Two thousand years ago, the sage Hillel made a statement that is quoted universally, especially at times of urgency.
“If not now, when?”
With Congress now on track to pass the “Big Ugly Bill,” which experts estimates will rob at least 10 million Americans of their healthcare, kick 20 million off of Medicaid, promote food insecurity among those most vulnerable, undermine clean energy and climate protection, threaten the rule of law while funding a police state and increase the deficit by 3.3 trillion, Hillel’s question rings more like an exclamation.
And so does this commentary from the 15th century Italian Jew, Ovadia from Bertenuro (called the Bartenura). “If not now,” he says, “means: in this world.” It means, while we’re alive.
Although there are many Jewish traditions about an afterlife, known to the rabbis as “the world to come,” Judaism always places a premium on the actions we take in this life. Having had my own brush with mortality lately, I fully understand the urgency of the moment.
Psalm 115:17 states, “The dead will not worship You, nor any who go down into silence.”
Because this life - and this moment - is the only place where our actions will resonate, we must grab this moment to act. We may never get another chance to determine the nature of the world that will exist, God willing, long after we have gone. Once we have “gone down,” we will be unable to change anything.
For the psalmist, “going down” means to the grave, the abode of the dead known in biblical times as She’ol.
But for us, “going down” could also signify a rapid decline to the ignominy of having twiddled away our democracy by not doing enough when we had the chance to do it. We would be “going down” in history as a generation of naive fools, suckered by a con man into giving away our birthright, numbed into submission by the never-ending carnival of distractions and manufactured outrage.
“Going down into silence” is precisely how I would describe things right now. Too many are capitulating. The media, religious leaders, business leaders, not to mention many politicians. Everyone who is silent is complicit right now, including some of my Jewish clergy colleagues. “Going down into silence” is dragging all of us down.
This is a moral moment if there ever was one.
To my clergy colleagues and other moral, political and thought leaders, I implore, in the manner of the psalmist: “The dead will not worship You, nor any who go down into silence.” In my mind that means: Those who bring our nation down with their silence now will have forfeited a precious chance to bring a measure of godliness and basic human decency back to our troubled world.
Basic human decency is what has been stolen from us these past six months. We’ve almost forgotten what it is.
If we don’t do everything we can possibly do to prevent this fascist coup - and yes, Trumpism is a new American strain of fascism - as General Milly said explicitly, calling Trump “Fascist to the core” - we will only have ourselves to blame. And so, “If not now, when?” means precisely now, while we have the physical life-force within us, and, for now, the freedom, to do something about it.
We should never take lightly the threat to violently deport tens of millions of people here legally, to use military forces on political opponents and entire US cities and to remove basic freedoms we’ve longed taken for granted. To ban books and even burn them. To promote hatred and division. And to use Jews as human shields to destroy universities, scientific research and precious first amendment rights all in the name of supposedly defeating antisemitism, when such actions will only promote more hatred and division.
Hillel would be calling on us to stand up to defend what is right and good.
As Bartenura would tell us, we can sleep when we’re dead.
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