Torah Study 7: Don't Murder Murderers!
God begrudgingly does good things for bad people—and so should you
Previous Torah studies can be found here.
1.
This week’s parsha is Vayakhel. It means “and he gathered”—Moses is the “he,” and the Israelites are who he’s gathering.
What’s he gathering them for?
A bunch of boring nonsense!
Seriously, this is the point where the Torah gets aggressively unbearably lame.
The sages teach that every word of the Torah has divine significance. If you stumble or stutter or mispronounce a vowel on the bimah, you repeat yourself until you get it right. Every word must be intoned precisely, with the proper inflection, or else you’re not really getting the full power of what God’s telling you.
This is a cute story, I get why we tell it.1 But the Torah’s been on about the construction of the Tabernacle and the preparation of sacrifices for a solid four weeks now—it just ain’t interesting, and it just ain’t meaningful.
There is one slightly meaning-laden bit, before he spends dozens of verses on Tabernacle logistics, Moses says:
Take from among you gifts to God; everyone whose heart is so moved shall bring them—gifts for God: gold, silver, and copper;
blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, and goats’ hair;
tanned ram skins, dolphin skins, and acacia wood;
oil for lighting, spices for the anointing oil and for the aromatic incense;
lapis lazuli and other stones for setting, for the ephod and the breastpiece.
Dolphin skins? While the Israelites are wandering the desert? Really??
God is truly great!
We also have Exodus 35:10:
And let all among you who are skilled come and make all that God has commanded:
This really strikes at the heart of the matter. There’s a distinction between how Moses tells the people to take the action of making the Tabernacle—“let all among you”—and what comes next, his description of what the Tabernacle should look like—“God has commanded.”
The Tabernacle’s absolutely gotta get made—and in a very particular way that must involve delphinic gifts for God—but no one in particular is obligated to do the making or to bring the gifts. Just anyone “whose heart is so moved.”
Yesterday’s bar mitzvah talked about the various voluntary—supererogatory, let’s get fancy with it—contributions he makes to the communities he’s part of. Discussed how that contribution created connection, strengthened his communities.
2.
I don’t disagree with any of that. Obviously going above and beyond to dedicate yourself to the people around you is a nice thing. Obviously it makes for stronger relationships. Obviously it’s a thing you would want to do.
What’s more interesting to do is take an outside view—a God’s-eye view, we could say.
God’s certainly not shy with explicit commandments—with creating full-fledged obligations for the Israelites. So why doesn’t he command that everyone give him a gift now?
I mean, just last week, he commanded that everyone contribute a poll tax. Why the shift to a supererogatory tone?
There’s an easy and boring lesson here, I’ll give it first: the poll tax would be used to sustain the community, to do useful things, to take a census; whereas the Tabernacle would be used… to pray. To do religious things. Which are nice! God certainly wants us to do religious things! But His first priority is our survival.
Contribution to the community itself is obligatory; contribution to the community’s extra little Tabernacle side-project is supererogatory.
This seems like a solid libertarian governance principle—you have to pay into the one central pot that helps us all survive, but any more wealth redistribution is at your discretion. If you really love the idea of having a Tabernacle, donate your dolphin-skin scarf. If your heart isn’t so moved, that’s ok too. (Though you might go to Hell for it! Or will you? See
’s reading list to find out…)2Fine, that’s all vaguely satisfactory. But what’s the more interesting lesson?
3.
Well, it flows from that same boring divine obligation / supererogation divide, though sort of non-obviously. This week’s Haftarah can help us see how.
We’re reading Ezekiel 36:16-36, a Messianic prophecy. In honor of Women’s History Month, I assume, we get this gem:
O mortal, when the House of Israel dwelt on their own soil, they defiled it with their ways and their deeds; their ways were in My sight like the impurity of a menstruous woman.
But it’s ok! In the World to Come, God’s loving grace will be extended even to menstruous women. He tells the Israelites:
I will take you from among the nations and gather you from all the countries, and I will bring you back to your own land.
I will sprinkle pure water upon you, and you shall be purified: I will purify you from all your defilement and from all your fetishes.3
How nice!
There’s a catch, though—you may have noticed that six unmentioned verses lie between the two quotes I’ve given you. That’s because I have a sense for suspense, unlike lazy ol’ Ezekiel with his lazy ol’ linear storytelling.
Here are some of those juicy lines:
I scattered them [the menstruous woman–like Israelites] among the nations, and they were dispersed through the countries: I punished them in accordance with their ways and their deeds.
But when they came to those nations, they caused My holy name to be profaned, in that it was said of them, “These are GOD’s people, yet they had to leave their land.”
