(RNS) — I have profound problems with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, stemming from his repeatedly stated anti-Zionism, which he turned into policy within the first days of his administration.
But, when he said in his inaugural address on Thursday (Jan. 1) that he wanted to replace “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” it made me think about what Judaism teaches on those worldviews.
There has been outcry on social media about the word “collectivism” because it sounds like “collectivization,” meaning the forced consolidation of private property and enterprise into collectively managed or state-run entities. Under Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in China, collectivization meant the government seizing land, abolishing private farming, creating state-controlled collectives and authoritarians enforcing it with no democratic consent. It meant famine in Ukraine, mass incarceration and mass death. The very notion of collectivization should rightly send shivers up the spine of all good people.
But, Mamdani referred to “collectivism,” which is different.
Collectivism could mean that citizens would share responsibility in addressing various city-wide challenges, like housing affordability, public services and wealth inequality. You can disagree with those policies — and many do — but they are not Mao 2.0. In modern New York City, that’s not even remotely possible.
Which brings me to his critique of “rugged individualism” and the related Jewish conversation.
On one hand, individualism is a blessing — perhaps, the original blessing. It comes from the fact that each human being is made in the divine image and means that each individual possesses dignity and autonomy.
The ancient sages would concur. The Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5) famously puts it this way:
Adam was created alone, to teach you that anyone who destroys one soul – it is as if he destroyed an entire world. And conversely, anyone who sustains one soul from the Jewish people, the verse ascribes him credit as if he sustained an entire world. … The first person was created singular so that one person can say that my ancestor is greater than your ancestor….
That is Jewish individualism 1.0.
But, is individualism a problem? Sometimes.
In “The Social Animal,” David Brooks writes:
Conservative activists embraced the individualism of the market. They reacted furiously against any effort by the state to impinge upon individual economic choice. They adopted policy prescriptions designed to maximize economic freedom: lower tax rates so people could keep and use more of their money, privatized Social Security so people could control more of their own pensions, voucher programs so parents could choose schools for their children.
Liberals embraced the individualism of the moral sphere. They reacted furiously against any effort by the state to impinge upon choices about marriage, family structure, the role of women, and matters of birth and death. They embraced policies designed to maximize social freedom…
Judaism is an extended critique of rugged individualism. It insists that moral responsibility begins not with the self, but with the other. As French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas put it: “The face of the Other speaks to me and thereby invites me to a relation incommensurate with a power exercised, whether enjoyment or knowledge.”
At the foundation of Jewish ethics is the principle of arevut, or mutual responsibility. “All Israel is responsible for one another,” the Talmud teaches (Shevuot 39a).
Consider the concept of tzedakah. “If there is among you a poor person … you shall not harden your heart” (Deuteronomy 15:7). Who, in the Bible, hardened his heart? Pharaoh. The lesson: don’t be Pharaoh.
In “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Blanche DuBois said, “I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.” Judaism responds that no one should have to rely on kindness. The laws of gleaning required farmers to leave portions of their harvest for the poor and the stranger (Leviticus 19:9-10). This was not voluntary generosity but social responsibility.
That idea collides head-on with rugged individualism’s insistence on absolute property rights and morally neutral markets.
The rabbis, for their part, offered a chilling portrait of what happens when rugged individualism goes unchecked. They described the people of Sodom not primarily as violent, but as radically individualistic.
In Pirkei Avot, we read:
There are four types of character among human beings. One who says, ‘What is mine is yours and what is yours is mine,’ is an unlearned person. One who says, ‘What is mine is yours and what is yours is yours,’ is pious. One who says, ‘What is mine is mine and what is yours is mine,’ is wicked. One who says, ‘What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours,’ is an average type—and some say this was the character of Sodom.
In other words: leave me alone. I’ve got mine, you’ve got yours, and that’s all that matters. Let us retreat into our own bubbles and call it justice. Judaism calls that moral failure, and the ancient sages would say that such an attitude condemned Sodom to destruction — that any society that functions this way would implode.
This is precisely what we mean when we talk about living in community. That doesn’t mean only the people that we know and like. “Community” implies a sense of living in a cooperative relationship, a sense of shared values — what the late sociologist Amitai Etzioni defined as communitarianism, the belief that individuals flourish only within networks of mutual obligation, shared norms and common purpose, and that society has moral claims on us that precede our personal preferences.
At its core, that is the question that Judaism asks. “Where are you?” God asks Adam. And the only preferred answer is: Hineini, here I am. Judaism asks us to build social capital, to re-attach the Velcro that binds us to each other — starting with our families, our people and, ultimately, the world itself.
Whether politics achieves this is an open question. But, our institutions can strive to do so. In fact, they must.