And now for something completely different . . .
Yet Again: Negotiating Moral Crossroads
The Prince of Shechem rapes Dina, Jacob’s daughter. Her brothers are outraged. They seek and plot revenge. When the brutal assailant, eager, of course, for negotiations and ceasefire now that he might face consequences, proposes marriage and a peace treaty, the brothers accept, upon condition that the people of Shechem circumcise themselves, to make them ritually acceptable to Jacob’s clan. (This may have been the source of the idea to beeper-attack Hezbollah in the groin area; Bible study rules!) While the Shechemites are incapacitated, Simeon and Levi attack, killing them and rescuing Dina. Jacob is appalled. He fears that this will tarnish his reputation. He never forgives Simeon. But the brothers are unrepentant and the Torah gives them the last word. “Shall our sister be treated as a harlot?” Jacob has no response.
That is only because Jacob was not a Distinguished Senior Fellow at an American-funded Institute of Heightened Jewish Sensitivity, Enlightenment, Tolerance, and Morality.
Nevertheless, so begins what appears to be an endless cycle in Jewish history. An unforgivable, savage assault on the Jewish collective. A mandatory response. And then a moral queasiness as to whether such a response is a betrayal of the moral character of the Jew. What will the Gentiles say? Is this not genocide? Surely the Canaanite General Assembly will hold its collective nose and look down it at us.
We have recently been swamped with such breast-beating, inundated by virtue-signaling, saturated with self-righteous posturing. Of course Hamas was evil and vicious, they tell us. Of course we were correct in responding in an attempt to avenge our dead, recover our hostages, and protect our children and future generations. But . . . maybe we went too far. Our liberal friends in Jewish Federations who sponsor our enlightened, progressive, oh so tolerant think tanks are embarrassed. Left-leaning Rabbis are appalled. They are preparing their High Holy Day homilies about the Jews being a light unto the nations. Even if the claims of starvation, rampant settler and soldier violence, and wanton infanticide are spurious, still, shouldn’t we do something different to appease our critics? We are Jews, after all. The Days of Awe are almost upon us. God is merciful; we too must be merciful.
They tell us that there has always been this tension between our desire for survival and the need to ask ourselves hard questions, which do not appear hard for them at all.
For example, as we know, Jacob’s children descended to Egypt and were enslaved for hundreds of years under the most brutal conditions, including the mass murder of their male children. Finally, God remembered his covenant and redeemed them. But . . . ten plagues? Would four not have sufficed and been more proportionate? Sure, go ahead and make a statement; even the European Union would have acknowledged that the Egyptians deserved punishment. Transform water to blood (so long as no one goes thirsty). Inundate the country with frogs. Turn off the lights and thrust the country into darkness (but not for more than a few hours per day). Killing the first born? Locust-caused famine? A bit much, no? We are, after all, Jews. There are limits to what is morally permitted to Jews. Why didn’t God think about preserving His moral credibility, as the modern Senior Fellows would have instructed Him? Was He not concerned about the image He projected to authors of blogs and students on campus?
Why was there no plan to rehabilitate Egypt on the day after? Couldn’t the walls of the sea have collapsed before the Egyptians arrived? So the song might have been a bit less triumphal and the message not as resonant. At least our moral credibility would have been intact.
It gets worse. After the Jews exercise their religious freedom to worship a Golden Calf, the “fanatical and corrupt” leadership under Moses, together with his right-wing henchmen and, yet again, those murderous Levites, kill 3,000 of their brethren. Later, this same Moses, obsessed with maintaining his hold on power and keeping his coalition intact, calls upon God to wipe out the followers of Korach who have the effrontery to question his leadership. You might ask how the followers of Korach differed from the 80 Orthodox Rabbis, armed with data from Hamas, The New York Times, and the UN, who challenged the integrity of the Jewish State and the IDF (if you find a satisfactory answer, please let me know).
By that time, of course, Moses’ attempt to preserve his legitimacy had reached the limits of strategic effectiveness and justification. Moses had lost, for the Jews who are guided by tikkun olam, all moral credibility. Recall that he even arrogated to himself the power to appoint the judiciary, not ceding to the judges the power to make their own laws and appoint their successors. Thus were planted the seeds of societal destruction. How could Korach, like the Senior Fellows, do anything but urge civil disobedience?
All that pales into significance when compared with Moses’ failure to stand up to the far-right vision of a Middle East free of Amalekites and Midianites. It appears that nothing but the conquest of the Land of Canaan, the expulsion of its inhabitants, and permanent Jewish occupation would satisfy these zealots. Obviously, they knew nothing of authentic Judaism. Moses and his acolyte, Joshua Bin-Gvir, appear not even to consider a seven-state solution, in which the Jews live side by side peacefully with the indigenous tribes of Canaan (or, as they are now known, Palestinians).
Nor did this descent into moral blindness and cultural prejudice and parochialism stop with the conquest of Canaan. We all know the story of Mordechai and Esther, who had, it must be stated, every right to try to save the lives of the Persian Jews. But did they need to be so bloodthirsty about it? The Iranians, understandably and justifiably, still have not forgiven her for asking the King for that extra day of carnage. When it was already clear that they had the upper hand, did the Jews need to proceed until total victory? Is that the Jewish way? Couldn’t they just have hanged three or four of Haman’s sons, or seen to it that they received counseling? When they were wiping out their enemies, did they do all they could to protect those who presented as civilians? Was there an appropriate post-Purim investigation to find and punish any right-wing activists who might have exceeded the bounds of tikkun olam morality?
And don’t get me started about those Maccabees! Intolerant religious fanatics.
To be sure, every army and every war has involved physical ruin and civilian casualties, but with Rosh Hashana just ahead, shouldn’t we, as Jews, have waited to respond in Gaza until we had a comprehensive plan to rehabilitate those who had massacred our babies? Our failure to do so placed us in danger of allowing our moral discourse to become coarsened. Thank god for a number of anglo commentators–you know who they are–residents of humanistic Institutes and think tanks, and preservers of the true Judaism, august Senior Fellows, whose fine sensibilities are available to instruct us on the essence of true Judaism, which appears to be the same as true ethical culture and, thank the Lord, bears no resemblance to the historical Judaism that gave rise to all those atrocities.
As the world coalesces in its strident anti-semitism and hostility to the existence of the Jewish State, shouldn’t we be listening to the voices of the oh so enlightened among us, with the oh so highly developed moral values, who echo the slanders of our enemies and, urging civil discord, weaken us at every opportunity? Of course, we could resist the craven, pusillanimous tendency of these hyper-educated, learned, and open-minded self-flagellators and proclaim to the world the justice of our struggle against Iran and its proxies, the imperative to react to the atrocities of Hamas, the fact that the brave soldiers of the IDF–our brothers and children–are waging a noble, courageous war under the most difficult of circumstances, that the calumnies and slander used against us are, for the most part, baseless, and that only one side in this struggle for survival–not ours–endorses genocide. We could persuasively and justifiably, vigorously, and endlessly proclaim the righteousness of our cause.
But, as Jews, is that appropriate during our season of reckoning at the moral crossroads?
And what would happen to the speaking fees and donations to the foundations that pay the salaries of the most enlightened among us? As the spirit of the Jewish New Year descends peacefully upon us, let’s just encourage them to keep telling their patrons what they want to hear. And the rest of us will keep doing what needs to be done.
Shana Tova.