Regular readers will know that the Boy Scouts were a big part of life in my family growing up. My grandfather became an Eagle Scout in 1924. My father, two older brothers and I were all Eagle Scouts too. It was through Scouting that I learned formative lessons about life and leadership, camping and hiking, citizenship and first aid.

But more than anything, I think Scouting helped instill in me a deep sense of duty and responsibility. “On my honor:” these are the opening words of the Scout Oath. Speaking them, an eleven-year old Tenderfoot is immediately confronted with a word that signifies an inner-directed sense of virtue. While honor can be related to shame, which has a significant public dimension, in Scouting as in life I learned that honor is ultimately much more a sense that springs from within, and that honorable people are those who don’t need others watching them in order to do the right thing.

That sensibility of honor animates the first of the twelve points of the Scout Law: “A Scout is trustworthy.” We might be able to trust someone because we know they are being held in check by other forces—the threat of consequences if they violate our trust, for instance. But genuine trust is the kind that emerges because we know someone to be honorable: We can have faith that they won’t abuse our trust, simply because to do so would be wrong.

Society cannot exist without trust, and law cannot really function without honor and virtue. Yes, the threat of punishment can keep bad actors in check. But, just as the Talmud recognizes the category of a naval b’reshut hatorah, one who acts within the law but is nonetheless a scoundrel, all legal systems ultimately require that those enforcing the laws, much less those obeying them, be honorable people.

Parashat Terumah opens with the stirring words of the Holy One to Moses: “Speak to the children of Israel and take for Me an offering—from every person whose heart is moved shall you take the offering to Me” (Ex. 25:2). Reflecting on why this Torah portion comes just after Parashat Mishpatim, which was focused so heavily on civil and criminal laws, Rabbi Baruch Halevi Epstein (1860-1941) suggests that the placement is intentional. “It is to teach you that only an offering of things acquired justly and legally are desirable by the Holy Blessed One. Not so for an offering acquired through robbery and extortion—these are unacceptable.”

We often look to these words about the stirring of the heart as the touchstone for our Torah of spiritual practice, and with good reason. We don’t want to perform rituals, or live our lives more generally, as automatons. Much of our teaching of Jewish spiritual practice reflects that: we often focus less on concepts like duty and obligation (some might even blanch a bit at them), and much more on voluntary action. From that perspective, Rabbi Esptein’s words might even strike us as superfluous: Do we really need to be reminded of the importance of living ethically and honorably?

And yet. Today, as much as ever, we live in a moment when all of us, individually and collectively, should expect honorable behavior of ourselves, of others, and of those we entrust to lead us. Yes, it should be a prerequisite for our practice—but it should also be its goal. If our spiritual practices aren’t leading us to greater ethical behavior, to a deeper sense of our own honor and dignity and that of every image of God, to higher levels of trustworthiness—then what are we doing? Put another way: If observance of the law without manifesting its spirit is rote performance, then isn’t observing the spirit without manifesting justice rote performance too?

Nine centuries ago, Rabbi Bachya ibn Pekuda titled his great work of Jewish ethics and spirituality Hovot Halevavot: Duties of the Heart. Then as now, our heartwork is a responsibility of our personhood—and it must be deeply interwoven with our efforts to live honorably, to be trustworthy, and to maintain a just society under the rule of law.

It was cold on Presidents Day, and many of our friends had gone to warmer places for the long weekend. So my son Toby and I wound up at the movies. We saw “Mufasa,” which tells the backstory to “The Lion King:” how the orphaned Mufasa (this is a Disney movie after all—gotta have your orphan story) is adopted by a new family and emerges into a great leader. Love, betrayal, all the the usual ingredients, including some new songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda (far from his best work, but fine). I’d give it a solid B.

Despite the familiarity of the storyline, nevertheless I couldn’t help but be moved when the stronger moral moments emerged: when characters showed great bravery, when homecoming finally occurred, when all the animals recognized Mufasa’s integrity and instinctively started kneeling to him and calling him “Your Majesty,” crowning him their brave, wise, and benevolent king. While the Disney tropes may be tired, they’re still quite effective.

I’ve written in this space before about social psychologist Dacher Keltner’s research into awe. As a tear came to my eye towards the end of “Mufasa,” I heard Keltner in my head reminding me that one of the ways we can experience awe is by witnessing moral beauty: seeing people do selfless, courageous things; witnessing people offer comfort and solidarity (like many others, I expect, I teared up again Thursday morning watching Israelis lining overpasses and interchanges as the vehicles carrying the bodies of Oded Lifschitz and Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas traveled on the highway from Gaza to Tel Aviv). These touch deep chords in our hearts. They activate something deep inside, a sense, perhaps, that we’re observing the Divine Presence at that moment.

