Walk Through the Parsha by Rabbi David Walk

The Greatest Gift
Rosh Hashanah 5768
September 11, 2007
An interesting article came out this summer in Scientific American. It discussed the atrocities perpetrated in Iraq's Abu Gharib prison. There is the perception that the American soldiers who committed these horrendous acts must somehow be horrible people. However, social psychologist (Does that mean that he's a friendly shrink?) Philip Zimbardo claims that this is not the case at all. In fact he performed a study thirty years ago, which dispels that view. In 1971 Zimbardo conducted the famed Stanford prison experiment, in which 24 normal college students were randomly assigned to be "prisoners" or "guards" for a two week period in a mock prison located in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford. The students quickly began acting out their roles, with "guards" becoming sadistic and "prisoners" showing extreme passivity and depression. The experiment became so dangerous that it was called off after only six days. Their conclusion? Group members can't resist the pressures of their assumed roles and brutality is the natural expression of unequal power. This has led many psychologists to accept two maxims. First, individuals lose their capacity for intellectual and moral judgment in groups, and therefore groups are inherently dangerous. Second, people inevitably act tyrannically when in groups and given power.

Dr. Zimbardo has been interviewing Americans guards from Abu Gharib, and has found interesting results. In 2004, Zimbardo testified for the defense in the court martial of Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick. He argued that Frederick's sentence should be lessened due to mitigating circumstances, explaining that few individuals can resist the powerful situational pressures of a prison, particularly without proper training and supervision and that he had been a model citizen both before and since the incidents. Dr. Zimbardo violently disagreed with politicians who claimed that the atrocities were committed by a few bad apples. Instead he posited that it was the barrel which was rotten.

These findings, I believe, help us to understand a difficult verse in last week’s Torah reading. In the verse it says, “Even if your exiles are at the end of the heavens, the Lord, your God, will gather you from there, and He will take you from there (Deuteronomy 30:4).” The problem in the verse is the repetition of 'from there.' Why two there's? To help find the answer I turn to a verse quoted in the Musaf service for Rosh Hashanah and referred to in our daily Shmoneh Esreh prayer. "And it shall come to pass on that day, that a great shofar shall be sounded, and those lost shall come from the land of Assyria and those exiled in the land of Egypt shall come home and they shall prostrate themselves before the Lord on the holy mount in Jerusalem (Isaiah 27:13)." This verse predicts the future ingathering of the Jewish people back to Israel. Again there is a problem. The preposition used for those lost because of the Assyrian exile is 'from (in Hebrew the suffix mei), while the one used for the Egyptian bondage is 'in (Hebrew: bi).

There must be two kinds of exiles. One is characterized as Egyptian, and the other is called Assyrian. The Assyrian model is external and we return from it. The Egyptian type is internal and remains within our psyche. We can lose our way because of physical influences around us, or we can be in exile because there are dangerous stimuli within me. These are the two there's which God promises us that we will return from. These two verses are teaching that there are both bad apples and bad barrels, but that either can be overcome. As a matter of fact we all experience both. Everyone is occasionally pushed to behave badly by social pressures, and everyone has been enticed to immoral acts by our own devil within.

How do we combat these insidious enemies? First of all we have to think carefully before we act. We must halt that headlong rush to do something, anything which happens to so many of us, and only afterward do we realize that we shouldn't have jumped the gun. Unless there is a clear and present danger we must resist the lemming instinct to follow the crowd and leap off the precipice. Just a moment's reflection can save much grief. Then we need support in these efforts. We require countervailing influences to counteract the negative pressures of society and stress around us. We must develop relationships with those whom we love and trust to help us in this struggle to be sounding boards, and we need God.

There is a major debate about these verses which I quoted above. These statements proclaim that we will return to Israel and to God from our far flung diaspora. Many authorities say that this is a commandment. However, there is another team which firmly believes that this is a prediction and a promise. I like the second opinion. We are being assured that as difficult as the situation may be politically or spiritually there will be a happy ending. This is God's greatest gift to us the children. God is always waiting for us to return and will lovingly expedite the Teshuva when the time comes.

This is the attitude with which we should enter Rosh Hashanah and the new year. We should have serious concern for our own behavior and for the actions of those around us. Are we emphasizing positive deportment or not? Are we identifying and eliminating negative conduct? And, finally, do we know the forces which inform our actions? As we dip our apples into the sweet honey this year, let's try to make sure that that they are neither bad apples nor come from a bad barrel.

Have a happy, healthy, sweet and carefully directed New Year to you, your family and the entire Jewish People.