February 2000 The Odd Couple By a href="mailto:AKass@emjc.org">Rabbi Alvin Kass Hillel taught: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me; and if I am only for myself what am I? If not now, when?" Those are surely among the wisest words of our tradition. Their meaningfulness and contemporary relevance came poignently to mind upon watching the recent PBS documentary "New York," which demonstrates that this city was founded upon the premise of making a buck. While other colonies may have come into being as havens for religious dissidents or indentured servants, the history of New Amsterdam began with the most famous real estate deal in history: Peter Minuet's purchase of Manhattan Island from local Indians for $24 in beads and trinkets. Real estate transactions have pervaded the local scene ever since along with myriads of other commercial endeavors, proving that New Yorkers accept Hillel's admonition that if they don't line their pockets with cash, no one will do it for them. To have an unabashed love affair with capitalism and commerce doesn't make for noble and heroic rhetoric. The fact is, however, that the pursuit of greed in New York has led to some very positive developments. No one knows that better than the Jews. Thus, when the crusty, irascible and anti-Semitic governor of New Amsterdam, the notorious Peter Stuyvesant, tried to banish the first Jews who came here to live in 1654, he was overruled by the directors of the Dutch West India Company, who feared that such conduct would interfere with the colony's profitability. For similar reasons, Asser Levy succeeded in his battles with Stuyvesant to become the first Jewish policeman in this hemisphere as well as to gain citizenship rights for his co-religionists. While Hillel had no problem with people making money, his philosophy makes clear that if that is all you do, your humanity is sadly lacking. This city, with all its greed and avarice, also understood that with profit must come social conscience. Hence, decent housing, public health, and free education became recognized over the years as entitlements that go along with citizenship. At seminal moments, the city responded to glaring communal ills. Jacob Riis' stirring photographs of slum conditions in the 1880's shamed city elders into developing housing codes for tenements. The tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in 1911 that killed 146 women in 15 minutes led to broader powers for the Fire Department to ensure factory safety and bolstered the drive to unionize factory workers. The evolution of municipal conscience was also evident in the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission which saved precious buildings that otherwise would have been demolished in the lust for lucre. The proper balance between capitalism and the public good wasn't always struck, but it has happened often enough to put New York City in the vanguard of the struggle to make this country the world's preeminent citadel of social justice. Greed and goodness may seem like an odd couple, but they have gotten along amazingly well in the City of New York. That greed and goodness are not incompatible is a fundamental premise of Freudian psychology. Indeed, Freud argued that self-love must precede love of others. Only those who care about themselves and fulfill their own requirements possess as well the psychological health and physical means to focus attention and energy on the plight of the disadvantaged. The third clause of Hillel's instruction is: "If not now, when?" Hillel exhorts us in those classic words to remember life's brevity. Unless we start right now to synthesize our greed and goodness, to combine our efforts at self-aggrandizement with social consciousness, it may soon be too late. The knowledge that our life will end some day should not dominate our lives. Nevertheless, it ought to give vividness and urgency to our actions. May the Third Millennium bring prosperity to us all. May it also be a time when we work together to complete the unfinished tasks that will bring into being a world of social justice and universal peace. That is what Hillel would have wished us, and it represents the highest aspirations of our faith.