Efrat, Israel – Besides the obvious material advantages the West offers its citizens, a select number of Jews of Western persuasion has created an ideology out of continuing to live in the Diaspora. They maintain a glorification of the exile based on the notion that living marginally, on the edge of history, allows one to remain aloof from the ugly aspects of society.

So long as Jews are powerless and stateless, (which is what the Jewish position in Christian/Western culture boils down to when the past 2,000 years are taken as a whole) the Jewish people cannot be accused of the cruelties and immoralities other nations have committed wholesale. Sitting on the sidelines we don’t trample the innocent.

And so Israel, a small country with all kinds of problems, looms on the international horizon as an undesirable trouble spot, forced to deal with thorny moral questions: How to punish terrorists who’ve been convicted of brutal murder that doesn’t distinguish between a child and a soldier? How to fight a war against katyusha rockets launched from within civilian populations aimed at nothing but the civilian populations in Jewish border towns? How to release terrorists with blood on their hands for captured Israeli soldiers? How to make peace with masked Arab gangs whose guns are often aimed at their fellow Arabs? How to maintain a humanitarian stance towards an enemy whose fanatic hatred begins with mother’s milk and doesn’t end until the seventy virgins embrace the suicide bomber?

For the ideologues of non-involvement it would seem that the image preferred is the Jews as scholar, rabbi, poet and doctor — the quiet soul who never raises his voice, and therefore doesn’t have to risk getting his hands dirtied by the complex business of running a country surrounded by enemies.

In this week’s portion, Re’eh, Jews are commanded to kill other Jews if the overwhelming population of a city worships idolatry, a concept which sounds utterly primitive to a modern sensitivity. How can God command us to kill a Jewish city? True, we’re dealing with idolaters, but we’re still dealing with an entire city consisting of men, women and children. The idea is so shocking that it’s easy to miss the end of the verse that “…God will then grant you to be merciful?” (Deut. 13:18) What is mercy doing in the heart of such apparent cruelty?

Rabbi Akiva suggests that the very words “God will then grant you to be merciful” means that you are not to kill the children (Tosefta Sanhedrin Chapter 14). However, there are three Talmudic passages which see this passage as a confirmation of compassion, as a fundamental characteristic of the Jewish People:

Tractate Shabbat, 151b, “It is taught: Rabban Gamliel B’Rebi says, ‘He will grant you to be merciful, and He will be merciful to you,’ teaches that all who are merciful to others are accorded mercy by heaven and all who are not merciful are not accorded mercy by heaven...’ ”
Tractate Betza, 32b, “It is taught: [our verse followed by. . .] All who are merciful to others are assuredly of the seed of our father Abraham, and all who are not merciful are assuredly not of the seed of. . . Abraham.”

Tractate Yevamot, 79a, “It is taught: There are three distinguishing signs of the Jewish nation: mercifulness, shamefacedness, and loving-kindness. Mercifulness, as it is written….and then the quote from our verse in Deuteronomy 13.

What’s going on here? A Jewish law of physics — as you do unto others so it will be done unto you? That for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction? A Jewish law of heredity and genetics for identifying Abraham’s seed? A third law of social anthropology in terms of distinguishing Jewish behavior? Why all this from a verse in a passage concerning idolatry and decimation? The tension between aspects of mercy and the horrible facts of annihilation is a total shock, so jolting that the reader staggers away in confusion.

The Ohr HaHayim, (Rabbi Haim ben Attar, 1696-1743), pierces through this question by examining what happens to people when they kill. The actual executions may very well lead to a state of blood lust among the killers capable of undoing the very heart of Jewish civilization. By including the verse concerning mercy, the Torah promises that compassion will not be uprooted from the Jews, even if normal peoples would ordinarily be changed by the violence. God’s promise is a gift: Jews will not become cruel.

In this light, the Talmudic passages we’ve quoted reverberate even deeper. Who and what we are as a people —seed of Abraham, loving-kindness, compassionate etc. —not only accompany us in the best of circumstances, but even during the worst. Hope-fully, the Torah is presenting a self-fulfilling prophecy: Get your hands dirty, if you must, in the business of establishing a state, but don’t forget your fundamental quality of mercy.

Every day in Israel we see the relevance of the Or HaHayim’s interpretation. In the war between us and the Palestinians, we are being called upon to do things which are “cruel” in order to protect our innocent civilians, constantly targeted by our enemy. But how many other armies have devoted so much energy toward inventing bullets which maim, but don’t kill? Bursting into a house suspected of hiding a cache of weapons may frighten people, but how many armed forces perform such actions with the avowed purpose of not killing the innocent, even at risk to themselves. We do not aerially bomb an entire area we know contain caches of weapons ready to be used against us, we rather go searching house to house, and only target would-be assassins, even if this means risking the lives of our own boys.

During the two intifadas –and even today--  the impossible has taken place. In every Jewish hospital in Israel, Arabs — even Palestinians who were wounded with their hands still clutching their loaded gun-- are given the same excellent medical attention as the Israelis. And I recall an amazing event which could take place only in Israel. An Israeli Jew was murdered by a terrorist Gazan. During the second intifada in the midst of their tragedy, the family opted to donate his heart for a transplant. The next person in line for a heart was a Palestinian from East Jerusalem. The family agonized and decided to give the heart, never the less. 

If we think about it, this Jewish heart may have been foreshadowed in the verse about compassion appearing in this week’s portion. Cruelty will not become second nature to us. It’s a promise. The Jews will never lose their compassionate hearts. Even in the midst of necessary violence, “God will grant you to be merciful.”