The Crime Good People Commit

Voltaire famously stated that we are responsible for all the good we did not do. The great Enlightenment thinker understood that not doing bad is not enough for a stable and healthy society. A society at peace with itself must be one in which citizens are actively engaged in doing good. This need is present in all societies in all times, but especially when challenged by discord, unrest and division. Often, one person can effect positive change. In his important book on the Holocaust, “The Righteous,” Martin Gilbert tells the story of a bishop in France who wrote a letter to priests in his area to be read publicly. The letter instructed parishioners to protect Jews from the Nazis. A member of his congregation drove on bicycle to more than 40 churches and had the letter read from every pulpit.

Because of innumerable individual acts like that of the bishop, more than two hundred thousand of France’s wartime population of three hundred thousand Jews were saved.

The renowned French novelist, Émile Zola, who was not Jewish, took on the entire corrupt, antisemitic, political and religious establishment and rocked French society to its foundation. Alfred Dreyfus, an assimilated French Jew, was wrongly accused of treason. Zola knew that the charge was bogus and wrote the letter “J’accuse,” confronting the authorities with a charge of antisemitism and deceit.

Eventually, after great social upheaval and international outrage, the truth was revealed, and Dreyfus was exonerated. Here again, a single person simply could not tolerate falsehood and injustice and acted according to his conscience. He paid a very heavy price, having to flee to England and suffering scorn in his country, but he proved that one righteous person can change society for the better.

In a recent article in The Atlantic, Timothy Ryback reveals an astounding development in Hitler’s rise to power, and in his overthrowing of a democratic government. In this case, it was not what people did, but rather what they did not do that changed the world. Ryback notes that if certain individuals had acted at the right moment, the entire horror of the Second World War, including the Holocaust, would not have occurred.

Ryback calls Hitler’s ascendancy “political contingency rather than historical inevitability,” meaning that it didn’t need to happen. It was not destined: “Had Hitler’s predecessor in the chancellery, Kurt von Schleicher, remained in office another six months, or had German President Paul von Hindenburg exercised his constitutional powers more judiciously, or had a faction of moderate conservative Reichstag delegates cast their votes differently, then history may well have taken a very different turn.” More specifically, “Hindenburg did not call his new chancellor to account for violent public excesses against Communists, Social Democrats and Jews. He did not exercise his Article 53 powers.” Here we have a dramatic example of a few individuals, and one in particular, who could have prevented a world war and mass murder. Joseph Goebbels “would later marvel that the National Socialists had succeeded in dismantling a federated constitutional republic entirely through constitutional means.” Hallowed institutions are only as good as the individuals charged with the responsibility to maintain their integrity.

Hallowed institutions are only as good as the individuals charged with the responsibility to maintain their integrity.

Civilizations collapse when individuals abdicate their responsibility to act for just and moral causes for the common good. America has a Bill of Rights; Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Where is the Bill or Charter of Responsibilities? Without the responsibility to participate and improve society and take a stand against hatred, intimidation and injustice, how will rights be preserved?

Judaism teaches that each person is a world. That principle implies a sacred nature to the individual, a divine spark. I would suggest that it also means that the individual has the potential for much influence for good.

The idea of fate and individual helplessness is Greek. Thucydides wrote that the strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must, meaning that might makes right and that ordinary individuals have no effect on the course of history. It was Judaism in biblical times that introduced the idea of moral agency and individual personal responsibility. Judaism’s gift to the world was the obligation to be righteous, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6).

One of Canada’s founding fathers, Joseph Howe, used to ask three questions concerning personal responsibility in establishing a new country: “What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?” Those are the kinds of questions that inspire people like the bishop and Zola, and they are questions that most definitely would not occur to a Hindenburg.

Let us put an end to the insidious notion that the individual is powerless. Voltaire was right. It isn’t enough to be good. One must do good. One person can save another; one person can change the world.

Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Waterloo.