One of the Most Radical Passages

In this week’s Torah portion, we come across what I think might be one of the most radical passages in the Torah, and yet it hardly seems radical at all.  It comes in the 10th Chapter of Deuteronomy:

Mark, the heavens to their uttermost reaches belong to your God יהוה, the earth and all that is on it! Yet it was to your ancestors that יהוה was drawn out of love for them, so that you, their lineal descendants, were chosen from among all peoples—as is now the case. Cut away, therefore, the thickening about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more.

For your God יהוה is God supreme and Lord supreme the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe, but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing food and clothing. You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10: 14-19)

It might not strike us as radical, but for a sacred text in the ancient Near East to call out to God Supreme, Great and Mighty and then immediately associate God with the marginal in society – that is a highly unexpected move.   God’s in that world were most often associated with strength in battle, with association with the nobility of the kingdom.  God was allied with the nobility and their wealth and power was a reflection of their deity’s own wealth and power.   But here, in our Torah, we get a very different move.  Immediately after expressing God’s supremacy and power, it immediately puts that power in support of those who are least supported in society.

As we will discuss tomorrow morning in Torah Study, this is what Frederick Nietzsche called “Slave Morality” and for him, is was the cause of everything weak, sad, and reprehensible in the Europe he inhabited.  Nietzsche mourned the old morality in which kings and warriors made right with might, and good was whatever those with power said it was.  He was the weakness of Europe as a reflection of this radical Jewish inversion of values, so that those who were least powerful determined moral virtue. 

In his “On the Genealogy of Morals” he wrote: 

Nothing which has been done of the earth against “the noble”, “the mighty,”  “the masters” and “the rulers,” is worth mentioning compared with what the Jews have done against them:   the Jews, that priestly people, which in the last resort was able to gain satisfaction from its enemies and conquerors only through a radical revaluation of their values, that is, through an act of the most deliberate revenge…. Namely, the slaves’ revolt in morality begins with the Jews: a revolt which has two thousand years of history behind it and which has only been lost sight of because – it was victorious

We assume that good equals helping those who are most in need of help and making sure the powerful do not oppress the weak excessively, but as Nietzsche points out, that is a radical new form of ethics that is brought to the world from Jewish tradition.   It turns the ethics of monarchy and authoritarian rulers upside down, and points out that God sees us equally, and in fact is on the side of the weak in order to balance the scales of justice just a bit.

This connection of God’s power with the liberation of the oppressed is at the heart of Judaism;  it is perhaps one of two or three fundamental Jewish theology innovations that have shaped our world.  Others include monotheism,  the sacredness of a day of rest, and a centering of the historical narrative on the quest to find a home. 

The passage I read also includes what is a sometimes uncomfortable verse about God choosing the Jewish people as God’s treasured people.  We have all had our moments of discomfort with the idea of being chosen, and for what (given our difficult history).  Here though, I think we can make a connection between God’s support for the weak and his choosing of the Israelites.

In last week’s portion, the same portion that includes the Shema and V’ahavta, we read this:

For you are a people consecrated to your God יהוה: of all the peoples on earth your God יהוה chose you to be God’s treasured people. It is not because you are the most numerous of peoples that יהוה grew attached to you and chose you—indeed, you are the smallest of peoples; but it was because יהוה favored you and kept the oath made to your fathers that יהוה freed you with a mighty hand and rescued you from the house of bondage, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 7:6-8)

Here, our ancestors accepted that we were loved not because of our greatness, or our moral certitude, but simply because we were the smallest of peoples and God had made a promise to Abraham and didn’t like that Pharoah was bullying such a small and powerless group. 

In the Torah, even though it says that the oldest son gets all the inheritance, in our narratives, it is almost always the opposite.  Jacob, the youngest, gets the blessing.  Rachel, the youngest is the mother of the hero of the story, Joseph, who is also the youngest for most of his life.   King Saul was the youngest in his family, as was King David, and King Solomon was among the youngest of David’s children.  

Our tradition somehow senses there is something profoundly meaningful and valuable in the experience of the underdog, the weak, the marginal, the small, that somehow it is those with the least power that have the most to teach us about morality and about what it means to create a good society.  Judaism would never say no one is free until everyone is free – that is far too all or nothing.  Judaism does say that we are all made better the more we can create justice for all in society, and that is best measured by the justice received by those who are most vulnerable in society. 

I also think it is a valuable reminder that we are loved not for our superlative strengths and skills, not for our resumes, and not for our accomplishment, but for our humanity, our vulnerability, and our ability empathize.   We are loved even though we are the least. That is a very powerful, healing view of the world and of God that we as Jews carry into this world we now live in. 

And the V’ahavta and the calls that we must love God and remind ourselves to do the Mitzvot is rooted in a fear that when our children become safe, settled, comfortable and affluent – when they become privileged- they will forget where they come from and with it, they will forget their ethical obligations.  

This is a danger for all of us, and Judaism calls upon us to do what we can to create justice and love mercy, and that doing those things is how we walk with God.  Yet, Judaism also warns against siding with the poor against the powerful, just because they are poor.  Instead, we are called to the highest, and most difficult sort of justice:  To see both weak and powerful, oppressed and oppressor as equal in the face of justice and of God.  We must try not to side with the powerful because they are powerful, or the poor because they are poor.  Instead, our tradition teaches the world that in the face of justice, we are all equal, no matter what society tells us, and that is still one of the most radical claims in human history. 

Shabbat shalom.