Holy Helpers

It is instinctive to be a bystander.  We all want to live our separate lives and have no interest in being drawn in by the drama of others. And besides, we’re just too busy to help.

An excellent example of this phenomenon is found in a study by two academics at Princeton in 1971. The results were so stunning, the New York Times reported on it at the time:

Prof. John M. Darley, who teaches psychology at the university, and C. Daniel Batson, a doctor of theology doing graduate work in psychology while teaching at the Princeton Theological Seminary, …recruited 40 volunteers from the seminary. Explaining that they were studying the vocational placement of seminarians, Dr. Batson and  Professor Darley asked each to write a brief talk on a given text. To half the volunteers they presented a text on job opportunities; the other half got a text of the Good Samaritan parable. (Which talks about people refusing to help an injured man on the side of the road – C.S.)……

One by one the volunteers were then told to proceed from Green Hall to record their talk in the Annex….The volunteers were dispatched at 15‐minute intervals….and there—lying in a doorway in the alley—was a young man coughing and groaning and possibly in pain. The “victim” had been put there by Dr. Batson and Professor Darley to see if the seminarians would play the role of the Good Samaritan — or pass him by……

Of the 40, a total of 16 stopped to help. Twenty‐four did not swerve from their path. One even stepped over the “victim” to get through the doorway….

The subjects of the study were seminarians, young men who were training to become religious leaders. Yet they zip right past a person in need on their way to preach a sermon about helping people in need.

This response would be shocking, except that it’s not. Years earlier, Rabbi Israel Salanter had quipped that people will rush to a lecture on Mussar ethics and knock over three other people along the way.

Darley would study various forms of “bystander apathy.”  He was disturbed by the infamous 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in Kew Gardens, New York. Genovese was stabbed to death outside her apartment three times, while bystanders who observed the crime did not step in to assist or call the police. In one study, he found that bystanders often rely on a “diffusion of responsibility.” He explained that “If a number of people witness the same event, the responsibility for action is diffused, and each may feel less necessity to help.”

In other words, people instinctively push the responsibility onto others. They would rather not get involved.

In Judaism, one must never be a bystander. A lost item is to be collected from the street and returned to its owner. If someone in need approaches for charity, you must not “harden your heart and shut your hand.” And most importantly, the Torah obligates us not to stand idly by when a life is in danger.

This becomes embedded in Jewish culture. The World Happiness Report ranked Israel first in the quality of social connections. Israel is the place where people are most certain that others will come to their aid if they are in distress. No one is a bystander.

And as anyone who visits Israel knows, sometimes there is a bit of overhelping. There is a lot of unsolicited advice, directed at anyone, including strangers. Tourists will sometimes be treated to lectures on how to raise their children from someone they met five minutes earlier. Quiet reserve is not an Israeli character trait.

The Torah teaches us that we must never be bystanders. On its own, this is a meaningful lesson. But the Talmud offers a further insight regarding this obligation.

In Parshat Nasso, two laws appear side by side: the Sotah and the Nazir. The Sotah is a married woman who has been secluded alone for a significant amount of time with a man who is not her husband, and is accused of adultery. She comes to the Temple, where she brings a sacrifice and undergoes a ritual to prove her innocence.

The next paragraph in the Torah is about the Nazir, a person who vows to undertake a ritual of holiness: no wine, no contact with a dead body, and no haircuts.

The Talmud ponders the connection between these two laws and offers the following explanation: “One who sees the shame of the Sotah should choose to become a Nazarite and abstain from wine.” Rashi explains that “wine leads to frivolity, and it was the cause of it [the downfall of the Sotah].” The loss of inhibitions brought by intoxication can lead to infidelity. The remedy is to avoid wine.

Many later commentaries are troubled by this statement. It says that merely seeing the Sotah requires the observer to change their behavior. But this observer might be a very good and pious person. Why should a mere bystander be obliged to become a Nazir because of someone else’s failure?

There are multiple approaches to this question.  The Baal Shem Tov explains that psychologically, we notice first the flaws in others that we have ourselves. One’s reaction to the Sotah is a spiritual Rorschach test; and it instructs the person about which inner weaknesses they must tend to. If you “see” the Sotah and are profoundly troubled by her behavior, perhaps you need to consider your own faults.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook approaches the question from a social perspective. Each individual is profoundly influenced by their social context. A flaw anywhere within my community becomes my responsibility; it makes no difference how holy and lofty a person is. He writes that:

There is a wondrous connection between people, to the point that the actions and behaviors of the most distant stratum at one end of society make some impression even on those who are far removed from that stratum, standing on the opposite end.

…despite the distance between woman who might betray her marriage and the stature of a person who, in his goodness, aspires to be a holy person and a Nazirite to God –  there is nonetheless such a degree of connection (between them)…that anyone who sees a Sotah in her disgrace should take it to heart.

No man is an island. The failure of one is the failure of the entire community. It is incumbent on all who see the Sotah to help the community by becoming a Nazir.

Finally, there is a mystical approach, offered by Rav Zaddok of Lublin. He writes, “All the matters and actions that occur to a person incidentally are actually hints from (God) above….” The Nazir takes responsibility to improve society because that is what God wants them to do.

When you witness devastation and disorder, God is sending you on a mission to help fix the world.

You must not be a bystander when an individual needs help; and you must not be a bystander when the world needs you. To borrow the cliche, you need to be the change you want to see in the world. That is your mission.

Those who take up this mission become holy helpers. They simply refuse to accept the brokenness of the world.

Since October 7th, I have met a handful of unique people who stopped everything else in their lives in order to help. Ben, a special forces commander, psychologist, and hostage negotiator, is using every free moment to build an organization called Rising Heroes, to foster resilience and teamwork for IDF reservists like himself. Gila, a university director, left her job to found the Ariel Center, an innovative, first-of-its-kind sports therapy center in southern Israel, in memory of her late brother. Naama, a hi-tech executive, has taken an extended leave of absence to devote herself to the children orphaned by October 7th. She has spearheaded an organization called Assure for the Children to make sure that all of their needs are taken care of.

Naama’s story is the perfect example of how holy helpers find their vocation.  One of her children’s friends was orphaned of both parents on October 7th. So she reached out to help him. And then she helped his friends. And now she is a surrogate mother to dozens of orphans, texting with them and helping them whenever she can.

That is what a holy helper does.

A well-known quote from George Bernard Shaw is “Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.”  That is exactly what Ben, Gila, and Naama have been doing. For the last twenty months, they have been dreaming every day of healing a broken community. They are saying “why not,” and building much-needed institutions for the future. Out of the devastation and destruction, they have heard God’s call for help.

They are holy helpers. May God bless them for all the good they are doing.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.