Obama's New Era of Responsibility

A few years ago, my sister and I took a (nerdy) vacation together to Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum that embodies the everyday existence and historical significance of Williamsburg, Virginia, during the period surrounding the American Revolution. Walking along the cobblestone streets, viewing the restored homes and public buildings, I enjoyed the educational foray into the daily lives of eighteenth century colonists. But my favorite part of the day was witnessing a speech by “Thomas Jefferson.”

Peppered with quotes from actual letters, publications, and speeches of Jefferson’s, the performance addressed the crowd as colonists and argued for rebellion against the British Crown. With sweeping rhetoric and grand ideas, “Jefferson” called for a new political union, a new country and a new government unlike any preceding it, one that required bravery and vision, audacity and hopefulness. When I clapped and cheered “Huzzah!” I did so not as an audience to a convincing performance (thought it was) but as an enthusiastic supporter of Jefferson’s call to a new kind of nationhood—a government of the people, for the people, and by the people that would require hard work, education, dedication, and sacrifice.

Standing there in Colonial Williamsburg, I thought, and not for the first time, that the United States needs to revitalize its ideal of public service. In an age of increasing individualism, an age in which everyone and his blog is “famous,” we need a call to collective responsibility as a nation. We need a reminder that the founders of our nation, though marred by their own prejudices and biases, ultimately called themselves and future generations to strive to improve the life, the liberty, and the happiness of the many, not the one.

In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama made such a call, honoring the memory and the legacy of countless Americans who “struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions, greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.” Through remarkable acts of self-sacrifice by our military personnel to the seemingly simple and too often ignored moral dedication of a parent, Americans, President Obama argued, have served their country and through it the human good through a “spirit of service, a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.”

“What is required of us now,” the President urged, “is a new era of responsibility—a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”

In Hebrew, the word for responsibility is acharayut. Its first three letters also spell achier, “other” or “one who comes after.” I like to think about this connection between responsibility and the Other—the one who is different from us, the one we think we will never understand. I like to remind myself that my responsibility—to the Jewish community, to the Jewish people, to the nation of America, and to the world—is not only to myself or even to those I love, but to future generations. In Judaism, we share countless stories, prayers, and obligations about tze’etzaeinu v’tze’etzaei tze’etzaeinu, “our descendants and our descendants’ descendants.” The new era of responsibility that President Obama wants to catalyze is one that will weather us through the crisis, hopefully in our own lifetimes, but its focus and its riches will truly reach future generations: “Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end” and that “we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”

May we remember that our acharayut, our responsibility, is to those who come after us, the other, acheir.