The Jewish Power Blog: Not by Might

In the Torah portion we read a few weeks ago (Eikev), we find this warning:

Beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God who freed you from the land of Egypt…  and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.”  Remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfillment of the covenant that He made on oath with your fathers…  (Deut. 8:14, 17-18)

This passage summarizes the belief that stands behind the covenant between Israel and God: that Israel’s victory and defeat, prosperity and famine, health and sickness are all manifestations of God’s favor – of God’s power to determine the nation’s fortunes in response to their behavior.  The liberation from Egypt, the conquest of the promised land, the sufficiency of the rainfall in that land – none of these are accomplished by the people’s strength, or cleverness, by heroism or technology; rather they are gifts from God, conditioned on the people’s living according to the Torah’s commandments.

The above passage is echoed by the prophets and the rabbis and Jewish thinkers throughout the ages, disparaging human claims to power or attempts to achieve it.  A key story in this tradition is that of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9).  One popular answer to the question, “What exactly was the sin of the builders?” is the suggestion that the purpose of the tower was to get to heaven and take over from God the power over the rainfall; that is, human usurpation of divine power (=idolatry).  Nineteenth century German Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (usually credited as the founder of “modern orthodoxy”), spun it slightly differently:  “The desire of a nation ‘to make a name for themselves’ and to increase their national honor – means the abandonment of any moral purpose.”  (comment on Noah 11:4)  I suspect it was not coincidental that Hirsch was writing as romantic nationalism was on the rise around him.

A different expression of skepticism about power appears in the opening chapters of Exodus, when the mighty king Pharaoh orders that Hebrew baby boys be cast into the Nile.  Three women – Moses’ mother and sister, and Pharaoh’s daughter, quietly, under the radar, subvert his order (he didn’t say anything about life jackets), leading, eventually, to Pharaoh’s death by drowning.  The most powerless undermine and destroy the most powerful.  So maybe power is just an illusion?

Later, the rabbis’ recollection of the Hasmonean revolution became another case study in Jewish suspicion of human power.  It seems that the wars between the Jews and the Seleucids in the second century BCE were a case of successful guerilla warfare against an occupying empire.  The Jews were not powerless; they had assets and knew how to use them, and it was a hard struggle, and for a while, they achieved a measure of independence.  The rabbis, it seems, were uncomfortable with this manifestation of military success, and composed this prayer, which is still recited during Chanukah:

You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the wicked into the hands of the righteous, and the degenerates into the hands of those who cling to your Torah…

We were weak, and few; the only way we could win was through God’s intervention.  The only power on display was God’s – not “the might of our own hand.”  Modern secular Zionists really didn’t like this interpretation, and sought to give full credit to Hasmonean heroism.

This traditional disparagement of the aspiration to power might seem to lead to the claim of some ultra-orthodox leaders today, that it is not the IDF, but the intense devotion of yeshiva students to Torah study that is protecting the state of Israel from its enemies, by calling forth divine power on our behalf.  This claim, of course, makes a lot of people very angry – and not only hard core secularists.  After all, the Zionist revolution was originally (before the current messianic enthusiasm) all about self-liberation: not waiting for God’s redemption, but redeeming ourselves from homelessness and  powerlessness, dunam by dunam, tree by tree, startup by startup.

Moreover, Zionism had a traditional “leg to stand on,” in that alongside the covenant understanding of history, the rabbis were very clear that human responsibility – human use of power – is natural, part of the way the world works.  So, for example, Jews turn to – and become – doctors, not relying on divine healing; and Jews were and are farmers, ploughing, planting, cultivating, harvesting – understanding that God may make us prosperous, but only if we do the work.  And while God may fight our battles, the Torah takes for granted that we will serve in the infantry.  This tension – or balance – between divine power and human responsibility is nicely expressed in a midrash: Facing the Red Sea with the Egyptians in hot pursuit, Moses prayed – and God said, “Enough praying, do something! Raise your staff and tell the people to start marching.”   (Bab. Talmud Sotah 37a)

So it seems that human power has a place, indeed is essential to being human; the problem is when it becomes not an expression of partnership with God, but an idol in and of itself, with no checks, no balances, no limits, no doubts, no humility, no tolerance for dissent, and, it follows, no empathy – or sympathy – for the sufferings of those with less power.  Moreover, as Pharaoh learned, power is a false god, always at risk of being undermined or overwhelmed by someone with more of it.