Menachem Mirski
Thoughts on parashat Behar 5784
A light of nations. That is what Israel is. That’s who we Jews are, or have believed about ourselves. A people chosen by God and history to survive, to be an example for the Nations of the Earth.
Perhaps this is why the UN, EU, Western countries, and the entire world has always had their eyes on Israel. But the hypocrisy the vast majority of them now show is tangible. It reminds me of the exchange between a Danish official and Caroline Glick more than 10 years ago where he openly stated: “We expect better from you.” How condescending is that.
One of the topics of this week’s parasha is slavery. Interestingly, and perhaps disturbingly for some, there is a distinction between Jewish “slaves” and non Jewish “slaves.” In our parasha the Torah doesn’t even use the term eved ivri – the Hebrew slave. Instead, it calls this person achicha – your brother, your kin. Both Jewish and non-Jewish slaves were to be treated as hired laborers – all enjoyed the same rights and freedoms. They had a day off, they could marry and have a family of their own, they had to be provided with good food and under no circumstances could they be exploited, humiliated and used for meaningless work. The one difference was that at the end of the 6 years Jewish slaves were freed whether they paid off their entire debt or not because in the 7-th year – the year of Shemitah – all debts were canceled. And here is this important difference: the non-Jewish slaves could have been, by law, kept forever. They weren’t, in this particular matter, equal to Jewish slaves.
Because we are moral, self-reflective people there are many Jews that feel bothered by this and ask why. One of the answers could be: the Torah wanted to completely phase out slavery (in the long run) and that’s why it completely reshaped this institution in the Jewish world; but because slavery was widespread in the ancient world that surrounded us, the Torah decided to “compromise” some of its aspects.
I could also reiterate that the status of non-Jewish slaves in the Jewish world was still way higher than in the non-Jewish world, so it could be a response to the treatment of Jewish slaves in the non-Jewish world, who were treated as commodities and basically didn’t enjoy any rights. I could say that Slavery was a widespread norm in the ancient world and slaves were not even considered human-beings! We had slaves here in America a few hundred years ago and slaves were considered 3/5th of a person – in the US constitution. Yet ancient Israel enjoyed the most moral treatment of Jewish and non Jewish slaves.
But you will still find people in our community who would feel uncomfortable with this double standard, even though we are talking about laws that were instituted 2500-3000 thousand years ago.
And here is my point. We as a people are so focused on being wrong we expose our jugular vein believing that others will follow our lead. We are so much focused on us being “ethically correct” that we are condemning ourselves to the judgment of the least moral – we are giving them the razor. To take it to another level, we believe in our self determination and responsibility to the extent that many of us would feel uncomfortable with redirecting attention to the world around us to look for the causes of our situation, and make no mistake, that is exactly where we should be looking. You can’t be moral when you deal with a fundamentally immoral enemy. It’s difficult to be generous and forgiving when you deal with a fundamentally ignorant populace. Yes, I am talking about the so-called elite university students that chant “From the river to the sea” and don’t know which river or sea or have no idea what ‘intifada’ means. I am talking about the students graduating from Yale that painted their hands red – not realizing those are a symbol is from the lynching of two Jewish-Israelis who made a wrong turn into arab-controlled city of Ramallah and a crowd of Arabs broke in, and killed and mutilated the bodies of those two lost Jews, and then one of the murders held up his red bloody hands to the cheers and screams of Arab onlookers.
We look for flaws in ourselves. That’s what moral people do. We believe that we need to have a higher standard for ourselves. We give others breaks while they are slaughtering us, raping us, putting our jewish babies in ovens and keeping members of our families under brutal hostage. If we had the same standards as Hamas, the Gaza strip would be a parking lot on October 8th. We wouldn’t care about civilians, any civilians, including our hostages. We wouldn’t make robocalls and distribute leaflets to the civilians that voted Hamas into power. But instead we feel uncomfortable about unequal treatment between jewish and non-Jewish slaves by our ancestors.
As a nation, as a people, we must be willing to honestly confront our flaws and shortcomings. Self-awareness and a willingness to improve are essential for progress. However, we cannot become so preoccupied with our own failures and imperfections that it leaves us vulnerable to exploitation by immoral and ignorant enemies.
If we are constantly beating ourselves up over mistakes, endlessly dwelling on what we have done wrong, it opens the door for other nations to seize upon that self-criticism and use it against us. It has been the case numerous times in history: the Christian and the Enlightenment antisemites, like Voltaire, used the words of our own Prophets and their criticism of ancient Israelites as an ultimate basis and justification for their Jew-hatred! It all opens the door to moral equivalency – as the head of the corrupt ICC claimed this week that Israel and Hamas were both guilty! Our adversaries, who may not share our moral compunctions, will be all too happy to amplify and capitalize on our self-flagellation. They are using our own introspection and desire to be better as a weapon to undermine us globally – AND IT IS WORKING.
We must find the right balance. Honest self-assessment is vital, but it cannot come at the expense of moral fortitude and the willingness to robustly defend our interests and values. Just as we expect high standards of ourselves, we must also be prepared to unapologetically uphold those standards in the face of brutal enemies who have no such scruples and live and breathe our death.
By keeping our focus primarily on constructive, forward-looking efforts to improve us as a nation, instead of making our self-criticism public, we need to deny our opponents the opportunity to twist our self-critique into a vulnerability. We need to demonstrate confidence in our ability to learn, grow and become better, without opening the door for the despicable to exploit us.
In this way, we can fulfill our moral obligation to be a light upon nations and to continually strive for excellence, while also maintaining the strength and resolve needed to protect our rightful place in the world – quite literally. It is a delicate balance, but one that is essential if we are to realize our full potential as a people – if we are to survive as a nation.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Mirski
Leave a Reply