INDEPENDENT
Not in the way many of us misunderstand it. Values are meaningless when we treat them like commodities to be gambled with on the stock market of political correctness. Judaism, wrote Abraham Joshua Heschel in God in Search of Man, “is not just a way of living; it is a way of thinking.” And we’ve all but lost a good chunk of that “way of thinking” by blindly hopping onto whichever bandwagon of “empathy” happens to be in vogue, assuming naively that “empathy” is a Jewish value.
It is certainly not a Jewish value when overly empathetic policies by local jurisdictions enable rapes and murders by repeat offenders. The fallacy of “empathy” has of late also enabled sovereign nations to be overrun by cultures bent on destroying them, streaming across their borders (no weapons needed) under the Trojan Horse banner of “asylum seeking.” Empathy, schmempathy. As the 2nd-century Rebbe Elazar taught: “Anyone who acts mercifully toward the cruel, will in the end act with cruelty toward the merciful” (Midrash Tanchuma, Metzora, Ch. 1).
Rabbi Gershon Winkler
Walking Stick Foundation
Golden, CO
HUMANIST
Yes—empathy is absolutely a Jewish value, but it is a demanding one, bounded by responsibility and judgment.
The Torah’s lodestar is “v’ahavta l’rei’echa kamocha,” often translated as “Love your neighbor as yourself.” My teachers suggested a different reading: Love your neighbor because he is like you. This grounds empathy in moral recognition. Other people will not remain abstractions to us when we think of them as other selves, capable of pain, fear, dignity and moral choice—just as we all are. The Torah further reminds us (repeatedly) that we were “strangers in Egypt” and are therefore called upon to resist cruelty, indifference and dehumanization. These teachings transform empathy into an ethical discipline asking us to imagine the inner life of others and act accordingly.
Yet Judaism never suggests that this attitude is limitless or self-negating. Empathy does not require us to accommodate every demand or ignore real risks. Compassion is not naiveté. Our rabbis believed in compassion but also in firm boundaries to protect life, communal safety and moral order.
In today’s debates, what some call “suicidal empathy” conflates empathy with the abdication of moral responsibility. Our tradition rejects that confusion. Empathy must inform judgment, not replace it. Practiced in this balanced sense, empathy is a Jewish value. It is both rooted in shared humanity and tempered by reason, accountability and a commitment to the well-being of our communities and our people.
Rabbi Jeffrey Falick
Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Metro Detroit
Farmington Hills, MI
RENEWAL
Gosh, yes. I don’t know how the new “toxic empathy” folks can read the Torah and avoid finding empathy. Indeed, the Torah mandates empathy, as well as kindness and justice based on empathy. Over and over, the Torah teaches us not to harm or oppress the stranger—indeed, to love the stranger. Why? Because, says the Torah, you know what it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land. As Rabbi Shai Held has prominently taught, our foundational precept is to turn the experience of having been oppressed by slavery in ancient Egypt into empathy for the strangers residing in our midst. What about “Love your neighbor as yourself”? By all means, love your neighbor, but the Torah cares a whole lot more that you love the stranger. Empathy and equal justice for the stranger are the Torah’s great lessons of the Exodus from Egypt.
These core Jewish values are being tested now; here in the United States, decades of progress in expanding empathy are crumbling in the face of government cruelty toward immigrants. In Israel, we see an implosion of Jewish values as Palestinians continue to be ignored, demeaned or treated as second-class citizens. How long can a Jewish nation endure if it is not based on empathy and justice for both its own citizens and the strangers living among them?
Rabbi Gilah Langner
Congregation Kol Ami
Arlington, VA
RECONSTRUCTIONIST
Heck, yeah: Empathy comes straight from Scripture, our most basic and Golden Rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). We are commanded to see those around us as indistinguishable from ourselves, commanded to “bear the yoke with our neighbor” (Avot 6:6), even when the yoke is heavy. And how can we not, when our neighbors (of every nation, creed or color) equally carry the divine image (Genesis 1:27)? They’re not heavy; they’re our siblings.
The essence of empathy is that life is not all about you. You’re not the center of the universe. You’re here to give, to share, to serve, to transcend.
Hillel makes it clearer still, in his articulation of that universal golden truth: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; that is the whole Torah” (Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 31a). Mic drop. Empathy, our full loving identification with others, is the whole Torah. It’s painful even to have to spell this out, but such are the times in which we live. Against the ominous winds of political discourse and social media, Judaism insists that we be distinctly countercultural and hold aloft such big, holy, ancient ideals as empathy. Tacking into today’s mean-spirited breeze, let’s proudly unfurl our tall empathic sails and make slow, steady headway toward the sacred shores of love and interconnection.
Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb
Adat Shalom Reconstructionist
Congregation (Emeritus)
Bethesda, MD
REFORM
The Hebrew word ampatiyah is a loanword adopted from English; there is no ancient Hebrew word that is a direct equivalent for the English word “empathy.” One might think that this indicates that empathy is not a Jewish value. But that is not the case.
Found in the Talmudic tractate Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 6:6 is a list of 48 Jewish virtues, also called middot. Practicing these middot makes one a true learner and practitioner of Torah and an ethical person. At the top of that list, right after “study of Torah,” is the phrase shmi’at ha-ozen, literally meaning “listening ear.” Shmi’at comes from the word for “listen” or “hear,” the same root for the word sh’ma; ozen means ear. As a character trait, shmi’at ha-ozen, attentive listening, is more than just the physical act of hearing.
