Abomination and the Narrow Path

The period between the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av is not just a season of mourning in the Jewish tradition. It is a confrontation with the very nature of destruction—its roots, its recurrence, and its distortions across time. In these “Three Weeks,” we walk through layers of memory, sin, desolation, and ultimately a search for repair. This Torah readings – Matot-Mas’ei – remind us not only of the ancient destructions of Jerusalem, but of the enduring temptation to sanctify violence, to confuse zeal with truth, and to mistake control for holiness.

Between vow and brutality

Parashat Matot opens with laws concerning vows (nedarim) — binding words that hold power to shape or shatter relationships. Moses speaks not to the entire people but to the rashei hamatot\ראשי המטוט, the tribal heads. This detail matters. The word mateh\מטה (tribe, staff) carries echoes of strength, but also flexibility — a branch can bend, a rod can strike, a lineage can bless or betray. The Sages associate the mateh with continuity: from Jacob crossing the Jordan with his staff, to Moses wielding it before Pharaoh, to David using it against Goliath. It is the rod of faith, the line of descent, and the backbone of a people trying to stand upright in a crooked world.

And yet, these laws of vows are delivered with troubling gender asymmetry: men may annul the vows of their daughters or wives. The instinct is to protest — and rightly so. But within the narrative arc, this is not about silencing women. It is about exposing how men too often failed to keep their own vows, failed to uphold their spiritual commitments.

Just before this, in Parashat Pinchas, the Israelite men engaged in ritualized sexual idolatry with Midianite women, an act so grotesque that it triggered a plague. Pinchas’s violent zeal stopped it, but at the price of bloodshed. This week, in Matot, vengeance follows. Moses sends twelve thousand troops – one thousand from each mateh – to slaughter the Midianites. Balaam dies, but so do countless others: “Kill every male among the children, and every woman who has known a man.” The women and children of Midian are not spared. The Torah does not flinch from the carnage. And we should not flinch from questioning it.

Abomination and appetite

The violence of the text is not excusable. Or its topic is beyond direct understanding. It is narratively and theologically framed as a reaction to te’uvah\תוֹעֵבָה  – abomination. This biblical term describes the utter distortion of creation, the twisting of covenant, the embrace of idolatry and moral confusion. Jeremiah uses the same word to describe the people’s betrayal: “You entered and defiled My land and made My heritage an abomination” (Jer. 2:7). This is not about foreignness or difference. It is about a betrayal from within. The Sages teach that the Temples were not destroyed by foreign armies alone, but by our own sins – the First by sexual immorality, bloodshed, and idolatry; the Second by sinat chinam\שנאת חינם, baseless hatred. And still today, te’uvah lingers.

Strangely, the word te’uvah sounds close to te’avon\ תֵאָבוֹן – appetite. The Torah does not ignore the body; it reminds us again and again how easily desire mutates into idolatry. The Israelites in the wilderness craved Egypt’s bread and meat more than the uncertain manna. The appeal of stability, even in slavery, seduced them. The modern mind is no different. We often prefer the predictable cruelty of systems to the vulnerability of freedom.

Hyper-violence, indifference, and the exile of conscience

The events described in Matot-Mas’ei are brutal. But they are not distant from our present. We, too, live in a world of hyper-violence, where moral language is used to justify extermination, where religious rhetoric disguises geopolitical ambition, and where even the faithful turn away from the stranger. From the destruction of sacred cities in Ukraine, to the theological impasses in Jerusalem and the Fertile Crescent, we are witnessing an age of abomination — not through ritual error but through hardened hearts and weaponized theologies.

And yet, the sin of abomination in our time often takes quieter forms – not ritual idolatry, but indifference, contempt, and disposal. We throw away people as we throw away things. We decide who deserves attention, who can be sacrificed, who is “trash.” Even when “faith leaders” speak truthfully, something is missing. There is a failure to name the deep, historical surplus of Jewish suffering and contempt that remains largely unacknowledged. Here, words falter. As the apostle Paul wrote: “God has shut up all unto disobedience, that He might show mercy to all” (Romans 11:32). None are exempt, all are implicated – not to condemn, but to prepare the ground for mercy that sees the whole picture. Without that, indignation becomes selective. And suffering becomes just another category to be weighed and discarded.

Today’s abomination often comes disguised as fulfillment — as if history had already delivered its final word. Some speak of “plenitude,” of prophecies accomplished. And yet, their mouths remain silent in the face of Jewish pain, or they keep being selective.

Among certain Orthodox Christians, even those dwelling in the Holy Land, there is a cold, doctrinal blindness. No compassion is spoken, only silence. At the same time, many of them have ceased to trust their Arab flocks and leaders. They may even cling to the protection of a state they did not always believe in. It is a terrible irony: both sides of this land are entrapped in a cycle of blindness and resignation.

Neither can imagine a future where the other remains whole. But this is precisely the spiritual texture of the Three Weeks – not just memory of destruction, but a call to confront the twisted logic of despair masquerading as realism. It is this twisting that the Prophets called te’uvah – not foreign evil, but internal misalignment of heart, vision, and faith.

Remaining on the narrow path

The weekly readings during the Three Weeks challenge all: can we walk the narrow path – when everything around us screams for vengeance or numbness? Can we still believe in sanctity after so many betrayals? Parashat Mas’ei lists forty-two stations of the Israelites in the wilderness. Each stop a struggle, each place a test. The journey is never direct. And yet, they move.

Today’s journey is no less winding. In the Orthodox Church this week, the Apostles are commemorated – Peter and Paul, hesitant disciples who became messengers of mercy. They, too, walked the narrow path. They, too, struggled with failure, violence, and misunderstanding. And Mary, the Theotokos, the one who bore the Son of Man, appears in feasts that mark consolation and presence amid sorrow. These Christian liturgies echo a Jewish rhythm: redemption must grow from within destruction, not beyond it.

In Israel, there is an ongoing test of spiritual coherence. The political and religious lines are blurred, the soil itself disputed and adored. The Birkat HaMinim\ברכת מינים, a rabbinic curse against heretics, still echoes, just as Christians once mocked the Jews as “blind.” Neither curse has purified the world. And yet, both traditions – in their deepest truth – call for something else: to look into the face of the other and see a fellow human child of God.

The time to build

The Three Weeks are not only about destruction. As Leviticus warns, a defiled land will “vomit out” its inhabitants (Lev. 18:28) – not in vengeance, but as a natural consequence of desecration. The land itself participates in the covenant, and abomination carries both physical and spiritual repercussions. They are about memory that leads to construction. “Do not defile the land in which you dwell,” God warns in Numbers. And yet, we do – with words, with indifference, with self-righteousness. But we can also plant. We can build.

As in the beginning, when Adam was told to “fill the earth and subdue it,” the call remains: not to dominate, but to cultivate. We plant trees, we raise children, we shape language that can heal instead of wound. The time of te’uvah can become a time of teshuvah\תשובה — return. The rod of the tribe anticipates the scepter of peace, not war. The vows we take become blessings, not chains. And even the wounds we carry can become openings through which light enters.

In this season of mourning, let us not mistake mourning for paralysis. The Temples were destroyed not because God withdrew, but because we expelled holiness by forgetting its demands. The path is narrow.

As the Gospel says, “Jerusalem will be trampled by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 21:24). The mystery of this fulfillment is not ours to define — only to live with open eyes, aware of the mercy still at work beneath the ruins.