Even the devil can quote Scripture
This is the Third Shabbat of Consolation; as we move toward the High Holy Days of 5785, may we find the inner strength to believe in the possibility of positive change in ourselves, and in our world.
אֵ֣ת כׇּל־הַדָּבָ֗ר אֲשֶׁ֤ר אָנֹכִי֙ מְצַוֶּ֣ה אֶתְכֶ֔ם אֹת֥וֹ תִשְׁמְר֖וּ לַעֲשׂ֑וֹת לֹא־תֹסֵ֣ף עָלָ֔יו וְלֹ֥א תִגְרַ֖ע מִמֶּֽנּוּ
Be careful to observe only that which I enjoin upon you: neither add to it nor take away from it. (Deut. 13.1)
Parashat Re’eh is full of alluring material: how to observe the Pilgrimage Festivals, rules for prophecy, even some kashrut tips. Most commentators can manage to completely ignore the more problematic topic covered in verses 12.29-31, in which we are warned about idolatry in the following context:
כִּֽי־יַכְרִית֩ ה’ אֱלֹהֶ֜יךָ אֶת־הַגּוֹיִ֗ם אֲשֶׁ֨ר אַתָּ֥ה בָא־שָׁ֛מָּה לָרֶ֥שֶׁת אוֹתָ֖ם מִפָּנֶ֑יךָ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ֣ אֹתָ֔ם וְיָשַׁבְתָּ֖ בְּאַרְצָֽם׃
When your God ‘ה has cut down before you the nations that you are about to enter and dispossess, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their land… (Deut 12.29)
For our homeless ancestors wandering through Europe and the Mediterranean basin, as far as India and Morocco, the idea of HaShem ethnically cleansing the land of Canaan so that Jews could live there in peace was either a long-ago legend or a reference to an impossibly distant future. To the extent that they suffered persecution in that Exile, it may have seemed an attractive dream, but unrealistic and unreachable dream it was.
In our own day we have witnessed the terrible cost of the idea that one people deserves to live in peace at the cost of another people’s existence. Survivors of the great Holocaust of our people are still living reminders. Because of our own still-recent history of oppression, before this Torah text we find ourselves nearly without precedent to refer to, with no Rashi to tell us how to interpret for our own day, when our own people attempt to apply such a text to our neighbors, the Palestinian people who also call the modern land of Canaan their ancestral home. Is it then a legitimate reading to assert, as some Jews do, that it is HaShem’s will that Jews occupy, displace and dispossess Palestinians?
Yet this parashah also warns us, in the very next verse, about being “lured into the ways” of the nations around us, as the very definition of idolatry, which is to fall away from the righteous path. From this very verse the early modern scholar known as the Hatam Sofer developed his rule: hehadash asur min haTorah, “anything new is forbidden by Torah.” This offers us grounding, already, to ask how modern Palestinians could possibly be compared to the ancient “seven nations of Canaan.” Yet how might we respond to the rabbinic idea that ayn mukdam um’uchar baTorah, “there is no early or late in Torah” – that everything always is now, and always applies?
“The more study, the more life,” as our ancestors say: looking more deeply into the question of the seven nations of Canaan, we find that Maimonides, our Rambam, has done his Talmudic reading:
Rabbi Yehoshua said to Rabban Gamliel: Do Ammon and Moab reside in their place? [The Assyrian king] Sennakherib (destroyer of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE) already came and, through his policy of population transfer, scrambled all the nations and settled other nations in place of Ammon. Consequently, the current residents of Ammon and Moab are not ethnic Ammonites and Moabites, as it is stated in reference to Sennakherib: “I have removed the bounds of the peoples, and have robbed their treasures, and have brought down as one mighty the inhabitants” (Isaiah 10:13) – BT Berakhot 28a)
Rambam therefore teaches that although “it is a positive mitzvah to destroy the seven nations [of Canaan], as it is said: ‘You shall utterly destroy them’ (Deuteronomy 7:2), and anyone who encounters one of them and does not kill him has violated an injunction, as it is said, ‘Do not keep alive a soul’ (Deuteronomy 20:16),” it is also true that, because of Sennakherib’s policy of population transfer, “their memory has already been erased.” (Hilkhot Melakhim 5.4)
Jews are like anyone else; when traumatized, we develop maladaptive behaviors. Abusers are most like those who have been abused. This is why some Israelis and Palestinians in the peace camp today recognized that intervention by the U.S. and Europe in the current conflagration might be the only way to help break the cycle of violence.
It is no wonder, given so many generations of brutalization, that some proclaim that Gaza should be “bombed flat” even as some call for Israel’s total destruction. Much violence has drained away the humanity from many suffering souls. But we need neither to “add to nor detract from” the message of our Torah to reclaim it.
כִּֽי־תִרְאֶ֞ה חֲמ֣וֹר שֹׂנַאֲךָ֗ רֹבֵץ֙ תַּ֣חַת מַשָּׂא֔וֹ וְחָדַלְתָּ֖ מֵעֲזֹ֣ב ל֑וֹ עָזֹ֥ב תַּעֲזֹ֖ב עִמּֽוֹ׃
When you see the ass of your enemy lying under its burden and would refrain from raising it, you must nevertheless help raise it. (Exodus 23.5)
“Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19.18) is applicable only to those we consider as in some way like us (it was traditionally meant as an intra-Jewish obligation). In some distant messianic future we may find out how to love an enemy, but in our current benighted state it seems to be asking too much. Yet there are also rules, called derekh eretz, oftentranslated”common decency,” for how we are to behave toward an enemy!
If ancient non-Jewish reality (the invasion of Assyria) made the seven nations of Canaan mitzvah defunct, then modern reality can do the same. It has never been more important for us to assert that Jews do not follow the Torah word for word: we are not literalists, not fundamentalists, in that way. That would be a new and different way of reading for us, inspired by Western reading; and that is forbidden, directly by our Torah itself.
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 