Toward a Jewish Values Conversation on Gaza
So much of the language we use and hear when discussing Gaza is uniquely unhelpful. Genocide is the latest inflammatory term dominating the conversation, especially since Omer Bartov’s op-ed in the New York Times. There may be a technical legal validity to claims that Israel is committing genocide. But for the bulk of American Jews (and, I’m sure, for many non-Jews), the word genocide conjures up images of gas chambers and cattle cars and millions of murders – elements that are clearly lacking in the Israel-Gaza war. When Israel’s supporters hear the charge of genocide, it becomes easy dismiss it as exaggerated, or part of an entrenched anti-Zionist ideology, or actually anti-Semitic.
The same is true of the terms “settler colonialism” or “apartheid state” or, for that matter, “pogrom” or any Holocaust word. Again, there may be technical, legal similarities, but the large gaps between the popular understanding of these terms and the actual situation in Gaza ensures that any Gaza conversation featuring those words will immediately devolve into defensive advocacy, or shouted accusations, or rhetorical violence. Heat, not light.
But it is possible to conduct a distinctly Jewish conversation that could include apt comparisons, or at least food for thought, using Jewish texts that feature essential and widely accepted Jewish values.
One important example is the “broken-necked heifer” (Deuteronomy 21:1-7). The Torah describes a situation where an unknown dead body is found outside of town. The elders of the surrounding villages are instructed to determine the closest town to the murder, and those elders perform the ceremony known as Eglah Arufah (“the broken-necked heifer”). They break the neck of a heifer and then recite the words “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done.” Minimally, this odd custom demonstrates that any violence done near our borders demands our full attention and implicates us in some web of accountability. But what’s most interesting about this passage is how Rashi (11th-12th century), Judaism’s most important biblical exegete, understands the ceremony. He writes, “But would it enter anyone’s mind that the elders of the village are suspect of blood-shedding? But the meaning of the declaration is: We never saw him and knowingly let him depart without food or escort.” In other words, the villagers’ responsibility for this dead stranger goes beyond investigating his or her death. The elders must also assert their responsibility for feeding and protecting a stranger, even one beyond their borders. You can’t say “our hands did not shed this blood,” until you’ve thoroughly investigated your own actions, and articulated your obligation not only to protect innocent strangers near you, but to feed and shelter them.
Similar values animate the Torah’s commandments regarding cities of refuge (Deuteronomy 19:5). The Torah describes a situation where a man chopping wood in a public forest accidentally kills another person. The accidental killer is exempt from a murder charge, but is still required to exile himself to a city of refuge. So, there’s some level of culpability even if the death is accidental. But, again, we find a more interesting and relevant twist in how the how later rabbis understood the law. The Talmud suggests a case where a carpenter invites a customer into his shop while still pounding away at a piece of wood. A chip of wood flies across the room and kills the customer. The rabbis immediately invoke the city of refuge law: the carpenter is innocent of murder, but still accountable. But one rabbi objects that the carpenter should be considered even more culpable that the Bible’s woodchopper. After all, the carpenter explicitly invited the doomed customer into his shop.
At this point, it’s important to interject that the Talmud contains three levels of accountability regarding loss of life. The lowest level is annus, or “force majeure,” where the killer is literally forced against his will to kill – as if someone hurled his body at the victim. There is no punishment whatsoever if judges determine the action to be annus. The second level is shogeg – mistaken. Here, although the death is entirely accidental, there is some element of negligence, and therefore some level of culpability. According to the Talmud, that explains why an accidental killer is exiled to a city of refuge – not as protection, but as punishment. The third and highest level is mazid – intentional. This is murder and demands the full punishment for taking a life.
Back to the case of the carpenter. The rabbis first put him in the same category as the woodchopper – an accidental killer who must now, as a consequence, go into exile. But when they note that the carpenter was actually more negligent than the woodchopper, they literally invent a new level of accountability: shogeg karov l’mazid – “accidental, verging on intentional.” In other words, an action so negligent that it’s not quite murder, but also not accidental. The case yields a wholly novel, more serious category of culpability.
The brilliance of these Biblical passages, along with their rabbinic interpretations, is how they force serious contemplation and conversation on the topic of accountability for the loss of human life. Those who love and support Israel can’t merely denounce or disprove the genocide charge. No matter what you call it, the starvation deaths of hundreds of Gaza’s children near Israel’s border, not to mention the loss of tens of thousands of civilians, demands a thorough investigation and an admission of at least some level of culpability. Anything less violates core Talmudic principles: the sacredness of every life and the insistence on accountability, what later rabbis refer to as heshbon nefesh – “searching the soul.” Of course, once we engage in a soul-searching project, investigating our levels of accountability, the next step in this Jewish dialectic is teshuvah. A difficult word to translate, it’s usually rendered as “repentance” but it also means simply “return,” and implies some concrete admission, and then tikkun – acts of repair.
One final text adds nuance and context to the discussion. In a famous Talmudic story, a Jew approaches a rabbi and tells him that the governor has ordered him to murder another person, or else he himself will be killed. He asks the rabbi what he should do: kill or be killed? The rabbi answers “Let yourself be killed rather than kill. Who is to say your blood is redder. Perhaps his blood is redder.” This passage is not just a plea for universality, a statement of the infinite worth of every human life. It’s also an example of the tragic, this worldly dilemmas we face when dealing with violent conflict. The rabbi in the story gives a solution, but it’s not remotely satisfying. Similarly, Israel faced no good choices after the October 7 massacres, and no simple, ethical way of fighting a genocidal terrorist organization that lives in the tunnels underneath civilian homes. One might claim that Israel overreacted and one must certainly demand accountability. But no one can deny the deadly entrenched context.
American Jews have been in something of a rhetorical bind for the past year. Many Jewish leaders have sensed a wrong ethical turn in Israel’s behavior, but they’re also afraid of inflaming the very real growth of anti-Semitism. And they’ve been faced with non-stop inflammatory language from “globalize the intifada,” to the now nearly routine charge of genocide. Perhaps it’s time for an internal Jewish conversation which focusses more on values than policy. The Jewish calendar, after all, will soon turn to the season of repentance. A good to time to consider deeply all our possible levels of culpability.
