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🇮🇱 Israel /Culture & Society

Parashat Nitzavim: Why we are all responsible for one another

From Jerusalem Post · () English

Summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Opinion Named sources Context piece
  • Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz uses Parashat Nitzavim to argue that people share responsibility for one another.
  • The article criticizes a culture focused on individual success and indifference to others, warning that social and moral problems eventually affect everyone.
  • It illustrates the idea with a parable about passengers on a ship who must stop a man from drilling beneath his own seat because the entire vessel could sink.

Parashat Nitzavim delivers a warning against the belief that people can live solely for themselves. Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz presents the Torah portion, read before Rosh Hashanah, as a call to mutual responsibility in a society increasingly focused on personal achievement.

He describes a Western world in which people often see one another as competitors for success and threats to their privacy. That outlook, he argues, leaves little time or willingness to help people facing difficulties. It encourages the idea that everyone should manage alone and that no one should become a burden on society.

Rabinowitz also extends the argument to spiritual and moral life. The principle that “everyone does what is right in his own eyes,” he writes, can allow moral values to erode while people avoid confronting problems as long as their own circumstances remain comfortable.

everyone does what is right in his own eyes

· Rabbi Shmuel RabinowitzA principle he uses to describe the erosion of shared moral standards.

The alternative is what is commonly called social responsibility. A healthy society depends on the strong supporting the weak, with the understanding that circumstances change and that help given today may return through the next generation.

The article illustrates the point through a familiar story about passengers on a ship. One passenger drills a hole beneath his own seat and asks why the others care. They answer that water will rise through the opening, sink the ship and drown everyone. There is, the lesson concludes, no such thing as damage occurring “only under my seat.”

only under my seat

· Rabbi Shmuel RabinowitzThe phrase captures the article’s central argument that individual actions can affect the whole community.
About this summary

Originally published by Jerusalem Post. Summarized and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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