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Poster Commentary
"A community is too heavy to carry alone."Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:10
Poster design:Ivan Chermayeff
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by Daniel Gordis

“Mountaintop experience.” The very phrase brings to mind a glow of inner calm, aloneness, beauty, profound insight, the solitary search for truth. Perhaps precisely because such experiences are so difficult to create when we most seek them, we imagine that they are the moments of true religious experience, when we come closest to feeling that indescribable presence that many call God.

While Judaism certainly recognizes that there are, indeed, moments like that in life, it makes an extraordinary claim: We dare not spend our lives seeking those sorts of moments as the pinnacle of religious fulfillment. In Jewish life, we seek religious satisfaction, insight, truth and closeness to God not in solitary moments, but in engagement with others. Jewish tradition says that it is in the muddy, complex, fraught world of human relations and shared responsibility that God’s presence can be brought into our lives.

Shared responsibility is the key. Almost 2,000 years ago, the Talmud (Sanhedrin 17b) stated that we should live only in a place that has a court for dispensing justice, a charity fund, a synagogue, public baths, a restroom, a mohel (the person who performs circumcisions), a notary, a slaughterer and a schoolmaster. We need each other.

Alone, we may feel a special calm, but there will be no one to challenge us, to urge us to further exploration or commitment. Alone, we have no one to model for us genuine courage, deeper commitment, engagement with people we hadn’t thought to include in our lives. It is when we build with others and learn from them, our tradition says, that the presence of God dwells in our midst. That has long been the secret to the magic of Jewish life.

 

Author
Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:10
Dated as late as 9th century
Homiletic commentary
on Book of Deuteronomy

Judaism has a rich and vast interpretive (midrashic) literature—works full of stories, homilies and legal exegesis based on the Biblical text. Deuteronomy Rabbah, perhaps dating from as late as the 9th century CE, is a midrashic work based on Deuteronomy, the fifth and final book of the Torah.

The passage from Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:10 (“A community is too heavy to carry alone”) is immediately followed by another verse: “Moses himself confessed his inability to lead single-handedly.” This rabbinic discussion is a comment on a section of Deuteronomy (2:12–17) in which Moses is giving a farewell address to his people Israel and is recapitulating key events and teachings from their years of wandering:

Frankly, how am I supposed to deal single-handedly with you now, when you complain and fight and make my life miserable? So [I told you], go find the wisest people in each of your tribes, and I will appoint them as leaders. And you responded: That sounds good.

I took your tribal leaders, the wisest in each tribe, and made them responsible for the affairs of the tribe, as heads of thousands, heads of hundreds, heads of fifties, heads of tens, and other officers. I instructed the judges to hear each case and decide it justly, whether it involves members of the people of Israel or strangers.  [I instructed:] Never show favorites, but treat the strong and the weak equally before the law. Never fear what others will think, because true justice is in the eyes of God.

This passage is Moses’s retelling of an earlier episode (Exodus 18:13–27), in which his father-in-law Jethro learns how burdened Moses is with hearing the people’s cases and exhorts him to share the leadership through a multitier justice system.

On the road from Exodus to Deuteronomy to Deuteronomy Rabbah, we are led to think about more than just a system of courts: we are challenged to consider the vitality and strength of a community when everyone shares responsibility for communal life.

 

Artist
Ivan Chermayeff
New York
Graphic designer
Illustrator

Ivan Chermayeff’s work as a fine artist, designer and illustrator has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, the Soviet Union and Japan. In 2007, he was honored with a one-man exhibition at the Pera Museum in Istanbul.

Chermayeff has received awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the Society of Illustrators and the Art Directors Club of New York. In 1981, he received the President’s Fellow Award from the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1982, he was named to the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. He also received the title Royal Designer for Industry of the Royal Society of Arts and Commerce (RDI Hon) in recognition of his achievements in graphic design.

Chermayeff is a past president of the AIGA and was a trustee of The Museum of Modern Art for 20 years.

He authored a book featuring his work, Suspects, Smokers, Soldiers, and Salesladies: Collages by Ivan Chermayeff (Lars Müller Publishers, 2000).

 

Quote
"A community is too heavy to carry alone."Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:10

Why all this?  Because the burden of the community is heavy and no one man alone is able to bear the burden.  A proof of this is: Moses, a teacher of all the prophets, was not able to bear alone the burden of the community.  How do we know this?  The Torah says: "And I spoke to you at that time, saying: 'I am not able to bear you myself alone.'" (Deuteronomy 1:9)  To what time does this refer? Rabbi Yohanan says: To the time of Jethro: "For the thing is too heavy for you. you are not able to perform it yourself alone." (Exodus 18:18)  Rabbi Hiyya says: To the time when the people murmured [against God, and Moses said:] "I am not able to bear all this people myself alone, because it is too heavy for me." (Numbers 11:14)