This past week there were two acts of
terrorism in Israel, both resulting in deaths. Especially horrifying is the
fact that both acts, and the deaths that resulted, were committed by Jews.
Sixteen-year-old Shira Banki died today of stab wounds inflicted by Yishai
Shlissel, a haredi man who stabbed Shira and five other people last Thursday at
the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem.[1] On
Friday, eighteen-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsheh burned to
death and three members of his family were seriously injured when their home in
the West Bank village of Douma was set fire by two Orthodox extremists from the
settler movement.
We could easily explain both
incidents as cases of deranged individuals committing ghastly and unspeakable
crimes, but that would be to ignore the underlying commonality and source of
the ferocious hatred, intolerance, and sense of righteous entitlement that
fueled both incidents, and many other acts of violence we have witnessed: the
claim that Torah—as
the claimants understand it and interpret it—is God’s direct word and God’s divine will. The claim to have unfettered and
exclusive access to God’s
word and God’s will is
a predominant feature of Western religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
It has justified an immeasurable amount of violent and immoral human behavior,
from the Crusades and Inquisition to ISIS. It is time for a wholesale rejection
of this arrogant and dangerous claim whenever and wherever it raises its
hideous head.
We find the claim made passionately
in parshat V’etchanan
in words that precede the Decalogue:
וַיִּקְרָא מֹשֶׁה,
אֶל-כָּל-יִשְׂרָאֵל,
וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם
שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת-הַחֻקִּים וְאֶת-הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים, אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי דֹּבֵר בְּאָזְנֵיכֶם הַיּוֹם; וּלְמַדְתֶּם אֹתָם,
וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם
לַעֲשֹׂתָם. ב יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ, כָּרַת עִמָּנוּ
בְּרִית--בְּחֹרֵב. ג לֹא אֶת-אֲבֹתֵינוּ, כָּרַת יְהוָה אֶת-הַבְּרִית הַזֹּאת: כִּי אִתָּנוּ,
אֲנַחְנוּ אֵלֶּה פֹה
הַיּוֹם כֻּלָּנוּ חַיִּים. ד פָּנִים בְּפָנִים,
דִּבֶּר יְהוָה
עִמָּכֶם בָּהָר--מִתּוֹךְ הָאֵשׁ. ה אָנֹכִי עֹמֵד בֵּין-יְהוָה וּבֵינֵיכֶם,
בָּעֵת הַהִוא,
לְהַגִּיד לָכֶם,
אֶת-דְּבַר יְהוָה: כִּי יְרֵאתֶם מִפְּנֵי הָאֵשׁ, וְלֹא-עֲלִיתֶם בָּהָר לֵאמֹר.
Moses summoned
all the Israelites and said to them: Hear O Israel, the laws and rules that I
proclaim to you this day! Study them and observe them faithfully! Adonai our
God made a covenant with us at Horeb [Mount Sinai]. It was not with our
ancestors that Adonai made this covenant but with us, the living every one of
us who is here today. Face to face the Lord spoke to you on the mountain out of
the fire—I stood between Adonai and you at that time
to convey Adonai’s words to you, for you were afraid of the
fire and did not go up the mountain—saying… (Deuteronomy 5:1-5)
The religious myth of Sinai is a
beautiful and meaningful one, but calcifying it through the most literal
reading possible strips out its spiritual beauty and replaces it with dangerous
fundamentalism. The specific scriptural claims that fueled the two acts of
violent terrorism this past week are: (1) God forbids male homosexual
intercourse (later expanded to include all sexual contact between two males,
and to encompass lesbianism, as well, which Torah never mentions); and (2) God
gave the Land of Israel exclusively to the Jewish people. These are religious
claims grounded in a particular reading of Torah and reinforced by centuries of
interpretation and commentary.
In the case of the claim concerning
homosexuality, no amount of scientific evidence makes any difference to
ultra-orthodox religious extremists, and from what I can see doesn’t touch
most modern Orthodox authorities either. They have all immunized themselves
against science, reason, and even morality by living in an insulated homophobic
halakhic world of their own devising. When challenged, they resort to the claim
that “halakhah
is clear on this issue” and “God’s morality” differs from human morality and must
simply be accepted and obeyed, yet they lack the intellectual or moral
integrity to admit that they, in their interpretations, create and define
halakhah, and through it, sanctify and perpetuate their own bigotries. For a
modern Orthodox treatment of homosexuality (which we would hope would be far
more enlightened than what we find in the haredi world) you might want to read
the “Statement
of Principles on the Place of Jews with a Homosexual Orientation in Our
Community.”[2] While it
condemns outright humiliation of homosexuals, it is abundantly clear: “Halakhic
Judaism views all male and female same-sex sexual interactions as prohibited.
The question of whether sexual orientation is primarily genetic, or rather
environmentally generated, is irrelevant to this prohibition.” This is hardly enlightened.
In the case of the claim to hold a
divinely-issued deed to Eretz Yisrael, the Orthodox establishment that breeds
extremist settlers conveniently ignores that even Scripture itself has no
definitive measure of the land and contains conflicting accounts of what
constitutes Israel’s
patrimony from God.[3]
Extremists in the settler movement—including those whose act of “price tag” revenge killed a small child last
Friday—reject all
modern sensibilities concerning other people’s historical claims and needs.
