Shavuos Ethos Analysis

Speech joke yetzer hara and yetzer tov
(…so I decided its 2017, I’ll listen to everyone.)
Believe it or not, part of what Shavuos represents is the introduction of liberal ideas to our society. Before Uriel jumps at my throat, let me clarify…
No society before the Torah or without Torah’s influence has attributed intrinsic value to individual life. Without the Torah, government spending to heal or preserve life would be considered an absurd venture. The right to life, which the American Declaration of Independence considered "self-evident," was not evident to anyone that didn’t absorb Torah values.
Think back to Rome only a few hundred years ago. Killing for entertainment was the most popular amusement in decorated country, where some 50,000 people would crowd into the Coliseum to watch convicted criminals, slaves, and POWs fed to the lions to the death. Lest the crowd get bored, routine executions by burning, beheading, and skinning people alive were offered for amusement during intermission.
“Lo Sirtzach,” the sixth of the Aseres Adibros revealed at Mattan Torah, was not simply ethical rationality to the stability of society. The Torah instead asserted that all individual human beings were holy because they were created in the image of God. As the
Gemarah writes: "He who saves one life is as if he had saved the whole world." The value of the individual is a Torah innovation.
When the Torah laid down the principle of equal justice before the law, the rest of the world must have laughed.
The pasuk in Kedoshim: "You shall not commit a perversion of justice; you shall not favor the poor and you shall not honor the mighty" would have been regarded as outlandish had God not commanded it. According to the Torah, even a king is not above the law and even a slave is not below it. Jewish courts do -- and always have- heard cases initiated by wronged workers, women, and foreigners. By contrast, ancient Athens, the so-called "cradle of democracy," extended full legal rights to only a few thousand men who owned land, leaving its other hundreds of thousands of residents with no recourse to the
law.
Imagine walking in an obscure European city; a rare area the Torah’s influence has not yet reached. We walk north, past the fashionable uptown, into a low-income neighborhood, and here the most conspicuous difference surfaces. The streets are lined with unfortunates – the mentally ill, the crippled, and the starving children. With all the strength they can gather, theses weak souls reach out their tired hands and beg for help: "Why are these people on the street?" we demand. "Where are the orphanages? The social service agencies? The institutions for mentally ill? The soup kitchens? The rehabilitation centers for the handicapped?"
An outraged response roars to our ears: "There's nothing like that here, and why should there be? We didn't hurt these people. It's not our fault if they're hungry or handicapped. We bear no responsibility to help them."
As Ken Spiro points out in WorldPerfect, a book discussing the Torah’s remarkable impact on society, the Torah burst into the scene with a completely novel concept: the obligation to proactively do good and look out for others. The psukim in Kedoshim: "Veohavta lerayachu kamocha” and "lo saamod al dam rayechu” charged humankind with social responsibility, an idea that sans-Torah societies never dreamed of.
Thomas Huxley, also known as Darwin’s Bulldog for his advocacy of the evolution theory, drove this point forward, calling Torah "the Magna Carta of the poor and of the oppressed.” The Torah obligated human beings to take responsibility for the welfare of people beyond the precincts of their own homes and circles, not because it was advantageous for the body politic, but because a just and loving God demanded compassion for all His children. As we experience this tasty holiday of Shavuos, let us remember to thank Hashem for introducing the Torah and, thereby, enhancing our society.