Are you a consistent person? As a whole, our society prizes
consistency and considers it to be an attribute allied with maturity,
reliability, and rationality. Before you laud yourself for never veering from
stated principles and positions, or flay yourself for being changeable,
consider what Ralph Waldo Emerson famously wrote:
A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and
divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well
concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard
words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it
contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah,
so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is
it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and
Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and
every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be
misunderstood.[1]
Emerson was on to
something. We speak from present knowledge—what we know today. When tomorrow arrives and
we learn more and think further, if our minds and hearts are open, we view
yesterday’s certainty from a
new perspective and less assurance. Put another way, in the words of art
historian Bernard Berenson, “Consistency
requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.”[2] This naturally
makes people who contend that Torah is completely consistent because it is
entirely “the word of God” uneasy.
How could God be
inconsistent? How, indeed? Here’s how: Parshat Ki Teitzei provides two
stunning instances of Torah’s
inconsistency: First, we are told (Deuteronomy 23:4) that Ammonites and
Moabites may never, “even in the tenth generation,” be admitted to the k’hal Adonai (Assembly of
Israel), which is to say, the Jewish people. Yet Moses’ wife, Tzipporah, is the daughter of the priest
of Moab, Jethro (Exodus 2:16; 3:1). Second the parashah closes with an
admonition to, blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven, and without missing
a beat, in the very next breath, Do not forget! (Deuteronomy 25:19).
Put another way: Remember to forget Amalek! The mind spins.
A friend recently
told me that Rabbi BenZion Gold (he was for many years the director of Hillel
at Harvard University) would say, “Consistency is not the first mitzvah in the
Torah.”
The Rabbis carried
on the long, proud chain of inconsistency, understanding that, as Oscar Wilde
expressed it, “Consistency
is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”[3] The Rabbis were very
imaginative. Among their brilliant solutions to deeply troubling problems
is their halakhic conversation about the Ben Sorer u’Moreh (“The Rebellious Son”), found in this
week’s parashah, Ki
Teitzei:
כִּי-יִהְיֶה לְאִישׁ, בֵּן סוֹרֵר וּמוֹרֶה--אֵינֶנּוּ שֹׁמֵעַ, בְּקוֹל אָבִיו
וּבְקוֹל אִמּוֹ; וְיִסְּרוּ אֹתוֹ, וְלֹא יִשְׁמַע אֲלֵיהֶם.
וְתָפְשׂוּ בוֹ, אָבִיו וְאִמּוֹ; וְהוֹצִיאוּ אֹתוֹ אֶל-זִקְנֵי עִירוֹ, וְאֶל-שַׁעַר מְקֹמוֹ. וְאָמְרוּ אֶל-זִקְנֵי עִירוֹ, בְּנֵנוּ זֶה סוֹרֵר וּמֹרֶה--אֵינֶנּוּ שֹׁמֵעַ, בְּקֹלֵנוּ; זוֹלֵל, וְסֹבֵא. וּרְגָמֻהוּ כָּל-אַנְשֵׁי עִירוֹ
בָאֲבָנִים, וָמֵת, וּבִעַרְתָּ הָרָע, מִקִּרְבֶּךָ; וְכָל-יִשְׂרָאֵל, יִשְׁמְעוּ וְיִרָאוּ.
"If
a man has a wayward son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not
obey them even after they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold
of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of his
community. They shall say to the elders of his town: “This
son of ours is disloyal and defiant; he does not heed us. He is a glutton and a
drunkard.” Thereupon the men of his town
shall stone him to death. Thus shall you sweep out evil from your midst: all Israel will hear and be afraid. (Deuteronomy 21:18–21)
The Rabbis, in
discussing the Rebellious Son in tractate Sanhedrin of the Talmud, notice that
the “son” must be a child in his parents’ care. Who executes a child? What is more, his
crimes—defiant behavior,
excessive eating and drinking—hardly seem commensurate with the punishment of
stoning. At the same time, the Rabbis conclude that something far more
nefarious must be going on here to explain Torah’s harsh judgment about the Rebellious Son, and
also render the punishment inapplicable. They tell us:
תניא רבי יוסי הגלילי אומר וכי מפני שאכל זה תרטימר בשר
ושתה חצי לוג יין האיטלקי אמרה תורה יצא לבית דין ליסקל אלא הגיעה תורה לסוף דעתו
של בן סורר ומורה שסוף מגמר נכסי אביו ומבקש למודו ואינו מוצא ויוצא לפרשת דרכים
ומלסטם את הבריות אמרה תורה ימות זכאי ואל ימות חייב שמיתתן של רשעים.
It has
been taught: R. Jose the Galilean said: Did the Torah decree that the
rebellious son shall be brought before bet din and stoned merely because he ate
a tartemar[4] of
meat and drank a log of Italian wine? Rather, the Torah foresaw his ultimate
destiny. For at the end, after dissipating his father's wealth, he would
[still] seek to satisfy his accustomed [gluttonous] desires but being unable to
do so, he would go out to the crossroads and rob. Therefore the Torah said: Let
him die while yet innocent, and let him not die guilty. (Sanhedrin 72a)
This suggests that
the boy was stoned not because of what he had already done, but to prevent him
from committing a more egregious violation—theft—which is also not punishable by execution.[5] Is this consistent
with Torah’s notion of justice?
Hardly.
Yet this
justification comes after the Rabbis have devoted no fewer than six full dapim
(68b through 71b) to successfully dismantling the law of the Rebellious Son by
placing so many strictures and limitations on it that it is impossible to carry
out. Thus the Rabbis simultaneously justify and promote the law of the
Rebellious Son, on the one hand, and effectively demolish it on the other hand.
Are the Sages consistent?
Certainly,
consistency has much to commend it, but it was consistency that Emerson
criticized, but rather “foolish
consistence”—doing things the
same way without regard to consequences, new knowledge, or consideration of
deeper values and concerns.
From a certain
perspective, the Rabbis are meticulously consistent. The underlying values—a premium on family
and respect for parents, concern for the welfare of society, respect for the
dignity of every human being—are
consistent and admirable. The way to best live and promote those values
in law and life changes with time. But even our values change with time, as we
acquire more knowledge and wisdom. To say that nothing changes is to deny the
magnificence manner in which halakhah—a system and tool chest for responding to
questions of morality and practice, not merely a set of rigid laws—responds to our
ever-changing, dynamic reality. To reduce halakhah to a strict set of immutable
laws is to render it “a
foolish consistency” that is, indeed “the hobgoblin of
little minds.”
© Rabbi
Amy Scheinerman
This Torah
commentary is posted at: http://taste-of-torah.blogspot.com, where
you can find commentaries for all the weekly Torah portions.
[1] Self-Reliance, 1841.
[2] Notebook, 1892.
[4] The Jewish Encyclopedia (volume 12, p. 489) says a
tartar is slightly under seven ounces.
[5] The Rabbis famously considered, but rejected, the idea of
killing Bar Kamtza, although they knew that he intended to bring false evidence
to the Roman government that the Jews were rebelling, a lie that would likely
lead to war and the deaths of thousands. Gittin 56a reports that confronted
with a preponderance of evidence concerning Bar Kamtza’s intensions, R. Zechariah ben Abkulas said to his
colleagues: "Is one who makes a blemish on consecrated animals to be put
to death?”
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