

Encountering the harsh passages of Torah, we cringe, we cry,
we scream out, speaking our tearful truth to power, be it the power of God, or
of people who would simply read, or rationalize, or, worst of all, callously
justify and say that is the tradition. There is such a passage in the weekly
Torah portion called Shoftim/Judges (Deut.
16:18-21:9). It is a portion whose
violence is framed by teachings of nonviolence, as though to warn away from the
ways of violence, as though to contain the harsh passages, to underscore that
these do not represent the way of Torah. Torah becomes a context of struggle,
of seeking the way.
Near the beginning, the Torah offers its classic challenge,
tzedek tzedek tirdof/justice, justice
shall you pursue (Deut. 16:20). Just before the place of the portion’s greatest
burst of violence is a series of military deferments, as though to say no to
the sword and to those who would wield it, no, no a thousand times no, even God
crying out. Immediately after the place of violence, framing and containing the
harsh passage, is the command to spare fruit trees in times of war.
Particularly in Chassidic teaching, the tree to be spared is seen to represent
the ultimate tree, the human being, ki
ha’adam etz ha’sadeh/for the human is the tree of the field (Deut. 20:19).

And then we come to the harsh passage (Deut. 20:16-18), its
words so hard to read, to share, to speak, chanting them in synagogue in a
mournful undertone. In regard to the Canaanite nations who dwell in the land we
are about to enter, the Torah says, lo
t’chayeh kol n’shammah/you shall not allow a soul to remain alive…. We
bravely step into the breach, ready to confront the violence, to speak truth to
power in the way that we have learned to do from Torah itself. If we do not
have the courage to confront violence in Torah, how shall we have the courage
to confront violence in the world around us? So we are meant to learn and to
transcend.

In a commentary of overwhelming moral
power, staggering in its challenge to the Written Torah and to most other
commentators, himself speaking truth to power, the Ha’k’tav V’ha’kabbalah
affirms the process of bringing Oral Torah, including our own voices, to
challenge the Written Torah. In regard to the harsh passage of our portion, as
usually translated, you shall not allow a
soul to remain alive, he virtually screams out at the cruelty and then
proceeds to show how it cannot possibly be as it would appear, that the Torah,
that God, God forbid, would call for the extermination of innocents, d’nireh k’ach’zari’ut g’dolah lish’foch dam
naf’shot n’ki’yim/so it appears as great cruelty to spill the blood of innocent
souls. He reviews the common views that rationalize the slaughter, offering
implicit critique to commentators who would appear to simply shrug. He then
goes on to offer his own view. He suggests that t’chayeh/to allow to
live has a technical meaning,
referring to sustaining a life, in this case enemy captives in order to enslave
them. He brings various examples to show how this is the meaning. The negative
formulation, as lo t’chayeh/you shall not
allow to live is not meant to suggest that we shouldn't sustain captives,
but that we should not sustain them for the sake of enslaving them. He then
says boldly that instead of either killing them or enslaving them, the verse
teaches that we should simply allow them to flee and to settle wherever they
like, even in the land of Israel.

Empowered
in our own wrestling with Torah as Torat
Chayyim/the Torah of life, drawn to confront and transcend violence in the
text, so we are meant to in life. The approach of the Ha'ketav V'hakabbalah points to the importance of
Oral Torah as the key to drawing out a stream of nonviolence that flows through
Torah. Oral Torah represents our human struggle with challenges presented by the
written word of Torah and in life itself. At times, the Oral Torah fills in
blanks and offers the way by which to fulfill a cryptically framed mitzvah, and at times it offers moral
direction and a call to question and wrestle with the written word.
So Torah
becomes a "laboratory," a context, in which we are meant to struggle
with all realms of life. Oral Torah represents the human will to engage with
all of our being, learning to challenge and redirect all that would undermine
the beauty of creation and the holiness of life, learning to challenge with all
of our heart, and with all of our soul, and with all of our might. Learning to
speak truth to power, we learn to lovingly engage with each other and with God
in the nexus of the written and the received.

Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein
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