Coralie Camilli Interview | Alex Gilbert #264.1

Coralie Camilli, substitute philosophy professor at the Military Health School (ESA) and French boxing champion, published L’art du combat (Puf) in 2020, Jours de grâce et de violence (Vérone éditions), and Insulaires (Puf) in 2023.

Brotherhood in Judaism

Introduction:
The word “brotherhood” often evokes the strength of a bond supposed to rest on a shared reality—of blood or alliance—that one hopes to keep alive or whose meaning one wishes to rediscover. It is that which resists indifference, selfishness, cynicism, or anonymity, a means of solidarity and sharing, whether public or private, institutional or familial.

But one must question what grounds brotherhood and what sustains the vitality of its idea even when nothing, or almost nothing, in reality seems to corroborate it: Is it a fact, a feeling, the result of an institutional process (as seems to be recalled by the French motto, liberty-equality-brotherhood)? Is it a value, an ideology, or an illusion?

The Jewish, Torah-based source could no doubt provide enlightening insights on this subject, as it presents brotherhood as inherently bearing the temptation of fratricide, viewed without naïveté or sentimentalism. In a first analysis, we will examine the notion of brotherhood in the Torah and demonstrate how the hope it raises is continually met with failure. We will show how brotherhood there coexists with the ruptures of human bonds when jealous rivalry and hateful violence prevail. Brotherhood starts poorly—very poorly, even—as it incites murder or suicide, since nothing seems to dispose brothers and sisters toward mutual affection or reciprocal sharing.

Far from offering an uplifting example, the biblical text instead prompts us to think that brotherhood is dangerous and inclines toward the irreparable. With the death of Abel, killed by his brother Cain, we realize that the first murder in human history is a fratricide.

We will then question, in a second stage, the meaning of this failure, which is not without attempts, grandeur, or significance: Could the biblical failure to establish lasting brotherhood ultimately signify an aspiration to detach from the biological, horizontal, artificially egalitarian model in favor of another relational model? Does the failure of a murderous brotherhood not compel us to rethink or establish another way of relating to the other, in the truest sense of the term? In this regard, we will see that the notion of transmission takes on the role that the notion of sharing was meant to fulfill, and that the master-student (vertical) relationship gradually replaces the brother-to-brother (horizontal) relationship.

I) The Horizontal Fraternal Model

A) Brotherhood has a political scope.
Whom do we call “brother“? In the Torah, brotherhood extends beyond family frameworks, for all humans are children of the same father, Adam, and thus brothers to each other. Brotherhood is not limited to consanguinity; it immediately qualifies the relationships between the descendants of the same father. Whether they come from the “great nation” (goy gadol) promised by God to the patriarch Abraham when He formed a covenant (brit) with him, or from the “families of the earth” (mishpachot ha’adama), who would also receive divine blessing.

Thus, all humans descend from the same couple, Adam and Eve—the original family—and some, additionally, are bound by an alliance. All are therefore brothers, and some brothers are doubly bound: by their fraternal bond and by the covenant made between God and Abraham.

What link, then, exists between this brotherhood and politics? What happens politically if the people descended from Abraham’s covenant, the people of Israel, wish, for example, to appoint a king after arriving in the Promised Land, the land of Canaan? Deuteronomy 17:15 says: “You shall indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses: one of your brothers (arhérha) you shall set as king over you; you may not put a foreigner, who is not your brother (arhirha), over you.”

These principles, and others like “Do not charge your brother interest, interest on money, interest on food, or interest on anything that may increase” (Deuteronomy 23:20), or “If your brother, near you, becomes poor and sells himself to you, do not impose on him the work of a slave” (Leviticus 25:39), emphasize that a brother has familial, political-social, and even economic obligations. Brotherhood thus appears as an alliance in which brothers are already engaged, an alliance that makes them responsible for one another. Leviticus 26:37 says, “They will stumble over one another,” which the Talmud (Sanhedrin 27b) comments on: “for the fault of his brother, we are taught that we are all responsible for one another.”

B) However, brotherhood signifies repeated failures.

The story begins with Cain and Abel (Genesis 4). Cain is Adam and Eve’s firstborn son, a farmer, while his brother Abel is a shepherd. One day, they each bring an offering to God: Cain offers fruits of the soil, while Abel presents the fat portions from his flock. God prefers Abel’s offering. Cain, jealous, kills Abel in the fields.

