Rabbi Mishael
Zion | Text and the City | VaYechi 2015
For a few weeks now I’ve been meaning to write about my
ancestor, Levi. The mythical father of my own tribe of Levites, he’s been rearing
his head a lot lately. Together with his brother, Shimon, Levi is the first Child
of Monotheism who unsheathed the indiscriminate sword of vengeance. In the killing
of all the men of Shechem, Levi is the mascot of twisting the demand for
justice and security into an isolationist and vengeful approach. He trademarked
the claim, in avenging the rape of his sister Dina, that deceit and butchery are
justified in the name of brotherly solidarity (“Should
our sister then be treated like a whore?”). Together, Levi and Shimon hold
the patent on turning Abraham’s covenant into a veil for violence.
And they’ve been accruing quite a lot of royalties lately. Each
week Levi’s fingerprints appear on more and more news stories: in the religiously
justified violence and extremism from various children of Abraham, but also in
the increasingly isolationist
approach of populist politicians. You know it’s a Levite isolationism when
it condones butchering in distant camps while keeping the home camp closed and
pure… Finally, for those following the latest wedding
fashions in extreme-right-wing Israel, in the appalling – but not
unfamiliar – call for revenge and violence from my own relatives.
At the end of his life, from the safety of his deathbed, he
returns to Levi and Shimon’s actions. In the midst of this week’s Torah
portions blessings to all his other children, Jacob issues the following curse:
Wronging weapons are their ties-of-kinship!
To their council may my being never come,
In their intimacy may my person never unite!
For in their anger they kill men,
In their self-will they maim bulls.
Damned be their anger, that it is so fierce!
Their fury, that is so harsh!
I will split them up among Jacob,
I will scatter them throughout Israel. (Genesis 49:5-7)
שִׁמְעוֹן וְלֵוִי – אַחִים! כְּלֵי חָמָס מְכֵרֹתֵיהֶם. בְּסֹדָם אַל תָּבֹא נַפְשִׁי, בִּקְהָלָם אַל תֵּחַד כְּבֹדִי. כִּי בְאַפָּם הָרְגוּ אִישׁ, וּבִרְצֹנָם עִקְּרוּ שׁוֹר. אָרוּר אַפָּם כִּי עָז! וְעֶבְרָתָם כִּי קָשָׁתָה! אֲחַלְּקֵם בְּיַעֲקֹב וַאֲפִיצֵם בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל:
 |
| A Star of David and the Hebrew word ‘Revenge’ are spray-painted on the walls of a Palestinian home which was burned down by arsonists on July 31, 2015 in the Palestinian village of Duma, near Nablus (Zacahria Sadeh/Rabbis for Human Rights) |
Nachmanides
explains that Jacob’s resounding curse functionally cuts them out of Abraham’s
inheritance, giving Shimon and Levi no independent share in the land of Israel
(probably reflecting the fact that neither tribe had their own land in Biblical
Israel). They are to be kept scattered among their brothers due to their “fierce
anger”, “harsh fury”, and their “Hamas”-like ways (“Hamas” חמס in Hebrew,
“deceitful wronging”, is the same verb used to describe the crimes of the
generation of the Flood). For they “caused the name of God himself to be
desecrated as people will claim that a prophet of God caused such hamas and
robbery”.
But Nachmanides also zeroes in on the first word of the
curse: Brothers. אחים:
“Simon and Levi – Brothers” – Some understood this as Jacob at first seemingly giving them credit, describing them as brothers to the core, believers in fraternity. For their hearts were passionate over the fate of their sister.
I imagine Shimon and Levi’s
ears perking up as they hear their father honor them with the title which they
self-identify with so strongly. “Yes, we are brothers indeed. In a family where
solidarity fell apart time and again – we were the loyal ones, weren’t we?” But
then his compliment turns into repudiation: if that is brotherhood, may my
legacy have nothing to do with it; may my being never become associated with this
version of fraternal intimacy.
Today, I hear Jacob’s
curse as a desperate plea. Please, may these powers that I have unleashed into
the world not take over what the name of Jacob/Israel will become. May the
family that I fathered not become smothered in brotherly fundamentalism. May such
“Brotherhood” (Islamic, Jewish, Christian, GOP, DNC) not become synonymous with
the project of Abraham. Jacob’s curse is not a prescribed destiny, it is a
charge to the rest of his children: make sure that Levi and Shimon’s ways do
not come to define what being a Child of Israel means. In a twist, he turns the
fraternal charge from one of violent protectionism and vengeance into one of
watchful moderation, engaged repudiation, brotherly intervention to mediate the
fury and anger when they arise.
Why do I return to Levi in confronting these dangerous, disgusting
and disheartening trends? Precisely because Levi is my relative, he’s my
backyard, the symbol of homegrown extremism. Framing this violence as coming
from my own family is a way of taking responsibility for it. Not liability, but
responsibility. Levi symbolizes the challenge of confronting homegrown hatred
and homegrown violence.
I do so in repudiation of the fact that so much of the discourse
in response to recent events has focused on othering those we disagree with,
distancing ourselves from any relationship with those who take the name
of our religion/nation/story in vain and desecration, and ignoring the fact
that there are values at the core of this hatred that must be engaged and
countered. Hiding behind words such as “radicalization”, “fundamentalism” or “populism”
is a way of creating a chasm between ourselves and those “others”, and in so
doing washing our own hands from any association. Levi reminds me that what we
must repudiate while engaging. Study the motivations and implications, then
truly rival their ideology, from up close and personal. Not let them claim the
values, dreams and names which are actually our inheritance. Not let them
define what Jacob’s path is in our eyes.
As one Bronfman Fellow said to me this week at the end of
our joint Mifgash Shabbaton of Israeli and American Bronfmanim: This weekend I
understood how for my parents and grandparents
the mission statement of the Jewish People was “I am seeking for my brothers”.
In response to the Holocaust, the plight of Soviet Jewry, the insecurity of
Israel, they felt that fraternity called upon them to fight for Jews against
their joint enemies. But today we live in the opposite reality, not of Jewish
disempowerment, but in deep Jewish privilege and power. For me, she said, “I
am seeking my brothers” means that I must not be silent - for my brothers
faces have changed. I must seek them out and call them out – and I must do it
first, for they are my brothers.
