No Middle Ground
Imagine walking through a forest by a big beautiful pond. Suddenly you hear something which averts your attention. You look toward the pond and see something moving. To your surprise, you realize that it is a young child, a toddler, drowning. You look around and can’t see any other adults or supervisors accompanying the child. Today of all days, you had put on some of your best clothes and shoes on your way to a job interview, and jumping into the muddy pond would no doubt ruin those (they’re supposed to be dry cleaned!) Would that prevent you from jumping into the pond and saving this child’s life?
I’m pretty sure that I know what you’re thinking right now, and would be very surprised if someone reading this would prefer to not ruin their good outfit… However, Australian philosopher Peter Singer claims that you and I are in fact prioritizing our good outfits everyday. We’re doing so by living our luxurious lives idly, while millions of children still die every year from preventable causes.
Peter Singer (1946-present) is an Australian philosopher born of Jewish descent. While he himself was born in Melbourne, his parents were Austrian Jews who immigrated to Australia shortly after its annexation by the Nazis in 1938. His paternal grandparents were murdered in the Lodz Ghetto, and his maternal grandfather David Ernst Oppenheim, a psychologist who collaborated with Freud and Adler, was murdered in Teresinstadt.
Singer is a moral philosopher who has been dedicating his work to applied ethics, Animal Liberation and human rights.
I’m bringing Singer today because of our Torah portion Re’eh which opens with a strong statement regarding our human obligation to make moral choices.
רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃
“See, this day I set before you blessing and curse:
אֶֽת־הַבְּרָכָ֑ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר תִּשְׁמְע֗וּ אֶל־מִצְוֺת֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י מְצַוֶּ֥ה אֶתְכֶ֖ם הַיּֽוֹם׃
blessing, if you obey the commandments of your God יהוה that I enjoin upon you this day;
וְהַקְּלָלָ֗ה אִם־לֹ֤א תִשְׁמְעוּ֙ אֶל־מִצְוֺת֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם וְסַרְתֶּ֣ם מִן־הַדֶּ֔רֶךְ אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י מְצַוֶּ֥ה אֶתְכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם לָלֶ֗כֶת אַחֲרֵ֛י אֱלֹהִ֥ים אֲחֵרִ֖ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹֽא־יְדַעְתֶּֽם׃ {ס}
and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of your God יהוה, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced.’’
Ovadia Sforno (1475-1549), the Italian philosopher and Torah commentator, tells us about these verses:
ראה״ (behold) pay good attention so that you will not be like the nations of the world who are always trying to find middle ground. Remember that אנכי נותן לפניכם היום ברכה וקללה, I present you this day with the choice of two extremes, opposites. The ברכה (blessing) is an extreme in that it provides you with more than you need, whereas the קללה (curse) is another extreme making sure that you have less than your basic needs. You have the choice of both before you; all you have to do is make a choice.”
What Sforno tells us here is simply to beware of doing nothing. He’s warning against choosing the "middle ground,” meaning not really deciding between one way or another. Our role as humans is to choose.
Midrash Bereshit Rabah, as well as the Zohar, support this by describing conversations between God and his ministering angels right before humans were created. Here is one conversation as it appears in the Zohar:
“Said the colleagues, ‘If so, why was he after all created?’ He replied: ‘If God had not created man in this way, with good and evil inclination, which correspond to light and darkness, created man would have been capable neither of virtue, nor of sin; but now that he has been created with both, it is written, “see, I have set before thee this day life and death” ‘(Deut. 30, 19). They said to him: ‘Still, why all this? Would it not have been better that he should not have been created and so not have sinned, thereby causing so much mischief above, and that he should have had neither punishment nor reward?’
He replied: ‘It was just and right that he should be created in this way, because for his sake the Torah was created in which are inscribed punishments for the wicked and rewards for the righteous, and these are only for the sake of created man.”
According to the Zohar and according to the Torah, humans were created in order to make choices.
In our ability to choose, according to our tradition we are in fact more elevated than angels. But at the same time our ability to choose can also place us lower than beasts.
Just like Sforno, Peter Singer claims that “not doing anything” when it comes to our ability to donate to charity for example is an immoral act.
In 1972 Peter Singer published an essay called: Famine, Affluence, and Morality. It is perhaps the essay which Singer is most known for and contains the example of the drowning child. Singer wrote this essay following the starvation of Bangladesh Liberation War refugees at the time. Singer in this essay brings forth a simple principal:
“If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything else morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it.”
Singer would develop his moral philosophy throughout the years into what he now calls Effective Altruism, his case for our obligation to live simply and donate all of our access income to charities. In its extreme form, Singer would say that we should donate our income to the point that we bring ourselves to be almost equal to the person we are helping. His more moderate suggestion would be to donate to the point that we begin to sacrifice something which would seem immoral towards us.
His approach of course received a fair amount of pushback and criticism for being for the most part unrealistic.
I personally would push back on Singer's suggestion from the other side, with the idea that charities in general are only a vehicle whose purpose is to perpetuate the capitalist structure. Charities preserve inequality but subdue the consciousness of those at the top making them feel like they are morally sound. This maintains the inherent unfair distribution of wealth.
One way or another, the takeaway here is that we ought to do something, whether be it charity, organizing or resisting, because it is our duty and the purpose for which according to our tradition we were created in the first place.