Mussar, the Jewish spiritual and ethical practice intended to help one live a holy life, embraces shmi’at ha-ozen. To practice shmi’at ha-ozen is to be focused and caring, to be a non-judgmental presence seeking deep understanding of the other. Shmi’at ha-ozen requires curiosity, humility and an ability to put oneself in the place of the other, with the aim of truly understanding them and coming to a new understanding of oneself. This is the beginning of empathy.
Rabbi Dr. Laura Novak Winer
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Fresno, CA
CONSERVATIVE
There is no doubt in my mind that empathy is a Jewish value.
So many of our sources teach the importance of understanding and sharing the feelings of another. Genesis tells us that all humanity was created in God’s image. The Torah repeatedly (36 times) reminds the Israelites that their experience as slaves in Egypt is foundational for their laws. And “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) is also a foundational teaching.
In modern times, I turn to Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, z’’l. Rachel became known for her tireless activism to raise awareness of the plight of the hostages—but I hope her legacy to her fellow Jews and the world will also be her tender and capacious heart. It’s a heart that holds her aching pain while also holding the pain of the other side. One of the most moving examples of this is the poem “One Tiny Seed,” which Rachel wrote for a woman in Gaza and delivered before the UN in December 2023.
Cultivating empathy is not intuitive or easy. Rachel is my role model. Her composure, her wisdom, her moral compass are unbelievable. Since October 7 I have had to work very hard to be empathetic to people I perceive as a threat or danger. Besides making Rachel my teacher, I also remind myself regularly that empathy is not an endorsement—it is being willing to listen and see.
Rabbi Amy S. Wallk
Temple Beth El
Springfield, MA
MODERN ORTHODOX
Empathy is a central Jewish value. Maimonides makes clear that acts of lovingkindness (such as visiting the sick, comforting mourners, offering hospitality) are all fulfillments of the central Jewish mitzvah to love your neighbor as yourself. All these practices require empathy for the other person. Maimonides considers not sharing the community’s concerns—not rejoicing in its victories, not feeling its pain—to be an ultimate betrayal of membership in the Jewish people.
Lately, some have pointed out that empathy without boundaries can be destructive. Witness those whose empathy for Palestinians striving for a state of their own or for Palestinians suffering in Gaza or the West Bank leads them to support Hamas and other terrorist groups that have murdered, raped or kidnapped Israelis and Jews. This is living proof that all good values and ideas have limits. They become destructive when taken too far.
In Jews who turn anti-Zionist, empathy for strangers (Palestinians) obliterates the natural human emotion to protect and consider the suffering of one’s family first. Supporting those who would kill the Jewish people, they betray their responsibility for fellow Jews. As the Talmud says: Those who show compassion for those who are cruel end up showing cruelty to those who deserve compassion.
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg
J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life/Hadar
Riverdale, NY
ORTHODOX
It is crucially important. Empathy is the beginning of compassion. You can’t have compassion unless you have an empathic understanding of some other person, and compassion is considered one of the most vital characteristics of a Jewish soul.
The Talmud relates that the Israelites, during a famine, received a divine communication that they were being punished for two sins: not properly mourning King Saul after his death, and neglecting a community called the Gevonim whose status as Jews was uncertain and who had been harmed by Saul’s wars. King David offered the Gevonim compensation, but they insisted on blood revenge on Saul’s sons. David granted it but declared that thenceforth they were not to be treated as Jews.
The Talmud draws from this story that Jews in community must demonstrate three qualities: They must be compassionate, have a sense of shame and do chesed, deeds of lovingkindness, to one another. Someone who does not have these three characteristics is suspected of not being fully Jewish. This view was incorporated in parts of Jewish law, a reflection of what the sages considered the essence of the Jewish soul.
That said, our compassion has to have limits. The Lurianic Kabbalah teaches that din, justice, starts from the idea that God’s chesed could be so overpowering that God had to create vessels such as din to hold it.
We have to be careful never to dull our empathy, but what we do with it requires more thought. To those who criticize “suicidal empathy,” I would say it’s not the empathy that’s harmful, it’s applying it in the wrong circumstances. For instance, concluding that no, we can’t have open borders—so we can’t keep the borders open to all those fleeing persecution or seeking a better life for their families—doesn’t preclude feeling empathy for those who are hurt. The policy isn’t a Jewish response; the Jewish part of the response would be to feel the empathy.
Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein
Cross-Currents
Los Angeles, CA /Jerusalem
CHABAD
Absolutely. Unequivocally. I would call it the quintessential Jewish value, pioneered by the first Jew, Abraham, who trailblazed a new path in life. In a pagan world driven by a “dog eats dog” attitude, Abraham instituted a revolutionary new approach, which would change the course of history: that we’re here to love each other and perpetuate virtue and justice. As Rabbi Akiva said, the most cardinal of all mitzvot is to love your fellow human as yourself; that is the fundamental principle of all of life. It’s the essence of all Judaism and of all civilization.
However, empathy is not about making yourself feel good because you helped somebody. We have to be very careful not to fall into the trap of “selfish empathy,” which just serves our own needs. Or “suicidal empathy,” appeasing an enemy, which ends up harming oneself. Such empathy often turns out not to be empathetic at all. We are taught: Those who are kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind. Appeasement, empathy in the face of an enemy, in the face of hurting people who are innocent, is not empathy at all. So you have to always ask yourself, are you being empathetic because it makes you feel better or because you’re answering to a higher truth, a higher order?
The essence of empathy is that life is not all about you. You’re not the center of the universe. You’re here to give, to share, to serve, to transcend. Empathy, like love, is about transcendence. It’s what allows human beings of different natures and personalities and opinions to transcend their differences and unite in harmony as one.
Rabbi Simon Jacobson
Meaningful Life Foundation
Brooklyn, NY