Menachem Mendel

Raymond Ibrahim has a article in the latest issue of the Middle East Quarterly, “Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?”. Ibrahim’s claim is that there is a fundamental difference between violence in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions. (hat tip) He wrote he following regarding violence in the Bible,

Old Testament violence is an interesting case in point. God clearly ordered the Hebrews to annihilate the Canaanites and surrounding peoples. Such violence is therefore an expression of God’s will, for good or ill. Regardless, all the historic violence committed by the Hebrews and recorded in the Old Testament is just that—history. It happened; God commanded it. But it revolved around a specific time and place and was directed against a specific people. At no time did such violence go on to become standardized or codified into Jewish law. In short, biblical accounts of violence are descriptive, not prescriptive.

Ibrahim’s understanding of violence in Jewish tradition is somewhat similar to that already found in the Mishnah (Yadayim 4:4, also see T. Kiddushin 5:4), “כבר עלה סנחריב מלך אשור ובלבל את כל האומות” (“Sanharib the king of Asshur already came and mixed up the nations.”) While God did command that the seven nations be destroyed, these nations no longer exist and therefore the biblical command is no longer valid.

A number of writers have addressed different aspects of Jews, Jewish law, Jewish history, violence, and war, among them are Elliot Horowitz, Moshe Greenberg, Michael Broyde, and Michael Stanislawski. In addition, collections of articles have been published and blog posts dedicated to the subject.

One of the most interesting articles that I have read which discusses the change from a biblical view of idolators and idolatry to one found in Talmudic literature is in an article by Moshe Halbertal, “Coexisting With the Enemy : Jews and Pagans in the Mishnah,” which was publshed in Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity. Halbertal wrote that,

It is a strategy of passive resistance rather than outward war. The issue is how to live with a pagan reality, and yet not be involved in benefiting from it, or indirectly supporting it. Instead of the biblical commandment to kill pagans, accord to the Mishnah a Jewish midwife is not allowed to serve in a birth of a pagan since a Jew is prohibited from helping to sustain pagan worshippers around him or her: ‘An Israelite woman should not act as a midwife to a heathen woman’ (Avodah Zarah 2.1).

He claims that the Mishnah called for an “introversion of aggression from waging an open war to avoiding benefit. It seems that the Mishnah attempts to continue the struggle from the position of weakness; it thus adopts the rule of avoiding rather than destroying.” The question is what happens when that “position of weakness” no longer exists?

Posted on June 9th, 2009 under Jewish History, Jewish Thought, Jewish-Gentile Relations • RSS 2.0 feed • You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed