The past
few weeks have been exceedingly painful ones for Jews and Palestinians, marked
by the kidnapping and brutal murder of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal
Yifrach, and—within
hours—the kidnapping and barbaric torture
and murder of an Arab Israeli boy, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, apparently in
retaliation. Both acts are egregious, unconscionable acts of vigilantism. All
life is precious, and at no time should children become pawns and weapons in
the wars of adults, used to incite hatred and violent reprisal.
Vigilantism
is not new. Last week, at the end of parshat Balak, we read a most emotionally
disturbing and morally unsettling tale: Following the idolatry committed by the
Israelites at Ba’al Pe’or,
God commands Moses to publicly impale the ringleaders. Before that
extraordinary punishment can be carried out, a man named Zimri brings a
Midianite woman named Cozbi into no less sacred a place than the Tent of
Meeting where, in the sight of all, he copulates with her (no G-rated book, the
Torah). Imbued with zeal for God and Torah, Pinchas, the leader of the
Levitical retinue in the Tent of Meeting, grasps a spear and runs them both
through with one stroke. To insure that we, the readers, know that this was is
to be understood as a righteous act, Torah tells us that the plague which had
been devouring the people, and took 24,000 lives, ceased immediately. This week’s
parashah, which bears the name of the zealot, Pinchas, opens with an account of
God’s reward to Pinchas for this act:
The
Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Pinchas, son of
Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, has turned bad My wrath from the Israelites by
displaying among them his passion for Me, so that I did not wipe out the
Israelite people in My passion. Say, therefore, ‘I
grant [Pinchas] My pact of friendship. It shall be for him and his descendants
after him a pact of priesthood for all times, because he took impassioned
action for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites.’” (Numbers 25:10-13)
Gevalt!
There is no end of difficulties to understanding this passage of Torah. It is
so riddled with troubling aspects that I hardly know where to begin. But begin
I must because, however discomfiting the account of Pinchas, Zimri, and Cozbi
may be, it is part of our sacred tradition: It is holy text. Yet, whenever I
contemplate this episode of Torah, the words which leap to mind are not “inspiring,” “ennobling,” and “edifying.” Rather, I’m
apt to conjure up: appalling, revolting, and horrifying.
So I pause
to consider other biblical accounts that remind me of the story of Pinchas and
also trouble me: the Torah’s
tacit approval of Moses’ murder of
an Egyptian taskmaster who was, himself, not guilty of murder so far as we
know; and the erratic and violent behavior of Samson that led to the deaths of
hundreds of Philistines. All three stories all have a feature in common: Each
story seems to applaud and approve vigilante “justice.”
We want to
know what these stories teach us about how we ought to live our lives, but the
lesson that seems implicit in each—at least on the very surface—is
abhorrent. People have struggled with the source of ethics from time
immemorial. The ancient Greeks believed that the human mind, endowed with the
capacity for logic and reason, could eventually plumb the depths of any
problem, however thorny, tangled, or torturous. But it is easy to recognize the
weakness in this approach: Logic and reason are invaluable, but humans rarely
practice them purely. We make a muddle of reason when we unwittingly combine it
with our emotional proclivities and political alignments; the results are far
from pure reason and rationality. On the other end of the spectrum are those
who tell us that all ethics derive from divine revelation, and human reasoning
plays no part. This essentially boils down to a bumper stick I loathe and
disdain: “God said
it. I believe it. That settles it.” This
puts a divine imprimatur on any act that a person claims is biblically
permitted or mandated. It’s
hard to imagine anything more religious self-serving and narcissistic.
What,
then, are we to make of the extreme violence and vigilantism of Pinchas? Does
God expect us to replicate Pinchas’ behavior?
Is this what God wants? We know deep within that it is not. Yet Pinchas is the
poster-boy for fanatics like Meir Kahana, Baruch Goldstein, Rabbi Bakshi-Doron,
Yigal Amir—and many
West Bank and Gaza Israeli settlers, whose claims to promote Judaism and its
values are utterly belied but their hatred toward Palestinians and their
immoral actions, from desecrating churches and mosques to the latest and most
horrific: the torture and murder of an innocent child. What have they all
missed?
