I want to start this article out with a disclaimer that I’m not going to be talking exclusively about religion. Although I am a religious person, and I study religion in college, this article is not about me placing my personal beliefs out into the universe. I firmly believe that even if you are not religious, you can still take away concepts about life from different religions regardless of whether you practice that religion or not.
An example that I have been thinking about often takes place in Genesis 4:9. In the Old Testament, there are two brothers, Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel, and the Lord asks Cain where Abel went. In response, Cain says, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”Now, you may be thinking, “Ari I’ve never killed my brother? How the heck am I supposed to learn anything from this?” And in response I’ll say, be patient because I’m about to explain.
What does it mean to be your brother’s keeper? Well, I guess first you have to definite what it means to be a keeper. I’ve always thought about being someone’s keeper as being responsible for that person. It’s the idea that in being a keeper, you are keeping someone close to you, keeping an eye on them, making sure nothing bad happens to them. Responsibility is an interesting concept because it means an obligation or a duty. It’s either bestowed upon you or a choice that you make yourself. For example, my parents are my keepers. Under the United States law, they have an obligation to clothe me, feed me, shelter me, and keep me alive and well until I am of a legal age to be my own keeper.
But what about people you don’t have that tie to? How do you decide who is your brother, and who isn’t? To bring up another concept, in Leviticus 19:34, the text states “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall live him as yourself.”
Let’s break this down. This text brings up the fact that the Jewish people at one point were slaves in a foreign land. Although the Lord brought them out of slavery and into their promised land, they need to constantly remember their inferior place, and they need to use that reminder to welcome in the stranger.
If the religious parts are bogging you down, let me try another angle. In psychology, there are two concepts: an out-group and an in-group. Your in-group is your brother, essentially. This is a group of people that you identify with for some reason, be it your gender, religion, race, etc. You can have multiple in-groups. An out-group is the stranger, the person you don’t identify with. They have some characteristic that you see as making them different from you in some reason. Psychologically, we have found that if we witness someone from our group being targeted, we feel morally responsible to fight on their behalf. We recognize our responsibility as their keeper, because hey, that could be me.
But what about the stranger? What about the person with whom we declare we have nothing in common? You can read about slavery in AP US History and declare that racism is over because you’re a white college student and you never owned slaves or said the n-word, so you’re fine. You can roll your eyes when someone asks for you to use they/them because you’re a heterosexual cis-gender male and you’ll never be misgendered or identified. You can look away when a woman in a hijab is being interrogated because your religious practices aren’t as visible.
I get it, it’s hard. I’m not denying my privilege as a white cisgender female that goes to a private college. All I am saying is that it is difficult for all humans to embrace the unknown, and put our feet into another person’s shoes. It’s easy to say that the oppressed is not my brother, not my responsibility, not my problem. It’s easy to deny that someone’s brother is being killed if it isn’t our brother. We all have our issues, and it’s just easier to say that someone else will deal with it. But, the second we turn our backs, the second we deny the stranger, we end up killing our brother.
I grew up with a saying from a very famous rabbi. Rabbi Heschel once said, “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If am for myself alone, then what am I? And if not now, when?”
Again, let’s take it out of the religious context. You above all else must be your own responsibility. Because ultimately we live in this world alone, and we die alone, and you have to look out for yourself. But, if you only are for yourself, you’ll end up calling for help and no one will be around to help you. And if we turn our back, saying that someone else will deal with this, that we’ll help when we’re less busy, things will never change. I’m tired of articles simply being shared on Facebook, terrified at how normal shootings are these days. I’m frustrated with people who think themselves privileged enough to simply sit back and wait until it happens to them. I don’t want a wall. I don’t want a registry. We can’t end up killing our brother, because eventually no one will be left.We all have a responsibility to at least try. To put our arms down and listen to the stranger across the table. Learn about another person. Try to make our differences less foreign, less scary. We all have an obligation to help the stranger, because at one point we were all strangers in need.