Are you a member of a secret society in which there are only 35 other people?
If so, you might also feel very lonely as you do not know who they are, while they do not know you exist.
This relates to the legend of the Thirty Six Righteous People – also known as the Lamedvavniks, as those two letters of the Hebrew alphabet have that numerical value when put together.
The legend stems from the Talmud where we are told that “there are not less than thirty six righteous men in the world who receive the Divine Presence” (Sanhedrin 97b and Succot 45b).
What this was supposed to mean is unclear, but over the centuries it has developed into the idea that they are ordinary people, but who do remarkable acts of goodness and without whom the world would collapse.
No one knows their identity and their modesty is such that they may not even realise they count as one themselves. Their number is constant and so when one of them dies, another comes to take his place.
It is a magical motif – the silent hero with no name – and has come into secular culture in many forms: think of the masked Lone Ranger or Batman in his disguise.
What is crucial about the Lamedvavniks is that they make a difference to other people’s lives.
They have no official role and are not appointed – they just get on with doing good when needed – while there can at least five different routes to their work:
There are those who are good, those who aspire to good, those who inspire good, those who efforts lead to good and those who help the good. Those who are good might include Esther Rantzen.
There are many television presenters who do their job well or who bring important issues to public attention, but she has gone one step further, twice over. The first was in setting up Childline, which offers practical help to children coping with the many problems that they can encounter, from bullying to grooming to loneliness. Second, was establishing Silverline for older people, offering information and support. Tens of thousands of people have reason to be grateful to her. Those who aspire to good might include Oskar Schindler, immortalised in Steven Spielberg’s film about him, Schindler’s List, who was certainly no saint and who was primarily interested in money, women and drink.
However, he became increasingly appalled at what the Nazis were doing to the Jews and, unlike so many others, put his own life at risk to protect Jews who could offer him nothing in return.
Something inside him propelled him towards goodness and he rose to the occasion when it was needed most.
Those who inspire good might include Leo Baeck, one of the leading rabbis in pre-war Berlin and who was later sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp. He did forced labour during the day but held secret classes in the dark at night in the huts where hundreds slept.
They were on Jewish history to those being persecuted for being Jewish, or on Greek philosophy to elevate the minds of those whose bodies were exhausted, encouraging them to preserve their self-respect and resist the Nazis’ attempt to dehumanise them.
Those whose efforts lead to good might include the woman whose name is lost but who befriended a man sprawled in the gutter after a failed suicide attempt. She got her own private doctor to help him rebuild his life.
Years later, he married and had a son whose medical research led to discovery about cancer cells that benefited thousands of people. Without that woman assisting his father, he might never have been born and those people not cured. If that was the one good act she did in life, it would have been enough.
Those who help the good might include those who may not have no great streaks of altruism in them and are not driven to dedicate their life to a cause, but they respect those who do and discreetly support their work through private funding.
They differ from those who wish their name to be on a building – who contribute greatly but who also benefit from the public acclaim – whereas instead they have the quiet satisfaction of knowing that someone is doing good because of them and that is reward enough.
But whatever the truth about Lamedvavniks, the fact that the legend has lasted more than 1,500 years reflects its deep-seated appeal.
It means that the Jewish Chronicle’s series on JC Heroes is strongly rooted in Jewish tradition.
We may never know if Lammedvavniks really exist, and if so, who they are, but we can still aspire to be one as much as we can.
Jonathan Romain is convenor of the Reform Beit Din
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