The calendar is a moral document
July 27th, 2009 | Tikkun Daily
Mike Ignatowski makes two interesting assertions about moral documents in this article at Tikkun Daily.
I can accept that the framers of a budget are moral but not that the federal budget is (or ever could be) a moral document: the obvious question becomes “whose morality defines the federal budget?”
The idea that the calendar is a moral document, however, is correct — and I will make a case for it here.
The Hebrew word for calendar is luah [לוּח], a word related to shulhan [שׁוּלחן] “table”. (The little line beneath the “h” means you should pronounce it as if you have something stuck in your throat.)
The Jewish calendar, any religious calendar, imposes a tabular morality by setting out the days I call feasts, fasts and frolics — these are the organised days by which an adherent lives life. One of these days, Yom Kippur Qatan (YK Qatan) melds the separate ideas of calendars and budgets as moral documents.
Yom Kippur Qatan
YK Qatan is a custom from Kabbala. It is a day of fasting and repentance on the day before Rosh Hodesh (the New Month).
It was the custom of the sainted Chafetz Chaim to keep two sets of monthly account books — one in which he recorded his store’s reciepts and one in which he recorded the assets and liabilities accumulated by his soul.
Moral Budgeting
A personal budget is thus a moral document, and if enough personal budgets became moral documents the federal budget would by default also become one, even with line items in it that were inherently immoral. This would be so because we trusted each other as moral beings even if our politics separated us.
Utopia, thy name is Reb Arie!
Halakha (Jewish law) includes a moral budgeting perspective. Here is one form called a tzedaqa calculator. You can use to determine your halakhic obligation to tzedaqa (charitable giving) by basing it on your 1040 inputs. I wish we had something similar for the T1 tax return in Canada. One more thing to do…
The halakha also includes strong guidance for businesses, as in this article.
A Jewish calendar, any religious calendar, is about the imposition of traditional memory. My religious calendar, your religious calendar, tells me, tells you, that certain charitable obligations are applicable at certain times.A calendar usually has two functions: it is used to prevent memory loss — you want me to do a wedding on October 25? Let me check my calendar… no problem — and to establish me as reliable.
My course in liturgy and innovation at the Metivta of Ottawa calls this idea “liturgical ethics”. The call to spirituality does not necessarily imply a belief in any religious concept of godliness, Heaven, or the like.
The call to spirituality may merely be the call to attain a Good Order Direction, and that is a G O D even the most atheistic can surely embrace.