Eve, as a mother, says: “I have acquired a man,” referring to Cain, and not “we have begotten a son.” Three errors, so to speak: 1) she says “I,” instead of “we”; Adam is absent. 2) She says “acquired,” qaniti, and not “created, given.” 3) She says “a man,” not “a son.” The word “son” will only be used later, for Seth. Cain thus appears as the object of his mother, her possession. In this way, the text provides an etymology for Cain’s name: acquisition. Then the text says: “she gave birth to his brother Abel,” in Hebrew Evel, which means mist, something insubstantial—a name that foreshadows Abel’s fleeting destiny. Then: Abel is a shepherd, a nomad; he accompanies his flock, mobile and landless. Cain is a cultivator. Both offer to God an offering according to their activity: Abel, the fat of his beasts, and Cain, the fruits of the earth. Both offerings are designated by the same word, minhah. (The importance of words: Abel is referred to seven times as “brother,” arḥ, of Cain in the text, but Cain is never described as the “brother” of Abel!). But God accepts only Abel’s offering—Abel, the insignificant, the nomad, the second-born. At this point, the text says, “Cain’s face fell.” God then says to him: “If you act well, will you not be uplifted? But if you do not act well, sin is crouching at your door.”

Here, the text presents a word that is grammatically incorrect: “sin” is a feminine noun, but “crouching” (tapi) is in the masculine participle. This seems to destroy two primary distinctions that underpin human life: the difference between man and animal (because only animals crouch) and the difference between masculine and feminine, between man and woman. The text continues: “And Cain said to Abel.” Full stop. Absence of words, which kills the other. “And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.” There is no mention of struggle between the two brothers; nothing suggests that Abel defends or resists himself—he remains in his role of insubstantiality. God then says to Cain: “Where is your brother Abel?” He replies: “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

A first observation is necessary: relationships between brothers are still inscribed within genealogy and depend on what they each receive from their parents. Even before their birth, the relationship between their parents is broken—or, to be less pessimistic, suspended, hesitant (“Adam knew his wife Eve,” but there is no mention of reciprocity anywhere).

The birth of the two brothers suffers as a result. Adam does not assume his role as a father. Eve makes Cain her possession and does not see Abel. By accepting Abel’s offering and rejecting Cain’s, God legitimized their existence. He established them as separate, distinct, different, autonomous. Neither, however, seized the opportunity to take God’s word as the foundation of alterity. As such, neither attains fraternity. They remain trapped in their deadly dualism. Neither of them has descendants, as Abel is killed, and Cain’s lineage perishes in the Flood.

Thus ends the first fraternal relationship. We could have learned the lesson, but no, failure continues.

Abraham is 99 years old when God appears to him and proposes a covenant. He promises him numerous descendants, among whom kings will rule over the land of Canaan. He predicts that his wife Sarah, who is 90 years old and childless, will give birth to Isaac within a year, through whom the covenant will be upheld. One day, while Abraham hosts three men, God appears, and one of the strangers reiterates the announcement of Sarah’s pregnancy. Sarah hears it and laughs at the idea. Hence the name Yitsrak, “he will laugh.”

Isaac is born a year later and circumcised at the age of eight days. Shortly after Isaac is weaned, Abraham expels, at Sarah’s request, his other son Ishmael, whom he had with Hagar, so that Isaac will not have to share the inheritance with Ishmael. Yet, it is after Ishmael’s birth that Abram is renamed AvraHam, with the addition of HE to his name, a sign of God’s name. The Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer insist that Abraham will never forget Ishmael.

Isaac, too, has a fraternal relationship that fails. He will reproduce the same pattern with his sons: Jacob and Esau. The name Jacob means “he will supplant,” because he was born holding onto his twin Esau’s heel. Before his death, their father Isaac, now blind, wishes to restore Esau’s rights. Rebekah exploits her husband’s blindness to ensure that he gives his blessing to Jacob instead.

Esau, furious, decides to kill his brother as soon as Isaac dies. Rebekah discovers his intentions and implores Jacob to flee.

For the rest of the article (Part 2), click here