It may
seem an enormous leap from the story of Zimri and Cozbi being speared by
Pinchas to permission for a modern-day vigilantism, but sadly it is not.
The Sages
do not shower Pinchas with unadulterated approbation. On the one hand, the
Israelites have descended yet again into communal idolatry. From this
perspective, Pinchas embodies God’s wrath
and carries out God’s will, and in so doing, halts the
plague that is devouring lives by the thousands. This perspective, in an
attempt to defend him, garners Pinchas praise, and the “covenant
of peace” is understood to confirm the propriety
of Pinchas’ actions. The Yerushalmi (Jerusalem
Talmud, Sanhedrin 9:7) tells us that the Elders wanted to excommunicate Pinchas
and only relented when God declared that the covenant would be for him and his
descendants for all time. Concerning this, Rabbi Baruch Epstein, in Torah
Temimah, writes: “Such a
deed must be animated by a genuine, unadulterated spirit of zeal to advance the
glory of God. In this case, who can tell whether the perpetrator is not really
motivated by some selfish motive, maintaining that he is doing it for the sake
of God, when he has actually committed murder? That was why the Elders wished
to excommunicate Pinchas, had not the Holy Spirit testified that his zeal for
God was genuine.” On the
other hand, the Rabbis and later commentators are clearly uncomfortable with
Pinchas and express great ambivalence. They are wary of vigilante action; they
do not wish to legitimate the violence of any zealot who feels himself imbued
with God’s wrath.
Therefore the Rabbis attempt to limit the application of Pinchas’ example to “while the
fire is burning,” meaning
that Zimri and Cozbi had to be caught in the act and without the slightest
hesitation on their parts. Abraham ibn Ezra expresses even greater concern
about the precedent the story may set for other zealots, and therefore tells us
that witnesses had already given testimony concerning Zimri and Cozbi in court,
and therefore Pinchas was acting in the capacity of a duly authorized
executioner following a proper court hearing. This is both an attempt to
justify the simple sense of the text precisely that cannot be justified, and to
forestall the use of the text to promote vigilantism. Some commentators openly
hold that Pinchas’ behavior
was condemned by Moses. It has been explained that the broken letter “vav” in the term briti shalom (“covenant
of peace,” Numbers 25:12) reflects God’s
unwillingness to offer a full “covenant of peace” to Pinchas, a man who had just
committed murder. Clearly, the Rabbis were deeply ambivalent about Pinchas, and
very wary of his violent vigilante behavior—however much Torah tells us that God
approved. And well they should be! Such behavior is exceptionally dangerous and
highly reprehensible.
And lest
you think that such things are the stuff of Torah legends and could not happen
today, two examples will suffice. In 1996, the then-Chief Sephardic Rabbi in
Israel, Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, delivered a d’var
Torah on Shabbat afternoon in which he likened Zimri to liberal Jews who
desecrate Jewish traditions, thereby suggesting that a righteous Jew might act
the violent role of Pinchas. When furious and vociferous objections were raised
from every corner of the country, he responded that he meant it in a
metaphorical way. Well, Pinchas did not run Zimri and Cozbi through “metaphorically.” The response to Bakshi-Doron’s d’var
Torah was swift and strenuous because we had already seen what can happen when
the halakhic process is short-circuited: the result can be disaster. The
year before Bakshi-Doron delivered his ignominious drash, Yigal Amir
assassinated then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin z”l, propelled by yet another ignoble d’var Torah
delivered by an irresponsible ring wing rabbi based on the din rodef (law
of the pursuer). The rodef is one who, with weapon in hand and
articulating clear threats to another, runs after him with intent to kill.[1] Amir
heard a rabbi liken Rabin to a rodef for proposing negotiations with the
Palestinians. It thus became a mitzvah in the mind of a fanatic to kill him.
