What if a handful of people thwarted the apocalypse and didn't even know it?

Who gets to save the world?

In  1983, U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan made a remarkable statement about a fellow senator, Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, who had just died. 

"Henry Jackson was proof of the old belief in the Judaic tradition that at any moment in history, goodness in the world is preserved by the deeds of 36 just men who do not know that this is the role the Lord has given them. Henry Jackson was one of those men.” 

It’s a pretty striking comment to make about anybody, especially a Presbyterian from Washington State. It’s also interesting that it came from Moynihan, an Irish Catholic who grew up in Hell's Kitchen. But Moynihan was a very well-read fellow.

The concept of the 36 righteous people, like many Talmudic passages, is not clear-cut, and is the subject of energetic and sometimes joyous debate. There is not even agreement on what to call them: Two different Hebrew names, Tzadikim Nistarim (hidden righteous ones) and Lamed Vav Tzadikim (36 righteous ones). In Yiddish: lamedvavniks (36ers).

That’s the way we are. Put two Jews in a room, you get three opinions.

A synopsis of what may be the most prevalent version of the Tzadikim story is that at all times there are three dozen individuals whose worthwhile attributes, taken together, are just enough to forestall God’s angry intention to destroy the planet because of the rest of the jerks living on it.

As each Tzadik dies in the general order of things, a replacement takes over. If one is murdered, however, it’s duck-and-cover time.

A fun, but somewhat less-accepted, part of the legend is that some of the Tzadikim actually get divine assistance to save the lives of embattled innocents, perhaps ranging from firefighters rescuing dozens from the World Trade Center, to nurses who save lives one at a time. It’s like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, kosher-style.

One of the Tzadikim’s most important qualities is modesty, so to keep them humble, it’s necessary for them to be unaware of their superpower. It would be impossible for any Tzadik to know that he or she was one, and still be one.

President Ronald Reagan maintained Jackson had that kind of modesty. In a speech announcing the posthumous award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jackson, Reagan said, “By the time he died, dozens of young men and women had been helped through school by a scholarship fund that he established and sustained. No one knew the money came from Scoop, until a change in the financial disclosure laws many years later forced him to ‘fess up. He had never told the voters; he'd never even told his own staff.”

Jackson’s modesty was not necessarily Talmudic, of course. He was likely to have been more familiar with the Gospel according to Matthew: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them ... When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.”

Jackson was very familiar with Jews, however. He sponsored a bill that slammed the door on trade with the U.S.S.R. until it let Jews and other minorities emigrate. It actually worked.

He also was an early endorser of U.S. civil rights acts, and helped get statehood for Alaska and Hawaii. 

Jackson was far from perfect, however, and Moynihan had to know that. He was a stubborn supporter of the war in Vietnam and, as a World War II congressman, backed interning Japanese-Americans. Not cool.

Jackson ran for president twice, the last time in 1976. The Democratic primary campaign that year featured some solid competition, three of whom Moynihan could arguably have anointed as righteous ones, too.

Sen. Frank Church of Idaho had led investigations of some really evil abuses by the CIA and NSA. He was also a dedicated opponent of the Vietnam War.

Another Vietnam dove who ran in 1976 was Arizona Congressman Mo Udall. He led reforms of several federal agencies, campaign financing, and the House itself.

And then there was the eventual winner, Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter. At his 1971 gubernatorial inauguration, as he succeeded segregationist Lester Maddox, he put the state on notice that “racial discrimination is over.

“No poor, rural, weak, or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job or simple justice.” 

His statement was courageous. It was also surprising to most of Georgia, because his campaign rhetoric had not been very different from that of Maddox. Not cool, Part 2.

Carter, Jackson and the others had certainly been significantly wrong on some matters, and not only in the 20-20 hindsight of history. All were occasionally very obviously thick-headed in real time.

But if Jackson had been a possibility as a Tzadik, the other three similarly solid citizens might have been, too. The same goes for other good but imperfect people. And that begs an interesting question.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the Tzadikim Nistarim exist in real life. So at any given time, we might be shoulder-to-shoulder with one of them (Or if that seems weird now, our faces could be alongside one of theirs on Zoom).

What if we’re mean to them, as is so easy to do nowadays? They might react bitterly, and become a little less good-as-gold, and a little more good-for-nothing. They’d still be alive, but maybe not virtuous enough anymore to do their part in keeping the Earth worthy of continued spinning.

Even worse, what if somebody kills one of them? About two million civilians may have died in the Vietnam War. World War II? Forty million non-combatants. You start killing that many people, the odds of keeping an anonymous group of 36 alive get sketchy.

Somehow, the key three dozen people always survived, since the planet is still here.

But despite that apparently incredible run of righteous-people-preserving good fortune, maybe the lesson of the Lamed Vav Tzadikim is to be vigilant against anyone trying to ruin, or end, the lives of people who are just trying to get by.

You never know who might be really important.

Could the reason half the world seems up for grabs be that George Floyd was one of the 36?

Floyd’s six years in Minnesota were a personal rebirth, highlighted by employment and drug rehab mentoring. He also was behind an anti-violence video. So he seems believable as a Tzadik.

But, you ask, how can that be possible for a man with a criminal record dating from his twenties?

A reasonable question. Here’s another one: What about Scoop Jackson? 

The senator from Washington enthusiastically promoted the U.S. nuclear arms race. And he pushed for so many warplanes to be built in his home state that he was derisively referred to as “the Senator from Boeing.”

So whom would God like best?

According to the Judeo-Christian bibles, Eve, Moses, Sarah, David, Solomon, Noah, Aaron, Jacob, Peter, Paul and a host of others had some significantly bad moments, but they each picked up a nice following anyway.

If we left it up to cancel culture, none of them would have been allowed to reform. Almost all the apostles would be gone, and John would have been spreading the word all by himself.

Lately, we’ve damned some of our most talented artists, athletes, politicians and even inventors, just because they haven’t gotten everything quite right. As if we, out here in the cheap seats, are beyond reproach.

For all we know, we ourselves could be among the righteous. But if we treat people like pariahs because of their politics, what side of town they live on, or the team they favor, we don't have to worry about all that righteous responsibility.

We ain’t them.

It is fortunate that God chooses the 36. We Earthlings have established that we are incapable of distinguishing the most honorable among us from those who deserve punishment and ire.

So maybe we should be more careful about who we pick on. Maybe we should at least try to be kind.

Everything might be at stake, and we don’t know what we’re doing.

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