Another familiar trope founded on moral beauty is the person willing to do what’s right even when it comes with great risk. Think of “Twelve Angry Men,” or “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Such stories inspire us. We see courage, virtue, integrity: all the things that the animals—and we—see in Mufasa. If you’re like me, you might experience a swelling of the heart at such stories.

Yet those stories invite us to certain questions: How do we discern what’s right? How much is acceptable to risk, and under what circumstances? And, perhaps most of all for people who live in a democracy (or a polity that aspires to be one), when do we accede to the will of the majority—even if we think they’re wrong?

Political theorist Danielle Allen reminds us that “of all the ritual relevant to democracy, sacrifice is preeminent. No democratic citizen, adult or child, escapes the necessity of losing out at some point in a public decision.” (Talking to Strangers, 28) Democracies function on the twin practices of a) losing minorities to sacrifice by recognizing the will of the majority; b) the system’s ability to distribute sacrifice equitably, such that everyone is losing out at a roughly equal rate and no one constituency is always winning.

But sometimes the majority is actually wrong. Parashat Mishpatim invites us into such a case: “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment.” (Exodus 23:2) This is the verse that undergirds the whole story in “Twelve Angry Men:” Even when—no, especially when—the majority is about to do something wrong, we are commanded to speak up.

In an unusually long gloss, the normally laconic Rashi takes issue with an interpretive tradition that emerged around this verse which understood its application to be limited to rather particular cases within the rabbinic court system. In an unusually animated voice, Rashi counters: “There are regarding this verse Midrashic interpretations by the Sages of Israel; but the language of the verse is not explained by them in its proper way… ‘Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil’ means, if you see wicked men perverting justice, do not say, ‘Since they are the majority I shall follow them;’ ‘Neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment’ means, if the defendant asks you concerning that judgment, do not answer him regarding the dispute anything which inclines after that majority to pervert justice from its truth, but tell him the judgment as it should be, and let the collar be hung around the neck of the majority.”

The picture Rashi paints is one of a judge—or, in a democratic society, I would suggest, a juror, government official, or citizen—who is fearless in the face of the majority’s pressure to conform. Not only is such fearless righteousness morally inspiring, it is also Biblically commanded.

Easier said than done, of course. If it were easy to do, Disney wouldn’t make movies about it.

Which brings us to the question of practice. I have observed many times before that I see a relationship between Tocqueville’s notion of “habits of the heart” that lie at the core of democratic life and the Talmudic phrase avodah shebalev, “service of the heart,” which the Rabbis used to describe prayer. So many of the capacities required of citizens in a democracy are spiritual ones: the capacity to sacrifice, as Danielle Allen describes; the capacity to understand clearly our own motivations and those of others; the capacity to speak and act courageously, even when powerful forces are arrayed against us. These are not dry legal ideas confined to treatises by Hobbes and Locke. They are the heart and soul of the sacred task of sustaining a society in which every human being can live and be recognized as an image of God.

The beginning of this month marked five years since I began working at IJS. Half a decade later, I am grateful that I continue to wake up every day and get to do this amazing work with these amazing colleagues—including our professionals, our volunteer leaders, and the thousands of people who participate in our community in one way or another. That includes you, as a reader of these reflections. So I begin with gratitude: Thank you for the opportunity to be part of your life, and to hopefully do some good.

While by this point I feel genuinely comfortable in my role, when I first started it wasn’t necessarily obvious that that would be the case. Among other things, I am the first man to lead IJS. And (not unrelated) I’m also the first of our leaders who doesn’t hail from the liberal Jewish community. My ordination is from YCT Rabbinical School, a modern orthodox institution—with a feminist and often liberal bent, no doubt, but still.

So I’ve observed moments over these five years when the part of the world I’m working in and the part of the world I come from operate with different sensibilities. For instance, most of the people I work with and serve don’t observe Shabbat or practice keeping kosher in the same way as I do. Our communities have different orientations around the liturgy of the prayer book. They have different cultures of text study and language. The encounter of these worlds inevitably produces tension for me—tension which Jewish mindfulness practice has helped me to manage. And most of the time, I find that tension is a productive one, like a passing storm that yields a gentle rain—for me, at any rate, and hopefully for others too.

