Rising Above Evil
D’var Torah for
Parashat Re’eh
By Rabbi Boaz D.
Heilman
War brings out the worst in us. Hatred, vengeance and bloodlust combine with
other base instincts and turn us inside out and upside down. From heavenly creatures with lofty aspirations
and grandiose dreams we turn into evil-driven beasts, worse than any other
animal that creeps or crawls upon the ground.
Maybe that’s why the Torah piles commandment upon
commandment, ever trying to restrain the evil within us that yearns to emerge,
especially at trying times.
And so it is especially challenging to read, as we do in
this week’s parasha, Re’eh
(“Behold,” Deuteronomy 11:26—16:17), the following words:
“You shall utterly destroy all the
places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods, on the
high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. And you shall destroy their altars, break
their sacred pillars, and burn their wooden images with fire; you shall cut down
the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place” (Deut.
12:2-3).
It is difficult to read these verses today, as we watch wars
of intolerance and religious fundamentalism spread like wildfire around the
globe. It is hard to swallow the fact
that even in Judaism, in the very Torah that we believe to be God’s word, such
sentiments exist, that a fundamentalist streak exists within Judaism. Yet, that is precisely what these verses
portray. These, in fact, are among the
first obligations Moses places before the Israelites as they prepare to conquer
the Land of Israel.
Surely we’ve learned something from our own history and from
our own pain? Why are these words still
studied, chanted, repeated, imprinted into our hearts and souls?
I admit that the longer the current conflict with Hamas
extends, the more I tend to see the truth in Moses’s warnings. Too many good lives have been snuffed by
terror; add to these the most current tragedy, the death of a four-year-old boy
killed by a mortar round just earlier this evening, as Shabbat was descending
on our Holy Land.
The loss of all these beautiful human beings hurts deeply,
more deeply than can be described by words.
And along with the pain comes anger.
It’s a natural response.
Yet what has struck me all along this summer has been
Israel’s restraint. At the price of the
lives of its own civilians and soldiers, Israel and its army, the Israel
Defense Force, has conducted itself in a way no other country or army in the
world ever has. In accordance with its
own name, the IDF has acted strictly defensively in the ugly face of outright
aggression. There could have been
another way of dealing with the attacks, one more in accordance with the Torah
verses we study this week. But Israel
would not allow such behavior.
How did the vengeful, fundamentalist words of this week’s Torah
portion turn into something so completely different and opposite? How did fundamentalism disappear almost
completely from Judaism?
From the earliest days on, going back to the first century
or even before, the Rabbis have understood the dangers built into Deuteronomy’s
harsh commands. For every conceivable reason,
fundamentalism is inherently and forever dangerous. From the start, then, the ancient Sages have interpreted
these verses in such a way as to limit such behavior, to take it out of our hands. While waging war against evil is necessary
and even mandated, the final destruction of evil is, and must remain, God’s prerogative.
The great 11th century commentator, Rashi, reiterates the warning. These verses are a caution, he says, a warning
to all Jews not to follow the temptations of evil, not to indulge in foreign
cults and rituals or even behave in a similar manner as those who practice
them, but rather to remain faithful to the concepts of freedom, justice and
compassion that are the true basis of Judaism. Because as clearly as day
follows night, so will all evil be obliterated in due time, and all evildoers
will meet the same fate.
The extent to which we have internalized this teaching finds
proof in the way Israel has been conducting itself during the current war with
Hamas. In any war, there will be
casualties, many of them innocent.
Holding back its vastly superior forces, Israel has continuously chosen
to wage a limited, defensive war, aiming its weapons as much as possible only
at those guilty of launching attacks against it, whether by air, by sea or by
land. The price Israel has paid for this
restraint has been dear, but the IDF will not be drawn into a war of
extermination, into a war of indiscriminate bombing and utter destruction.
Fundamentalism is a dangerous concept. Maybe that’s why we kept these difficult
verses the Torah. They are there to
constantly remind us of the danger that lurks within every human being and
within every religion. We study these
words and repeat them—but never without the rabbinic commentary and cautionary
moral that accompanies them.
To be Israel means to struggle with divine as well as human
beings. It means to struggle with our baser
motives and urges and even with our own beliefs. To be Israel means to overcome instinct and
strive for higher standards, especially at difficult and trying times. That’s why Parashat Re’eh, along with its cautionary message, is so important
to study, especially today, when we see full-blown fundamentalism in all its barbaric
savagery and brutality all around us.
Despite the harsh words of Deuteronomy, the lesson of
Judaism is ultimately that there are moral and ethical restrictions to what may
or may not be done in the name of God. Fighting evil is mandatory. Behaving like the evildoers, however, is
forbidden.
© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman
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