Therefore I am concerned for My holy name, which the House of Israel have caused to be profaned among the nations to which they have come.
Say to the House of Israel: Thus said the Sovereign GOD: Not for your sake will I act, O House of Israel, but for My holy name, which you have caused to be profaned among the nations to which you have come.
Ah! So God isn’t ingathering the exiles for their own sake—it’s because He’ll look bad unless He does it. What kind of Chooser allows His Chosen People to wander around among the nations which worship false gods? What kind of Promiser allows His Promised Land to be raped and pillaged by idolaters?
Boy, that kind of God really wouldn’t be very Godly. Wouldn’t be so virtuous.
No, God doesn’t relish in doing a nice thing for the sinful, menstruous House of Israel. But He still understands that it’s a good thing to do.
God’s heart, we might say, is moved to redeem the Israelites. His heart is moved to forgiveness and redemption and purification of wrongdoers. Clearly He doesn’t think he has to forgive and redeem and purify them—it’s supererogatory—but we’ve made it to the End of Days, and He’s God, so what the hell.
4.
writes in defense of the death penalty as a “Sacrifice to the God of Progress.”“Let us have this one,” his subtitle pleads.
Conservatism can be understood as indulgence in some of the more primitive aspects of human nature. You get a bunch of knuckle-headed young boys together, they attack each other for being different, gay, or showing stereotypically female traits. All over the world, the populist right is composed of people who never got over this stage of psycho-social development.
This is why I read Hanania—what a beautiful and accurate critique of a view and an instinct that he himself holds. What a remarkable exercise in humility and honesty and self-control!
Of course, Hanania, being Hanania, recognizes and spells out all his own virtues:
I admit to having the natural instincts of a rightoid. When I was a kid I was into gangsta rap because I liked the idea of being a violent thug and would have been watching Andrew Tate videos if I had been born half a generation later.
…
But I was also smart and unusually honest. This meant I was destined to turn away from these ideas.
A story of growth! Of virtuous pursuit of higher ideals, turning away from ugly, lazy, populistic ways of thinking. Of moving past thoughtless, violent intuitions and toward reflective equilibrium.
Right? Right, Richard?
I want society through its laws to reflect a moral condemnation of certain kinds of behavior, and to bring the hammer down on individuals who have violated norms I believe in upholding through dramatic and decisive gestures.
…
Every time society executes a murderer, it is in effect saying, yes, we are good modern people, and have accepted that the only moral system that makes sense is one based on utilitarianism and individual liberty. But we’re still human beings! We realize that fairness and justice still matter and once in a while we need to indulge our base instincts.
Oh. Shit.
Hanania’s essay is well-written and well-argued. If anything could convince me of the death penalty, this would be it. And still it falls short, and still I’m angry he wrote it.
Because I expect more of Hanania! I expect him to transcend this—all of this. In his essay, he also writes that “immigrants are innocent, and trans women are beautiful.” How many supporters of capital punishment have you heard saying something like that?
Hanania, like God, dislikes criminals and wrongdoers. His instinct is to punish them—brutally, terribly.
But God’s very last act—at the end of the world, with the Messiah come and the Temple restored—is one of forgiveness. Transcendence of base instincts.
Maybe I shouldn’t hold Hanania up to God’s moral standard—maybe I shouldn’t hold any of us up to it.
Then again, where else do we turn?
For one thing, Old Testament God often feels extremely relatably human. I mean, he gives the sinful Israelites sass even while redeeming them! “Not for your sake will I act, O House of Israel, but for My holy name.”
Hanania, too, should act not for the criminals’ sake, but for his own name. So his name isn’t that of “the guy who wants to kill defenseless, caged people.” Because that’s an ugly and unvirtuous thing to want.
Hanania can do better than that—we all can.
Arithoughts
(Lucas is actually just a liar.)
The NYU website was hacked for a little while yesterday by some racists.
It was snapshotted by the Internet Archive, you can take a look.
Looking past the slurs, the hackers also published (alleged) NYU admissions data that (allegedly) shows their noncompliance with the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action.
I downloaded it! And analyzed it! And tweeted about it! If politics is your jam, check it out. (If you’re here for philosophy, don’t be scared away! Just also don’t follow me on Twitter…)
It’s about making space for interpretation and projection! If you go looking for meaning long enough, you’ll create it. You can extract important and true lessons from your own mind simply by making yourself think you’re extracting important and true lessons from a Great Book.
Is this most of the reason a classics education is valuable? Yes, I think it is.
You won’t, though. I mean, this is Judaism we’re talking about… I just think it’s an awesome reading list!
Jeez, kinkshame much?