Yet sometimes the storms can be, well, stormier. Such a case happened this past week, as I watched how these two worlds responded to the president’s announcement that he intends for the United States to redevelop the Gaza Strip and, in the process, aid in or force the relocation of the area’s millions of residents. Much of the liberal world responded immediately that this was wrong: It amounted to ethnic cleansing. Much of the orthodox world responded that not only was Trump’s idea not wrong, it was right: To oppose the opportunity for Gazans to relocate was immoral, as was the status quo, which would consign Israel to perpetual warfare with Hamas.

My own first instinct was closer to my liberal friends: Of course I’m against ethnic cleansing. I likewise believe the people of Gaza should have freedom to leave if they wish, and I also believe Israelis and Gazans alike should be able to live free of Hamas’s rule.

But my point here is not so much to espouse a political position (there are plenty of columns that do that) as to take note of this phenomenon I experienced in straddling the worlds that I do, and the way my own practice has aided as I’ve done so (there are far fewer columns that do so).

One of the benefits of my job is that I don’t have to make excuses to meditate—I, like, literally get paid to do that. So I found myself deepening my own practice this week, and really trying to stand on the balcony and observe this Bizarro phenomenon: Two views of right which appear to be diametrically opposed—and with enormous practical, political, historical, strategic, and moral stakes. I tried to resist the urge to react, and just sit with this profound, quite jarring phenomenon.

As I did so, what arose for me was a midrash about the miraculous nature of the revelation at Sinai, which we read in this week’s Torah portion: Each person heard according to their own voice—women heard the Divine voice in the voice of a woman, men in the voice of a man, etc. Or, as the Talmud puts it, “Moses would speak and God would answer in a voice”—in what voice? In Moses’s own voice (Brachot 45a). I understand this interpretive tradition as an attempt to answer a bedrock conundrum, or series of them: How is it that we each can relate to the Divine Presence uniquely, and yet we can agree that all of us encountered the Divine Presence? How is it that I can have my own experience of reality, which is inherently different from yours, and yet we can both acknowledge that we share a reality?

The philosophical, social, and legal questions proceed from there: How do we communicate, since my experience of language and your experience of it are always going to be different on the most intimate levels? (One is reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s quip: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”) How do we agree on the meaning of a promise, or a law, and that we are each bound by it? How do we come to a shared understanding, and what happens when we don’t? How do we know that others are operating in good faith—or even that we are doing so ourselves?

As I observed these questions coming up for me, I found myself arriving at the other end of the Torah’s socio-political spectrum, which is summed up in the sentence: “Each person did what was right in their own eyes.” This is a catchphrase of the Book of Judges, repeated over and over again to illustrate what can happen when a society is not bound by a shared commitment to authority, and setting the stage for the establishment of centralized government in the Book of Samuel. Yet what I realized as this verse arose in my mind alongside the midrashim about revelation that I shared above is that the line between these two experiences is, perhaps, vanishingly thin: When Ploni (Hebrew for John Doe) was standing at the foot of Sinai and heard God speaking in the voice of Ploni, was he hearing God’s voice or his own? How did he know? How would he know? And how would others trust that judgment—or their own? It doesn’t take long before the philosophical knots proliferate.

Revelation, recognizing the Divine voice and discerning the truth of the moment, is not easy business. It can be messy and contradictory and really hard—not only to discern what is right and true, but to live in community with others with a shared language of what is right and true. We are living through a period when, in my lifetime at any rate, as both Jews and Americans, we are being challenged on these most fundamental levels in ways we’ve never been challenged before. As individuals and as a collective, now is a time to lean into our practices even more, to resist the impulse to react with words and, instead, take the time to be quiet, to listen, and only then to speak—with more compassion, with greater wisdom, with deeper trust.

I don’t have much occasion to go in the backyard during the winter. For starters, January is pretty cold in Chicago, and the dog is perfectly fine if we just let her out the door to do her business and then run back in.

But the other day it was a little warmer, and Phoebe seemed like she would enjoy playing fetch. So I bundled up and took her out.

After a few rounds of catch and release with a stick, my eye noticed a large ice formation on the side of the house—under an outdoor faucet. Channeling my inner Moses, I thought, “How wondrous is this sight.” So I went to look.

Turns out we had a leak that, drip by drip, had built up into quite a large piece of work over the weeks.

