Drash for Shabbat Morning, Parashat Nitzavim

Even the Tradies

As everybody ‘knows,’ there are ‘Jewish’ occupations, and there are all those other jobs.  Jewish youth go to university.  They become doctors and lawyers.  Accountants.  Professors.  Scientists and engineers.  Entertainers, writers and producers.  Tradies?  Never.  You don’t see young Jews driving utes with all those toolboxes and ladders and such hanging off the top and sides.  And they certainly, never, become military men!  I mean, a Jewish mother would have a fit if her son announced that he was going to have a career in the armed forces.  And her daughter?  Oy!

          So, as a career military man whose brother was a career officer, I have to tell you that my mother took a lot of flack from her friends over the years.  Your son is in the Army??!  And your other son is in the Navy??!  She used to tell me of the conversations she had when she attended Hadassah meetings, or synagogue socials.  Either other mothers’ kids weren’t in such professions, or…they weren’t saying.

          (When I became a rabbi, I thought I was doing my mother a favour.  But then she would reported back to me that, when she told other Jewish mothers that her son was a rabbi, they would say:  What kind of a job is that for a Jewish boy?  Poor Mom…she can’t win!)

          So everybody ‘knows’ that Jews only go into specific career paths.  And when they don’t, when they become tradies or military men or God forbid, drift about between unskilled jobs, what do Jewish parents do?  They don’t talk about it with their Jewish friends!  They convince themselves that their kid is just playing around and finding himself.  Until he’s ready to enrol in uni and begin studying to be an accountant.

           But this week’s Torah reading talks of a different reality.  A reality where Jews pursue every occupation in the spectrum.  And where those who do work in less-prestigious jobs, are no less inheritors of the Torah, and part of God’s holy people.

You are standing today before the Lord your God.  Your leaders, your tribal chiefs, your elders, your guardians, every Israelite man.  And your children, your women, and the proselytes in your camp.  Even your woodcutters and water drawers.

          Now we understand that there is not an extraneous word in the Torah.  If the Torah forbids a particular practice, we understand that such a practice held attraction for at least some of our ancient forebears.  In this case, our reading goes out of its way to point out that the Torah is the property of the most and least prestigious members of the people.  So the leaders should not see themselves as above the law.  And the humble should not see themselves as too lowly to be elevated by it.  Ths tells us that, at least sometimes, leaders thought they were above the law.  And the humble thought they were too lowly to be elevated by it.  And the children, and women, and the proselytes?  If the rest of you thought that they were unworthy to participate, you were wrong.  Each and every Israelite, each and every member of the camp who chose to travel with the nation and who was going to participate in the upcoming conquest of the Land, was included.  All were standing before God.  Nobody was unworthy because of his or her place in society.  Certain members of the people – the Levites and from among them, the Cohanim – had special roles in the performance of the rituals that were seen as connecting God and man.  Even so, at the end of the day each individual stands before God Himself.  It is at once a liberating, and a terrible concept.  Nobody can stand before God in your stead.  It’s just you and Him, baby.

          Perhaps this is at the root of that fabled Jewish chutzpa, even by the humblest Members of the Tribe.  As reflected, for example, in the opening scene of Fiddler on the Roof.

          Alms for the poor, alms for the poor!

          Here, Reb Nahum, is one kopeck.

          One kopeck?  Last week you gave me two!

          I had a bad week.

          So??! Just because you had a bad week, why should I suffer??!

          People used to visit Israel and complain that the service at hotels and restaurants was lousy.  Jews don’t make good service people, they would say.  And the waiters and taxi drivers; what would they say?  What do they think we are, slaves??!

          The American-born Israeli author, Zev Chafetz, tells that the phenomenon of Jews visibly serving in every occupation was one of the attractions for him, of living in Israel.  Only after making aliyah did he realise that Jews do every kind of work imaginable.  Proudly.

          But that’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it?  It isn’t that, except in Israel, Jews don’t work as tradies.  It’s that, outside of Israel, we pretend they don’t.  It doesn’t match our image of Jews, and how they earn a living.  Thank God we have the Torah, in Parashat Nitzavim, to remind us that every occupation is worthy of dignity.  Yes, even the tradies.  Perhaps especially the tradies.  Shabbat shalom.