Torah's crucial message is ignored
There are foundational messages in our Torah that have been ignored for thousands of years. Of course, contained in that deepest of wells there are endless teachings, so how can I possibly isolate certain teachings from others, declaring them as basic? And if so, why have we not paid attention to them? Well, a good place is to begin is at the beginning.
The Torah could have started with the story of Abraham. After all, according to Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, we were the first of ancient peoples who began our story not with our people, but with humanity, with creation as a whole. This message has not yet taken hold. We can understand. For thousands of years, fear, not pride, has been the operative word. We were ostracized, tortured, and murdered for our beliefs, even though the messages we had to share were not all about us1.
Judaism is about the universal before it is about the particulars of being Jewish. This dream of how to live together as humans, actually how to thrive—in the best way possible, is a dream we’ve been dreaming for thousands of years.
What is that dream? What is the ideal state that our Torah wants us to achieve? It is to approach every single human being with the belief that each one contains a spark of the holy from our Creator. Our Torah doesn’t say that only followers of Abraham embody that special light. It is all of humanity. The creation story teaches us that we derive from a common ancestor.
That revolution in thinking, from the Torah, is the message that Jews are to bring to the world. There is an essential, inborn equality that supersedes any judgment by mankind. It was revolutionary thousands of years ago, and it is revolutionary in our own times. We think that we’re oh so modern, so advanced, so rational, so intellectual—-but we’ve barely moved the needle toward the right direction.
If we truly regarded each other in the way the Torah describes, how could the worst evils be perpetrated? Hirschfeld says “Jewish is not about being Jewish. Jewish is a way of being human.”2 But what does that mean when we are confronted with pure evil? With others who don’t abide by that belief? By those who wantonly murder, torture, and debase all of humanity by their actions?
For thousands of years of our history, we did not have the privilege of choosing our responses. We had to react in survival mode. We were powerless and homeless with no place to retreat to for safety. The establishment of the State of Israel changed that equation.
Now, is there a way for us to respond in a “Jewish” way, in a way that can possibly (I can hardly use this word) respect those who have murdered and tortured, still seek our death, wiping us from the face of the earth?
Here’s where you might stop reading. Or move on never to return. Or write me some hate mail.
Israel has made all sorts of accommodations to minimize the losses of the innocents3. But we have to go back to the Source. The Torah offers many laws of warfare, but way before that, efforts at peace have to be tried first (check). Torture is never allowed. Innocent lives are to be protected if possible. Spoils from war are not to be taken4.
Our Torah gives us guidelines for the moral dilemmas we will face in war because it serves as a history of how evil must be destroyed. These definitions of evil are given to us for direction, from the descriptions of individual leaders5 to their followers, all of whom try to corrupt humanity. And none are about different beliefs. Instead, they are about unconscionable actions.
Baseless hatred6. Evil perpetrated on innocents, the most vulnerable—women, children, the defenseless. Murder of children for the sake of belief7. We have a clear mandate not to accept this kind of evil, and the more we allow it, the more it perpetuates.
In our times, we’ve witnessed the most horrific of crimes stemming from different people’s beliefs of their own superiority8.
Preserving humanity means not watching how events ‘will unfold’. It means not backing down from doing what is right. We’ve been down that road (see previous footnote).
The overarching message of October 7th is clear to me. In its aftermath, a binary choice was created for the entire world. This is of such magnitude that has not been seen before. The ability of social media to influence public thinking is at its worst.
Thousands and thousands of people responded to this choice with extremely troubling outcomes. Those who find justification for the heinous actions of the perpetrators have not been silenced. Policies have not been enforced to retain the rights of others, deferring instead to violent behavior and rants.
Yet, the world watches. The world waits. We can not fail this test. Not as Jews and not as others who agree on basic minimum standards for humanity.
That subject, the one of being “chosen” is worthy of a post of its own.
Interview on October 7, 2015 with Rabbi Mark Golub z”l on JBS, the Jewish Broadcasting Service. It is ironic that this interview was taped exactly 8 years to the day of the October 7th massacres.
There are many more laws about warfare in the Torah.
This post will not delve into the myriad examples of this, since there are many factual examples if one cares to search.
The Torah doesn’t retreat from these descriptions, in the personas of Pharaoh, Laban (yes, that Laban), Amalek, Haman, and more.
It seems that almost all hatred should be baseless, but what the Torah is referring to is a deep-seated hatred that stems from prejudice toward others, not someone who wronged you personally. The instances in the Torah where even our own people perpetrated wrongful killing (tribes led by Simeon, Levi, and Benjamin for example) are held to task for it. The Torah allows us to see the ugliness and provides us with lessons to learn from it.
The idolatrous sacrifice of children to the god Moloch is so pervasive in the Torah that you can’t miss it. Even our people sunk to that level (see Jeremiah, Lamentations).
Crusades. Spanish Inquisition. Pogroms. Massacres. Nazis. Chinese massacres over Tibetans, Rwandan Hutus over Tutsis, Shia over Sunnis, Hamas, Houthis, Hezbollah over “non-believers”… the list is by no means complete, but shameful.