Like a lot of homeowners, we have a membership to a service that supposedly vets and rates professionals to come to your house and fix stuff. While we had someone there, I figured they could also repair another outdoor faucet in our side yard that wasn’t working properly. I knew that the expensive plumbing service we’ve used for major repairs in the past would take a week or more to come (they’re popular), and there was an offer from this online outfit to send someone the next day for a good price. So I took it.

Lesson learned (again): You get what you pay for. The guy was nice enough, but he didn’t have the right parts, so he went and found some cheap PVC plastic spout that would take care of the leak and would also fix the other faucet.

Which it did—until the next day, when I arrived home from a walk with the dog to notice a giant puddle forming on our driveway. I went to investigate, and the workman’s cheap fix had exploded. The side yard faucet was now gushing water, and the backyard faucet had sprung a leak too—worse than the original!

I turned off the faucets from the basement to stop the gushing (something the repairman had neglected to do), and then I called the expensive plumber. They’re coming next Thursday. The online outfit gave me a refund when I told them I’d cancel my membership.

As I reflected on this story, I found the words of Gil Fronsdal ringing in my ears. Gil, who I’ve mentioned in this space before, teaches a wonderful short maxim of mindfulness: Don’t make it worse. We may not always be able to make things better, at least not right away. But generally we can try to avoid taking action, in word or deed, that makes it worse. As my case illustrates, good words to live by. Oops.

Now you might say, “Don’t make it worse” seems like a low bar. It’s not exactly the prophet exhorting us to “break every yoke and let the oppressed go free” (Isaiah 58:6). But, shifting into some other registers, I find that it’s often a very high bar indeed. As a partner or a parent, it’s not unusual to find myself trying to discern whether and how best to communicate a thought or feeling: Say the wrong thing at the wrong time, and I can definitely make things worse. The same goes with relationships at work, in friendships, with my neighbors, or as a citizen. And as a (very minor) public figure, it’s a question I think about all the time: Are the words or actions that I’m contemplating going to improve things, or make them worse?

And on a deeper level, this is a two-step I think we do all the time. It’s reflected in the rhythms of Shabbat: Engage in the world for six days, withdraw from the world for one. Or, as my colleague Rabbi Marc Margolius teaches, engage for six minutes or six seconds, withdraw for one. (This is microdosing Shabbat, as Marc says.) This reflects a feature, not a bug, of the human condition: a little higher than my dog, who is constantly engaged with the world; a little lower than the angels, who exist on another plane.

“A person must consider himself as nothing, forgetting himself completely and praying only for the good of the Divine Presence,” teaches the Ba’al Shem Tov. “Then he can attain a level that transcends time – the world of thought, where everything is equal: life and death, ocean and land. This is the meaning of the Zohar: ‘Why do they cry to Me?’ (Exodus 14:15) – ‘to Me’ specifically, for the matter depends upon Atik, that part of the Divine that is beyond all duality and difference.’ The Israelites had to abandon themselves completely and forget their own danger in order to enter the World of Thought, where everything is equal.”

This is a lofty teaching from the Besh”t: If we can withdraw from, or transcend, the physical world, then we might behold the infinitely deeper reality that lies beyond its appearance. That’s what happened when our ancestors crossed the sea.

Yet consider this teaching of Rabbi Kalonymos Kalmish Shapira on the very same words, from two centuries later: “The Blessed Creator cares more about the dignity of the people of Israel than God’s own dignity… And since Moses prayed before the Holy One for God’s honor, God responded, ‘Why do you cry out to me?!’ Which is to say, ‘Why do you cry out to me for my sake? Rather, speak to the children of Israel and tell them to move!’ More than I care about my own dignity, I care about the dignity of my people.”

Rabbi Shapira would seem to push against the Ba’al Shem Tov: In a moment of such dire worldly concerns, God doesn’t want our self-abnegation and transcendence—God wants our action, our very physical engagement with the world.

Both readings are true, of course, and one may be more true than the other depending on the circumstances. Both can be, and probably are, even true simultaneously.

An essential part of our practice is discerning the circumstances in which we find ourselves, determining whether this is a moment for engagement or withdrawal, action or rest, speech or silence. We do this all the time—in our relationships, our work, our citizenship. We aim to hold, simultaneously, in our minds, hearts, and hands, the goal not to do harm and actively repair the world.

This a difficult practice. But it is one we are invited to engage in every cycle of Shabbat and the workweek, in the unceasing flow of moments of engagement and withdrawal, Shabbat and chol. May we be blessed to practice it and manifest it in our lives today.