It was cold on Presidents Day, and many of our friends had gone to warmer places for the long weekend. So my son Toby and I wound up at the movies. We saw “Mufasa,” which tells the backstory to “The Lion King:” how the orphaned Mufasa (this is a Disney movie after all—gotta have your orphan story) is adopted by a new family and emerges into a great leader. Love, betrayal, all the the usual ingredients, including some new songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda (far from his best work, but fine). I’d give it a solid B.
Despite the familiarity of the storyline, nevertheless I couldn’t help but be moved when the stronger moral moments emerged: when characters showed great bravery, when homecoming finally occurred, when all the animals recognized Mufasa’s integrity and instinctively started kneeling to him and calling him “Your Majesty,” crowning him their brave, wise, and benevolent king. While the Disney tropes may be tired, they’re still quite effective.
I’ve written in this space before about social psychologist Dacher Keltner’s research into awe. As a tear came to my eye towards the end of “Mufasa,” I heard Keltner in my head reminding me that one of the ways we can experience awe is by witnessing moral beauty: seeing people do selfless, courageous things; witnessing people offer comfort and solidarity (like many others, I expect, I teared up again Thursday morning watching Israelis lining overpasses and interchanges as the vehicles carrying the bodies of Oded Lifschitz and Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas traveled on the highway from Gaza to Tel Aviv). These touch deep chords in our hearts. They activate something deep inside, a sense, perhaps, that we’re observing the Divine Presence at that moment.
Another familiar trope founded on moral beauty is the person willing to do what’s right even when it comes with great risk. Think of “Twelve Angry Men,” or “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Such stories inspire us. We see courage, virtue, integrity: all the things that the animals—and we—see in Mufasa. If you’re like me, you might experience a swelling of the heart at such stories.
Yet those stories invite us to certain questions: How do we discern what’s right? How much is acceptable to risk, and under what circumstances? And, perhaps most of all for people who live in a democracy (or a polity that aspires to be one), when do we accede to the will of the majority—even if we think they’re wrong?
Political theorist Danielle Allen reminds us that “of all the ritual relevant to democracy, sacrifice is preeminent. No democratic citizen, adult or child, escapes the necessity of losing out at some point in a public decision.” (Talking to Strangers, 28) Democracies function on the twin practices of a) losing minorities to sacrifice by recognizing the will of the majority; b) the system’s ability to distribute sacrifice equitably, such that everyone is losing out at a roughly equal rate and no one constituency is always winning.
But sometimes the majority is actually wrong. Parashat Mishpatim invites us into such a case: “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment.” (Exodus 23:2) This is the verse that undergirds the whole story in “Twelve Angry Men:” Even when—no, especially when—the majority is about to do something wrong, we are commanded to speak up.
In an unusually long gloss, the normally laconic Rashi takes issue with an interpretive tradition that emerged around this verse which understood its application to be limited to rather particular cases within the rabbinic court system. In an unusually animated voice, Rashi counters: “There are regarding this verse Midrashic interpretations by the Sages of Israel; but the language of the verse is not explained by them in its proper way… ‘Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil’ means, if you see wicked men perverting justice, do not say, ‘Since they are the majority I shall follow them;’ ‘Neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment’ means, if the defendant asks you concerning that judgment, do not answer him regarding the dispute anything which inclines after that majority to pervert justice from its truth, but tell him the judgment as it should be, and let the collar be hung around the neck of the majority.”
The picture Rashi paints is one of a judge—or, in a democratic society, I would suggest, a juror, government official, or citizen—who is fearless in the face of the majority’s pressure to conform. Not only is such fearless righteousness morally inspiring, it is also Biblically commanded.
Easier said than done, of course. If it were easy to do, Disney wouldn’t make movies about it.
Which brings us to the question of practice. I have observed many times before that I see a relationship between Tocqueville’s notion of “habits of the heart” that lie at the core of democratic life and the Talmudic phrase avodah shebalev, “service of the heart,” which the Rabbis used to describe prayer. So many of the capacities required of citizens in a democracy are spiritual ones: the capacity to sacrifice, as Danielle Allen describes; the capacity to understand clearly our own motivations and those of others; the capacity to speak and act courageously, even when powerful forces are arrayed against us. These are not dry legal ideas confined to treatises by Hobbes and Locke. They are the heart and soul of the sacred task of sustaining a society in which every human being can live and be recognized as an image of God.