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Lech Lecha
"If you go to the left, I'll go to the right; if you go to the right, I'll go to the left"
It was the first, but certainly not the last, quarrel over the land. Abraham and Lot have returned to Canaan after their brief exile to Egypt. Abraham "had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold." Lot too had accumulated a large entourage of servants and flocks and herds. The result was conflict:
"The land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they could not stay together. Quarrels broke out between Abram's herdsmen and the herdsmen of Lot. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time. Abram said to Lot, "Let there not be quarrels between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers. Is not the whole land before you? Let us part company. If you go to the left, I'll go to the right; if you go to the right, I'll go to the left." (13: 6-9)"
Lot makes his choice, a bad one as will later become clear. He chooses the Jordan valley because of its fertility and prosperity ("like G-d's own garden, like the land of Egypt"). However, what is interesting is what happens after the two men separate:
G-d said to Abram after Lot had parted from him: "Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land you see I will give to you and your offspring for ever . . . Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I will give it [all] to you." (13: 14-17)
What is the sequence here? What is the logic of the divine promise then, after the conflict and Abraham's resolution of it? What is at stake here is not a simple incident in the life of the first of the patriarchs but something far more general and enduring. It is an utterly counter-intuitive answer to the question, "What do we own?"
Solomon won a reputation as the wisest of Israel's kings. One decision in particular (I Kings 13: 16-28) made a great impression and is one of the most famous passages in Tenakh. Two women came before him, each claiming that a child was their own. Both had given birth. One had accidentally suffocated their child by rolling over on it while she slept. Each attributed the accident to the other and argued that the living child was theirs. Solomon, in a masterpiece of lateral thinking, ordered his servant to take a sword and cut the child in two, giving each woman a half. One protested in horror. Let the child be given to the other woman, she said. I abandon my claim. You, said Solomon, are the mother and you shall have the child. How did Solomon know? Because she was willing to give the child away rather than see it die. We truly own what we are willing to give away.
Much of the sacrificial system in the Torah is about offering to G-d the first of what He has given us: the firstborn of animals, the first grain of the harvest (the Omer), and the first-fruits of the crop (eaten under conditions of sanctity in Jerusalem). After the tenth plague in Egypt, firstborn Jewish males were scheduled to spend their lives dedicated to the service of G-d. That arrangement was cancelled by the sin of the Golden Calf. From then on, priesthood ceased to be a function of the firstborn and became instead the right and duty of Aaron's sons. To this day, however, parents redeem their firstborn, if it is a male, in acknowledgement of that historic destiny.
The sacrificial system in Israel is hard to understand. Sacrifices made eminent sense in the worldview of pagan antiquity. The gods were capricious. They could strike at any time, bringing drought, famine, storms, floods, military defeat or other disasters. To avoid this, the ancients sought to propitiate them by bringing them offerings (not unlike the offerings Jacob sent Esau when they were about to meet again after their long estrangement). The G-d of Israel, however, was not like that. He sought justice, not sacrifice; righteousness, not burnt offerings; structures of societal grace, not the elaborate rites of shrines. What then is the meaning of these offerings of the first of flocks and herds and harvests?
The Talmud (Berakhot 35 a-b) contains a fascinating discussion of the logic of making blessings over the things of this world that we enjoy:
Rav Judah said in the name of Rav: To enjoy anything of this world without making a blessing is like making personal use of things consecrated to heaven, as it says: "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" (Psalm 24:1).
R. Levi contrasted two texts: It is written, "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof," and it is written, "The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth He has given to the children of men" (Psalm 115: 16). But there is no contradiction - the first verse refers to the situation before one has made a blessing, the second applies once one has made a blessing.
The world belongs to G-d. He owns it because He made it, and without Him it would cease to exist. It follows that there is no concept in Judaism of absolute human ownership. We are G-d's guests on earth. All that we possess, we do not ultimately own. We merely hold it as His guardian or trustee. A blessing is therefore an act of acknowledgement of G-d's ownership. If we do not make one prior to enjoying the things of this world, it is as if we had made secular use of G-d's property. Once we have made a blessing we have, as it were, redeemed the source of pleasure (buying it back for private use by our offering of words). Once we symbolically give something back to G-d, He gives it back to us ("the earth He has given to the children of men").