Yet another metaphor translated into concrete and violent vigilante action.
Parshat
Pinchas does not present a rosy picture of how people are, but then very little
in Torah does. Torah is a view of life without blinders. Its realistic portrait
of humanity is far more valuable than a pietistic whitewashing because it is
against this background that we are propelled into wrestling with God,
struggling with our traditions, and ultimately arriving at religious
imperatives in which we can have ethical confidence.
I am glad
that Israeli politicians in the Knesset spanning the broad political spectrum
publicly condemned the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir. Finance Minister Yair
Lapid rightly said, “We
should all be ashamed of the findings on the Arab teen’s murder.
The State of Israel cannot stand silent following the shocking murder of a
young, innocent Arab boy by Jewish murderers. There is no difference between
our blood and their blood. Law enforcement must act determinedly and harshly
against the murderers and put them on trial.” MK
Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid party) said: “Our responsibility as a nation is to
purify our camp from fringe elements who were forced on us. The values in our
national DNA require us to act. The investigation of Muhammad Abu Khdeir’s
murder should be a top priority and his murderers should be brought to justice.” MK Shelly
Yacimovich (Labor Party) summed up the situation succinctly: “Woe to us
if the lust for revenge will replace the state, its institutions and its rule
of law, Whoever is fanning passions and giving legitimacy to blood lust should
know that his hands are stained with blood.”
I feel a
measure of relief that six people have been arrested in connection with the
abduction and murder of Muhammad and that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has
denounced their actions as terrorism, saying, “We do not distinguish terror from
terror.” But this is not enough. The
settlement culture and reality that support and breed such acts remains, and
receives enormous support from the government. Until that is addressed, such
criminal and immoral acts—unquestioned
violations of Torah—may
continue. The bottom line: those who take it upon themselves to deliver vigilante “justice” are
nothing more than violent, fanatical zealots—in other words, they are terrorists.
One should
always try to end with a nechamta (words of consolation). I wouldn’t have thought that possible in the
case of the barbaric murders of four innocent children, yet it is. Two
Palestinians from the Hebron area (I regret I don’t
know their names, but I suspect they wish to remain anonymous) visited the
Fraenkel family last Sunday, during shiva, to express their condolences
personally. One of them said: “Things will only get better when we
learn to cope with each other’s pain and
stop getting angry at each other. Our task is to give strength to the family
and also to take a step toward my nation’s
liberation. We believe that the way to our liberation is through the hearts of
Jews… I see before me a Jewish family who
has lost a son opening the door to me. That’s
not obvious. It touched my heart and my nation. That same day, Naftali’s uncle
Yishai called Hussein Abu Khdeir, Muhammad’s father, to express, “our deep
empathy with their sorrow, from one bereaved family to another bereaved family… There is no difference between those
who murdered Muhammad and those who murdered our children…” Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem,
also spoke with Abu Khdeir to express his condolences on behalf of the
residents of Jerusalem. May the deep humanity and sincerity of gestures and
actions such as these turn the hearts of many others toward a just and
lasting peace.
© Rabbi
Amy Scheinerman
[1]
Let’s say you’re shopping at a mall. You’ve just pulled into a parking spot. You
see two people running, one pursuing the other. The pursuer is holding a gun
and waving it at the person running away from him, and he’s shouting, “You think you can get away
with it, don’t you? I’m going to catch you and kill you.
See if I don’t. You can’t escape me.” What
to do? There is no time to call the police because the pursuer is gaining on
his prey by the second. The din rodef tells us that not only may
we kill the pursuer to prevent a murder, but we must kill the pursuer in
this one narrow circumstance. (This of course assumes we have the means to kill
the pursuer and prevent him from committing murder.) The din rodef also
requires that the one who observes the pursuer must let him know that what he
intends is a crime punishable by death, and the pursuer must acknowledge that
he is aware of that. It’s difficult to imagine being able to fulfill these
requirements and thereby fulfill the din rodef, isn’t it?
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