Greed and A Reason to Live
11/14/15

A member of our shabbat morning class, who lost dozens of family in the Holocaust, offered a wise assessment this morning: other nations, the French particularly, are dealing with what it means to be hunted for no reason, to be targets for murder simply because they exist. We Jews have always lived with that. 
Thank you, Estelle.
It's a cogent thought.
Many of us have added random death to our list of anxieties. This is very personal, as we see people murdered without reason not only in poorer areas of the country as once seemed the case, but in middle class and wealthier neighborhoods as well. We feel increasingly vulnerable and uncomprehending: how could this be happening?
In 2002 at the height of Israel's Second Intifada I wrote to a friend in Jerusalem about whether I should attend a convention in Jerusalem. Would I be safe? He wrote back, "Mark, we're only asking you to do what we ask of my 6 year old everyday."
In other words, 2 things: some cultures find a means to acclimate to the higher risk of non-sensical death; and second, some cultures develop a higher reason for living as they do, and therefore feel they live with the risk to serve a higher purpose.
Rabbi Daniel Gordis writes about this regularly, the significance he feels by living in the Jewish State. Just living there validates his existence, and he is willing to bear the risk, both for himself and his children.
But we, in our hedonistic culture, often lack a higher purpose to our existence. This is the failure of American culture to explain to us why we should protect human freedom, invest in democracy (vote for instance), risk our lives for our neighbors, be willing to sacrifice for the greater good, rely upon one another, educate our neighbors' children, care about the "other;" and so much else.
At the onset of our current culture of greed in the early 1980s I attempted to discuss the problem of greed, and what it would do to us and our culture. I could not figure it out. Now we see it clearly: GREED UNDERMINES ALL OTHER VALUES. So many among us have sacrificed our devotion to family, to community, to mutual responsibility, and even to understanding why we are alive on the altar of greed. It's the almighty dollar that has robbed us of a higher sense of purpose in our lives.
And so, now that our lives are threatened, we want to know how to save ourselves, and those we care about. And for the time being we even care about the martyrs in France. But the internal anxiety remains: how do I heal from the threat to my life if I don't even know why I must endure this or what my responsibilities are? I want someone to figure it out for me, someone to make it go away.
In World War II my father went off to war, with all of the men of his generation. They knew why they served: to defeat tyranny, defend democracy and to have a purpose to living. They developed the personality trait of courage, and lived that way for the rest of their lives. They sacrificed for country and the people they loved. 
Perhaps, as we Westerners all begin to share this sense of being the hunted for no reason, that we are somehow all in this together for the first time since World War II, we too will find the courage to understand that we live to promote values more important than life itself, and that inevitably some will die preserving those values: Democracy, freedom to believe in God, and accountability to our neighbors on whom we rely for our existence. 
May there be a new burst of freedom from these threats, in which we build on the common value of interdependence for all who struggle to live as free men and women, and are willing to die to pass that freedom to the next generation. May we reject the greed that has overtaken our goals and destroyed our communal values. We see now that we live for higher qualities that give a purpose to living each day, and without those life itself may not be worth living.