This is the logic of the offerings of firstfruits and firstborn animals. It is a symbolic renunciation - an act of giving back to G-d what we rightly acknowledge as His. Once we declare Him the owner of nature and the land, He empowers us to act as His trustee. Nowhere is this stated more clearly than in the laws (Vayikra 25) relating to Shmittah and Yovel, the sabbatical and jubilee years.
There are inalienable conditions to Israelite residence in the land. Some of its produce must be shared with the poor. Slaves and debts must be released every seven years. Every fifty years, land must return to its original owners. There must be, in other words, periodic redistributions precisely because (as we know from the economics of globalization) the free market does not ensure equality of outcomes. The key word tzedakah does not mean "charity" or "justice" but a combination of both - and it exists as a concept only because Judaism sees property not as ownership but as guardianship. What we give to the poor is not "charity" but one of the conditions G-d makes to our possessing property at all, namely that we share some of what we have with others who have less. Hence the great verse, "The land must not be sold in perpetuity, because the land is Mine; you are but aliens and My tenants." We are entitled to possess only that whose ownership we renounce. We truly own what we are willing to give away.
That is the deep meaning of Abraham's offer to Lot. It is only when he is willing to give part of the land away ("If you go to the left, I'll go to the right; if you go to the right, I'll go to the left") that G-d tells him the whole land will be his ("All the land you see I will give to you and your offspring for ever"). We only own what we are willing to share.
Universal Education and the Internet
Much of the debate about globalization focuses on political and economic issues: global governance and the impact of the new economy. A Jewish perspective would argue that, vital though these are, the provision of universal education is more important still. In the foreseeable future, much will depend on the degree to which people are positioned to take advantage of new opportunities and this in turn will depend on the extent and depth of investment in education. In fact, so rapidly are technologies changing that the idea that education is confined to childhood will have to be revised in favour of lifelong learning, itself a classic value of the Judaic tradition. Jewry is one of the paradigm cases of a group that predicated the idea of a society of equal human dignity not on the distribution of wealth or power but on access to education; and it worked. That, I have argued, was itself the result of a revolution in information technology almost four millennia ago: the invention of the alphabet. The revolution we are living through _ of personal computers, modems, e-mails, interactive CD-ROMs and the Internet - should be understood in the same terms. Their ultimate significance is their contribution to the democratization of knowledge, and thus of dignity and creativity. The first imperative of the new information technology should be to make available to every child the universe of knowledge opened up by instantaneous global communication. One model here is the Bolsa-Escola scheme in Brazil that provides subsidies to poor families provided that their children attend school regularly. School participation in Brazil has risen, as a result, to 97 per cent of the child population. Recently, at a special session of the United Nations General Assembly, Britain backed a World Bank initiative to provide the funds to ensure universal primary education throughout the world by 2015. This is the correct prioritization. The more education children have, the wider their employment prospects, the more they are able to earn, and the more effectively they are able to cope with rapidly changing economic circumstances. The Internet has widened the availability and lowered the cost of tuition at all levels. Curricula can be designed and shared across the world. Universities have already gone on-line; so have many schools. No developmental area has greater effect and few are less contentious, because knowledge is not a zero-sum good. I do not lose knowledge by giving it to others. The reverse is more likely to be the case. It was, for example, the pooling of knowledge; made possible by the invention of printing, the birth of learned societies and the spread of scholarly periodicals, that led to the exponential growth of science in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. More recently it has been the exchange of ideas and discoveries in coffee bars that has made Silicon Valley in California the world leader in computer technologies. Knowledge grows by being shared. Information technology has not only transformational possibilities but also deep ethical implications. Worldwide, the number of children - girls especially - who lack adequate education is a scandal. It means that most will remain disadvantaged throughout their lives. Schools, curricula, the training of teachers, the provision of computers, and low cost downloading of information should be key forms of international aid and voluntary assistance to developing countries. No other single intervention offers greater prospects of enhancing economic opportunities for everyone, and for moving us forward in the long, hard journey to universal human dignity.