Rosh Chodesh Adar: Foundations

Purim is a holiday of the master’s tools. Among the reasons offered in the Gemara for why we do not say Hallel on Purim is that Hallel includes praise for God with us as God’s servants, and no one else’s:

רָבָא אָמַר, בִּשְׁלָמָא הָתָם: ״הַלְלוּ עַבְדֵי ה׳״ — וְלֹא עַבְדֵי פַרְעֹה, אֶלָּא הָכָא: ״הַלְלוּ עַבְדֵי ה׳״ — וְלֹא עַבְדֵי אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ? אַכַּתִּי עַבְדֵי אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ אֲנַן.

Rava said: Granted [that hallel is said] there [when recalling the exodus from Egypt, as after the salvation there, they could recite the phrase in hallel]: “Give praise, O servants of the Lord” (Psalms 113:1); [for they were servants of God] and not servants of Pharaoh. But can it be said here, after the limited salvation commemorated on Purim: “Give praise, O servants of the Lord,” [which would imply that the Jews were only servants of God] and not servants of Ahasuerus? We were still the servants of Ahasuerus.

(Megillah 14a)

In other words, the redemption of the Exodus is one that overturns everything – in the telling of the very next Psalm, the mountains and rivers reacted to the Israelites leaving Egypt! But at the end of the Purim story, all the structures that enabled the near-extermination of the Jews of Persia are still firmly in place. Achashverosh remains king, and there is no indication that the rejected wife-candidates held in his harems have any freedom. Insofar as the Jewish people are safer, it is because a few of them have made their way into the inner circles of power, not because society is set up for their long-term thriving.

The abusers and the structures that enabled them are almost all still in place. Just one man has taken the fall dramatically as a scapegoat for the rest.

Sound familiar?

The Jewish world is talking about (or at least in a horrible loop of the “we’re not talking about this enough!” phenomenon) Leslie Wexner’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has documented multiple instances in the unsealed Epstein files in which Wexner has been accused in sworn testimony of participating in trafficking and assault. Wexner has denied this.

my pandemic-isolation-era desk full of wexner swag

The concept of Takkanat Hashavim, “a decree/solution for penitents” has had much currency in Jewish conversations about systems-level teshuva - if a house was built with a stolen beam, the thief does not have to demolish the house to return the beam, but may instead pay the beam’s original owner its cost and maintain the house as it is. This has been used in conversations about reparations (most famously by Rabbi Sharon Brous) to argue that a country built on stolen wealth cannot morally continue onward without financial restitution.

Takkanat hashavim is an innovation of Beit Hillel. The school of Shammai, however, teach that “מְקַעְקֵעַ כׇּל הַבִּירָה כּוּלָּהּ וּמַחְזִיר מָרִישׁ לִבְעָלָיו” – “​​Beit Shammai say: He must destroy the entire building and return the beam to its owners.” (Gittin 55a.) The idea that the whole house must be torn down lingers behind this more achievable picture of financial restitution, perhaps haunting the system. Indeed, in Masechet Sukkah we find the case of a sukkah built with stolen materials, where the principle of takkanat hashavim is applied to rule that the sukkah does not need to be destroyed, only financial restitution given. But there is a voice of dissent:

הָהִיא סָבְתָּא דַּאֲתַאי לְקַמֵּיהּ דְּרַב נַחְמָן, אֲמַרָה לֵיהּ: רֵישׁ גָּלוּתָא וְכוּלְּהוּ רַבָּנַן דְּבֵי רֵישׁ גָּלוּתָא בְּסוּכָּה גְּזוּלָה הֲווֹ יָתְבִי. צָוְוחָה וְלָא אַשְׁגַּח בָּהּ רַב נַחְמָן. אֲמַרָה לֵיהּ: אִיתְּתָא דַּהֲוָה לֵיהּ לַאֲבוּהָא תְּלָת מְאָה וְתַמְנֵי סְרֵי עַבְדֵי צָוְוחָא קַמַּיְיכוּ וְלָא אַשְׁגְּחִיתוּ בַּהּ?! אֲמַר לְהוּ רַב נַחְמָן: פָּעִיתָא הִיא דָּא, וְאֵין לָהּ אֶלָּא דְּמֵי עֵצִים בִּלְבַד.

There was a certain old woman who came before Rav Naḥman. She said to him: The Exilarch and all the Sages in his house have been sitting in a stolen sukka. She claimed that the Exilarch’s servants stole her wood and used it to build the sukka. She screamed, but Rav Naḥman did not pay attention to her. She said to him: A woman whose father, Abraham, our forefather, had three hundred and eighteen slaves screams before you, and you do not pay attention to her? She claimed that she should be treated with deference due to her lineage as a Jew. Rav Naḥman said to the Sages: This woman is a screamer, and she has rights only to the monetary value of the wood. However, the sukka itself was already acquired by the Exilarch.

(Sukkah 31a; Sefaria translation)

This woman sees the entirety of the leadership of the Jewish community sitting in a sukkah built on wrongdoing. She is upset, and the leadership ignores her, claiming that the only restitution needed is financial. But what of the emotional impact of the sukkah remaining whole, rabbis and leaders feasting inside it while she watches from without? Payment was not enough.

Many conversations about what ought to happen in response to the further revelations about Wexner* have centered on ascertaining how guilty-by-association those leaders who took the money and thereby participated in laundering Wexner’s reputation are; and, therefore, what steps the individuals and the foundation should take to address that guilt. Individual action and change from the Foundation are by no means unimportant – I myself am thinking deeply about what I owe and ought to do, having received a total of $90,000 as a Wexner fellow, which enabled me to live without financial worry through my time in rabbinical school.

(*concerns have been raised for years; in 2020, I was the only current Wexner fellow to go on the record about this, and organizing on this issue at the time was robust but not impactful.)

But the harms are broader and more diffuse, too. Jewish leaders are sitting in a stolen sukkah, a house built on structures that lionize men’s power and treat money as if it can confer moral authority.

The Gemara in Bava Kama 94b teaches that a repentant thief who does not know who he stole from should return the money in the form of contributing it to “צׇרְכֵי צִיבּוּר,” communal needs. The millions of dollars that have come from Leslie Wexner to the Jewish community have had a broad impact – what if the damage itself happened on the level of “communal needs?” How, then, can it be repaired? Hundreds of rabbis and other leaders have been able to train to serve Am Yisrael because of this money. And Atra’s Rabbinic Pipeline Study claims that “more than half of students (62%) and nearly half of would-bes (49%) were strongly deterred by the cost of rabbinical school,” statistics which align with my anecdotal conversations with peers and students. For many people, we might assume, the Wexner money was transformative.

What is needed, then, is to dismantle the whole house, and to find new tools to do so.

Locally, in the megillah, the reversal described by “v’nahafoch hu” is a temporary reversal of social power. But the invitation of the holiday is to live in an upside-down world for a day, when we don’t take for granted the usual stable foundations that we have built upon. Perhaps this work is how we make Purim a holiday of complete redemption: overturning it all.

The Jewish community needs to radically (from the root!) restructure itself. We must do money differently. Rabbinical school should be free and stipended, for everyone, not an elite few who are asked in return to launder the reputation of a billionaire. Decisions about communal funds should be made democratically. All forms of labor, expertise, and leadership should result in livable incomes.

Does this sound impossible to even imagine? That’s the invitation of Adar.