a law. In more traditional Jewish communities, children are taught from a very early age to put a coin in a charity box every day. It is a habit that is reinforced throughout their childhood by virtue of its status as law, an observance no less obligatory than keeping kosher. The result is that these children grow up in communities in which charitable giving—which, in other cultures, is just another good deed—is accepted as a universal communal norm: Something that everybody simply does, out of habit.

 

Up until now, we have spoken mainly of the habit-forming exercise that law provides. When we shift our focus to the communal level, however, this kind of discipline offers a number of additional, powerful advantages that I believe can be accrued only when our moral beliefs and societal vision are grounded in a system of law.

One such advantage is the social sanction that accompanies law in general. Law raises the stakes of violating the moral code by making any violation into an assault on the system as a whole, and by turning people who are not fully committed to moral behavior into lawbreakers. To illustrate this point, it is worth taking a look at an example from American history: The problem of racial discrimination. This is truly one of the most remarkable transformations a people has ever undertaken: How a nation that preserved the institution of slavery well beyond most other civilized countries, and that, in the middle of the twentieth century, still allowed racial theories to figure prominently in politics and public culture, in the course of a single generation turned “racism” into a word as dirty as “tyranny,” and within half a century all but eliminated it from polite discourse.

How did this happen? Of course, it began with a Declaration of Independence that declared all men to have been “created equal” and “endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.” It continued with a rise of public support for equality in the twentieth century. But the turning point, the moment that made Martin Luther King’s dream a reality, was undoubtedly the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which made illegal all racial discrimination in businesses, federally funded agencies, and the public square. By making racism not just wrong, but illegal in key spheres of life, society had rendered a decision, and had sent a vivid message to racists throughout America: This is what this nation stands for. Believe what you want in your heart, but know that this country holds you to be wrong and counts you among the lawbreakers.

Law, it seems clear, provides a degree of social sanction, and of collective clarity in moral understanding that good values alone never can. Yet it offers a further advantage, as well: The power of what we might call “social coordination.” It is simply much easier to keep a moral precept if everyone around us is doing so as well. This is why artists band together in artists’ colonies, and why we form societies and clubs. We gain confidence in our ways and learn to follow them more effectively when surrounded by like-minded people. As anyone knows who has ever attempted to keep the Sabbath, kashrut, or any other system of practice, it is incomparably easier to do this in the company of others. From the feeling of confidence that is gained by seeing others around us behave similarly, to the removal of the burden of “making a statement” when all we really wanted to do was to live a certain way, it is amazing how much easier it is to be what we want to be when the community we live in is that way as well.

This is no less the case with moral behavior. We are better when we are around good people. Good, like evil, is infectious. One obvious example in Judaism is the unique set of practices associated with death and bereavement. Particularly for those of us who have never lost someone dear to us, there are few things as awkward as visiting a house of mourning. We love and enjoy life, and death is for us an unwanted mystery; we do not understand it, and most of us have little desire to bring ourselves close to it. Comforting the bereaved is therefore very difficult, and many of us simply do not do it. Or perhaps we do it in a perfunctory way, hanging back at the funeral and then running off, convincing ourselves that the bereaved do not really need us, or that the other visitors are more capable of providing comfort than we are.

At the same time, however, we all know this is a terrible thing: That there is something selfish, and spiritually weak, about letting that awkwardness carry the day. For the truth is, the family of the deceased may need us right now, sometimes desperately. In our uniquely individualistic modern world, the mourner is often left uniquely alone. By allowing our weakness to get in the way, or by doing what we feel like doing at that moment, as opposed to doing what we should, we betray those who need us the most.

Judaism, however, turns the good act of comforting the bereaved into a law.¹⁹ For seven days from the time of the burial, everyone in the community is dutybound to visit the mourner and to comfort him or her by his presence. We must listen to the mourner when he or she wishes to speak, or else simply show ourselves in silence for the mourner who does not. Through the societal coordination which comes with law, Jewish communities throughout history and to this day have succeeded in supporting their own people when it has mattered most. At a time when bereavement is overwhelming, when one faces a unique and powerful sense of not just loss but also loneliness, Jewish morality makes itself felt, brings itself into the life of the mourner, and assures him that despite the unfathomable nature of the loss, the mourner is not, cannot ever be, truly alone. And in communities where this is practiced, comforting the bereaved becomes incomparably easier. You do it because everybody does it, you do it because you have to, and you do it together with others. This is what it means for something to be a law.



We now arrive at the final, and perhaps most important, advantage offered by thinking about moral behavior in terms of law. This advantage has to do with the impact law has on our inner selves. Throughout the discussion, I have pointed to the ways in which Jewish tradition directs our focus away from thoughts and beliefs, and toward actions, habits, and the effect we have on the world. This inattention to the inner self does not, however, stem from disregard. There is an inner truth to who we are. There are good people, not just good actions.

It is the Jewish view, however, that a sincere change in our inner selves is not accomplished by focusing on beliefs or faith or theory or knowledge. Inner self-improvement, paradoxical as it may sound, begins with our actions. It requires not a “leap of faith,” but rather what Abraham Joshua Heschel called a “leap of action.”²⁰

Instead of hoping that our actions will follow our beliefs—which, as we have seen, does not work-Judaism believes that only if our actions and our moral habits are right and good can we become better people inside. The practice of giving charity makes people more charitable; the practice of careful speech makes us more sensitive to the impact of our words on others; the practice of taking in guests makes us more hospitable; the practice of visiting the sick or bereaved makes us more sensitive to the tragedy of others. These practices begin as law, but once we have acted in accordance with the law, we improve as a result.

Why is this so? The first reason is quite obvious: Life is a very distracting thing, and we really do need to be reminded of the moral considerations that make us good people. Law reminds us to do that which we really know to be right when the pressures of life lead us to seek a way out of our duties.

Yet I think there is a more profound reason, one which gets to the heart of how law gives us the opportunity to be better people than we may have otherwise been. A friend of mine who served in the Israeli army once told me that the most important thing he discovered in his basic training was the wealth of his own hidden abilities, the things he never thought he could do. By being forced to march for three days straight on three hours’ sleep each night, he discovered wellsprings of strength he never knew were there-a lesson which he carries with him in times of great stress in civilian life.