Marching to a self-absorbed and self-righteous drummer, they demand that the
world understand Jewish pain, but ignore the pain of others. Their use of
scripture to justify violence and cruelty is disgusting; their claim that in
doing so they perform God’s
will is vile.
Orthodox authorities of all Western
religious traditions will never divest of the power that comes with the
hubristic claim to speak for God. They have it neatly tied up: They don’t have to
justify their decisions either intellectually or morally because it’s “God’s law”—not their
own. Remember the bumper sticker: “God said it. I believe it. That
settles it.”
Many people take it for granted that
people will claim that their religious law is divine in origin. But that is not
always the case. Torah differed from the other law codes of the ancient Near East, which acknowledged
that their laws were written by people. Outside ancient Israel, law was the
province of the king in fulfillment of his obligation to the deity that
legitimated his sovereignty. Hammurabi, who ruled Babylonia 3,800 years ago,
promulgated a famous law code. The gods required that he produce a code of law
in order to rule over the people of Babylonia; doing so proved Hammurabi was
worthy to rule. (Shamash, the sun god, is shown in relief at the top of the
stele, transferring authority for Babylonia to Hammurabi.) Hammurabi’s
Code — all 282 laws[4] — begins: “Anu and
Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared Marduk, the
patron god of Babylon to bring about the rule in the land.” It’s not clear that all 282 laws were
enforced. Some scholars believe that the laws were guidelines for judges to
employ in deciding cases.[5] But what
surprises many people is that not only is there no claim to divine authorship,
quite to the contrary: Hammurabi composed it; these are his laws. Hence
they are open to reconsideration and revision.
In contrast, Torah understands God to
be the author of all the laws it contains. This is a unique feature of ancient
Israelite religion and continues to be a staple of Orthodox Judaism, as well as
Christianity and Islam. As a result, violation of any of the laws of the Torah
is tantamount to disobeying God. Citizenship and religious obligation are
inseparable. What is more, all laws deriving from those in the Torah—which are
patently extensions, interpretations, and outright creations of human beings—are
justified as God’s
word and will. This is the thrust of the first mishnah of Pirkei Avot, which
elegantly ascribes divine authority to the work of the Rabbis:
משה קיבל תורה מסיניי,
ומסרה ליהושוע,
ויהושוע לזקנים,
וזקנים לנביאים,
ונביאים מסרוה לאנשי
כנסת הגדולה. והן אמרו שלושה דברים: היו מתונים בדין, והעמידו תלמידים הרבה, ועשו סייג לתורה.
Moses received
the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua; Joshua to the elders; the
elders to the prophets; and the prophets handed it down to the men of the Great
Assembly. They said three things: Be
deliberate in judgment, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around the
Torah.
The chain of authority, Mishnah
claims, is unbroken, from the encounter between God and Moses on the peak of
Sinai to the deliberations of the rabbis in their academies. The notion of a
chain of tradition, unbroken links that connect us to our ancestors, is a
wonderfully romantic image, and I can appreciate it on many levels. I also fear
it because it has been used to justify egregious abuse of human beings and
ongoing immorality.
It is time to reframe the “sacredness” of scripture and avoid ambiguous
language such as “divinely
inspired.” Our
covenant with God is a call to seek out holy values and live a holy life—our values
and lives should be built around the twin poles of justice and compassion.
Torah is the transcript of our ancient ancestors’ attempt
to do that. Talmud is our Sages’ on-going
effort to continue the search process, and comes complete with transcripts of
some of their discussions and arguments, evidence that they had the moral backbone
to correct Torah at times[6], and
further evidence that they could admit to not knowing. The call to holiness is
not a one-time-and-forever event. Revelation is on-going. Our understanding of
what God requires of us changes and evolves as we grow and learn.
© Rabbi
Amy Scheinerman
[1] And to compound the horror, Shlissel was released from
jail three weeks after serving a ten-year sentence for stabbing three people at
the 2005 Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem.
[3] The borders of the Land of Israel are often discussed in
cliches: “From the Nile to the Euphrates” or “From Dan to Be’er Sheba.”
These are
enormously different! The first encompasses most of the Middle East, from Egypt
to Babylonia, inclusive. The second encompasses an area approximately the size
of Rhode Island. Numbers chapter 34
(Parshat Mas’ei) specifies detailed borders, but
the precise location of the places mentioned is not known. Mishnah Gittin 1:2
tells us: “From Rekem and eastward, including
Rekem [is not Israel]; from Ashkelon and southward, including Ashkelon; from
Acco and northward; R. Yehudah considers Acco itself outside; R. Meir
disagrees.”
This is a much
smaller area than Numbers 34 suggests.
[4] Hammurabi’s Code is fascinating for many
reasons, not least because it contains the lex talionis and the
presumption of innocence. Lex Talionis is the law of retribution, often
called the eye-for-an-eye law.
[5] Many scholars believe that the same is true of the
multiple law codes found in Torah.
[6] Two examples will suffice: The Sages dismantled the law of
the ben sorer u’moreh (rebellious son, whom Torah instructs
us to bring to the gates of the city and stone to death), and capital
punishment (the Sages understood how easily an innocent person could be
convicted and executed).
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