Sermon: Ki Teitzei – Do not remain indifferent
Written by Rabbi Colin Eimer — 6 September 2025
Rabbi Hugo Gryn z”l related how, in the closing months of the war, he was on one of the ‘Death Marches’ when Jews were marched from the concentration camps back into Germany in front of the advancing Russian army. He remembers passing through villages whose inhabitants would stare at them, but didn’t, as it were, see them. “It felt,” he said, “as if they didn’t even see us, as if something had gone out in their eyes.”
We are bombarded with images of pain and suffering to the point of what has come to be called ‘compassion fatigue’: that sense of being overwhelmed by so much suffering that we develop a second skin, as protection against feeling too assailed by the pain of these events. That is compounded by the feeling of “what can I do anyway?” How do we decide what to respond to? A paralysis of feeling leads to a paralysis of action. In addition, when you are overwhelmed with your own pain, it’s so consuming that it’s much harder to see that of anybody else.
In the war, indifference to the suffering of others was elevated into a virtue. On October 5th,1943, Heinrich Himmler addressed the SS 0fficers running the camps: “One basic principle must guide us” he said. “We must be honest, decent and loyal to members of our own blood and nobody else. Most of you know what it is like to see a thousand corpses lying side by side. To have stuck it out and at the same time to have remained decent fellows – that is what has made us hard.” That mix of ideology and indifference have become horrendous, murderous.
In 1946, the German pastor, Martin Niemoller, wrote a now famous reflection:
First they came for the Communists
But I did not speak out – because I was not a Communist;
Then they came for the Socialists
But I did not speak out – because I was not a Socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists
But I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews
But I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me –
But there was no one left to speak out for me
Our siddur anthology has a piece by the French Jewish poet Emmanuel Eydoux (p346):
to open eyes when others close them
to hear when others do not wish to listen
to look when others turn away
to rouse oneself when others accept
to cry out when others keep silent
to be a Jew
it is that
it is first of all that….
Decent human society is built on not remaining indifferent to the plight of others. It recognizes that beyond all those things which potentially or actually divide us: colour of skin, religion, political creed, wealth, culture etc etc, we all share a common humanity.
And so it should come as no surprise to find the injunction in this week’s Torah reading: lo tuchal l’hitalem (Deuteronomy 22:3) “you cannot remain indifferent.” Another translation reads “you cannot ignore it.” (Robert Alter) In Hebrew l’hitalem comes from a root word to do with concealing, hiding. In our verse, the verb is reflexive – in other words, the action is inner-directed. Rashi, in his commentary, brings out that sense when he uses the phrase lichvosh eyn’cha literally “to conceal your eyes” – as in a game of hide and seek where everybody runs to hide and you cover your eyes and count to 10 before looking for them. But Rashi’s ‘covering the eyes’ is of a different order altogether, a moral not seeing.
The context in the Torah reading is about finding something belonging to your neighbour. Indifference there is defined in terms of loss – somebody else’s loss should be our concern. Returning somebody else’s property suggests we do it because we feel the pain of their loss – which automatically implies that we don’t feel indifferent. But we use many mechanisms to avoid doing so.
Those Germans Hugo Gryn saw on the Death Marches had allowed dogma and ‘principle’ to shut out any other human considerations.
In religious thought, it’s called the ‘theological suspension of the ethical.’ We say that some supposed religious ‘principle’ is more important than ethical demands.
Political life is full of examples of political allegiance being given more importance than conscience. Disraeli is reputed to have said to some rebellious Member of Parliament, “damn your principles, Sir, and stick to your Party.”
Richard Dawkins, in his 1976 book, “the Selfish Gene,” argues that it’s in our nature to be selfish rather than altruistic. And how genes get reproduced reinforces that. But scientific research into this, however, suggests that human qualities are much more learned than inherited or genetically inborn. Our ethical sensitivity is largely created by the environment in which we live – our homes, schools, social relationships, the political climate and so on. That is, I presume, why those Germans were able to look on those in the ‘Death March’ and apparently feel nothing.
So-called ‘realists’ often applaud Dawkins-type thinking – “at least he’s being honest and realistic about human nature” they say. Clearly it would be naive to deny that there is a strong pull towards looking out for ‘number one’ or for those in our immediate circle. I guess we will feel differently for those we know, with whom we are in some sort of relationship, than we do for those with whom we don’t have any meaningful relationship.
But that said, there’s a big difference between recognising that pull towards selfishness, on the one hand, and saying that it’s our primary instinct, on the other. Morality and expediency aren’t necessarily diametric opposites. At it’s most grob level, it’s in my self-interest to treat you decently because I hope you’ll do the same by me.
What we have been seeing on our screens, in the newspapers, about what’s been happening in Gaza raise this whole question of lo tuchal l’hitalem “you cannot remain indifferent.” People who do not normally seem tough-minded somehow seem to be able to accept, even justify the military action, the withholding of aid supplies and so on. I don’t believe they are somehow callous or unmoved by the plight of others. Even allowing for misreporting, cynical control of information, media bias and so on, the images we see are appalling.
What happened on October 7th is beyond description or imagination, as is the continued cynical holding of hostages. But when I hear people saying that what Israel does now is justified by what Hamas did then, I think of lo tuchal l’hitalem, and wonder how those normally decent folk can talk in that way. Worse still, in my eyes, are those who say something like “well, they’re only Palestinians anyway.”
I feel the anger, the trauma, the shock, the despair, the surprise at the antisemitism it has unleashed – but at the end of the day, there remains lo tuchal l’hitalem.
I hope the choice is not between being a bleeding-heart liberal or a hard-nosed realist. But if that does have to be the choice, I think I prefer bleeding all over the place to a sort of moral anaemia, where I’m bloodless, as it were, unresponsive to situations where compassion is required.
But of course it’s not clearcut, not black-and-white. The real choice is obviously not simply between cynicism and indifference, on the one hand, and high-minded rhetoric about not being indifferent, on the other.
What Jewish teaching can do – must do – is to keep throwing at us those three Hebrew words in our Torah reading: lo tuchal lehitalem, “you cannot remain indifferent.” Religion keeps saying to us: there are issues we cannot ignore, to which we have to respond; questions with which we have to struggle and that if we do remain indifferent, we only do so at risk to our moral health.
The Days of Awe begin in less than three weeks – that time when we should be taking stock of who and what we are, how we are living our lives, relating to those around us – including the ways in which we have been indifferent to the fate of others.
to open eyes when others close them
to hear when others do not wish to listen
to look when others turn away
to rouse oneself when others accept
to cry out when others keep silent
to be a Jew
it is that
it is first of all that….
What is happening is unconscionable, and seeing without looking, finding justification for it, is to violate that command lo tuchal l’hitalem.