The Nounification of Righteousness:

Jewish Light for this Dark Day

"When the world gives you Pogroms, 
Give the world Tzedakah."

-- Javier Levine, The Book of Aphorisms

(The Lebuvaticher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, had a policy of meeting people and giving everyone he met a dollar that they could use if they needed it or give to someone else if they didn’t. He was one of the great advocates for Tzedakah and righteousness in the 20th century)
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This essay is not about what is happening in Amsterdam, nor about how little the U.S. and Europe are doing in response, nor even about the hypocrisy of the antisemitic left that has been crying about Trump’s nazism for weeks while not saying a word about the real Nazism on display in the Netherlands. 

This essay is about grammar.

And, also, about how wildly brilliant Judaism is.

This essay is about what happens when an adjective becomes a noun, or what we might call “nounification,” and it is about how Judaism nounified the concept of righteousness so perfectly you didn’t even notice it. 

Adjectives describe nouns. Nouns are things. 

When an adjective becomes a noun, it means that the description of something has become so complete that the very description has become a thing in and of itself. 

“Poor” is an adjective. 

“He did a poor job affixing his wings to his son’s back.” 

Here, poor describes the job that Daedelus did with his son’s wax wings. 

“Poor,” as an adjective, describes something which is lacking. In this case, the job that Daedelus did. 

But poor has also become a noun, “the poor.” 

It means someone whose financial situation is lacking so much that his very existence is a totality of “lacking.” 

Life for the poor is one of lacking. 

The same is true for the word “rich,” and so many other adjectives that have since been nounified. 

But there is no nounified version of “righteous,” at least, not in English. 

To be “righteous” means to behave according to “rightness,” or to do that which is or may be considered right. 

We know, more or less, what poorness becoming a noun looks like, and we know what richness becoming a noun looks like. 

But we have no idea what righteousness becoming a noun looks like. 

However, Hebrew does. 

The word for righteous in Hebrew is “Tzedek.”

“Tzedek” is also the word for justice. 

“Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof,” or “justice, justice you shall pursue (Deuteronomy 16:18-2). 

A “Tzaddik” is a righteous person, one whose life is defined by his desire to be in good standing with G-d.

Given that a “Tzaddik” is a righteous person, and the root of the word is “Tzedek,” which means justice, we would assume that a righteous person is one whose life is defined by his pursuit of justice. 

But soon, we are going to have a problem. 

We are very near to committing the heinous sin of tautology, circular reasoning, a crime for which a student of mine would have to spend several moments in the corner.

However, Judaism and the Hebrew language avoid this danger with a brilliant nounfication of the concept of justice, “Tzedakah.” 

“Tzedakah,” which we usually translate as charity, is a noun derived from the word for justice. 

Tzedakah, the giving of money and support to those who need it, is not an act of charity – it is an act of justice. 

Financially supporting the less fortunate is not charity, which is inherently optional, it is a mandatory manifestation of one’s sense of justice. 

The highest manifestation of justice in a human being is his charity. 

To many modern minds, this is counter-intuitive. 

One of the oft-repeated definitions of justice is that it is “giving to each his due.” 

Giving money to someone who did not earn it does not meet that standard of justice, which may demonstrate that that standard of justice is wrong. 

The concept of “tzedakah” extends well beyond financial support.  

Any action one takes to benefit his fellow man is a form of Tzedakah.

Giving money, donating time, even offering kind words to strangers on the street is a form of Tzedakah. 

In a world of virtue signalers, how do we know what real virtue is? 

Real virtue is what people do when no one is watching. 

When no one is watching you, how are you treating your fellow man? 

Has your sense of justice nounified in your soul? Are your actions a manifestation of your virtues? If not, maybe you have a little bit of self-pruning to do.

That’s a good thing – knowing you need to grow more is the only way to know that you are actually growing. 

I will leave you all with this thought. 

Every Jewish home has a Tzedakah box. If yours doesn’t yet, go get one. 

And get one that’s beautiful – giving Tzedakah is beautiful, and the vessel that holds your Tzedakah should reflect that. 

Every Jewish child learns that you are supposed to give Tzedakah.

Every shul has a Tzedakah box, usually placed in a prominent position. 

Generally speaking, it is considered inappropriate to give Tzedakah in front of other people because it can be considerd boasting. 

However, in shul, you are supposed to make a somewhat public display of yourself getting up and walking to the Tzedakah box. 

Why? 

Because every Jew in that room, since before they could walk, knows that he is supposed to put money in that Tzedakah box, and, when he sees you getting up to do that, it reminds him that he is supposed to do that too. 

Why is he supposed to do that? Because it is the right thing to do. 

Every man has an idea of what justice is and ought to be, and Tzedakah is how we manifest those ideas in our lives. 

When the world gives you Pogroms, Give the world Tzedakah. 

And if you are wondering how you can give Tzedakah to support Zionism in the aftermath of this Dutch tragedy, you can always upgrade your subscription to The Zionist Voice and spread our work to whoever you can. 

Let your sense of justice manifest in your behaviors, 

And let your righteousness shine through everything you do. 

Spread love, Spread Light, 

Am Yisrael Chai 

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