Mercy, Mercy Me
In my years of reading Jewish texts, one particular teaching has particularly popped for me, the atheist, because it encapsulates what I believe to be an actual reality principle.
I’m talking about Judaism’s recognition that justice must be balanced with mercy or the world will not endure. The Talmud expresses this in several passages. Here are three:
“When the Holy One was about to create Adam, he saw both the righteous and the wicked who were to issue from him. So he said: If I create him, the wicked will issue from him; if I do not create him, how are the righteous to be born? What did the Holy One do? He diverted the way of the wicked from before his sight, partnered the quality of mercy with himself . . . and then created him.” (From the midrash collection, Genesis Rabbah, as translated in Bialik and Ravnitzky’s indispensable The Book of Legends.)
“Every day an angel goes forth from the presence of the Blessed One, setting out to destroy the world — to return it to its primeval chaos. However, when the Blessed One sees young children studying with their teachers, and the students of the wise sitting in their houses of study, his anger immediately changes to mercy.” (From the Talmud’s minor tractate Kallah Rabbati, as translated in Danny Siegel’s Where Heaven and Earth Touch.)
Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha said: Once when I entered into the innermost part [of the Temple Sanctuary] to offer incense, I saw the Lord of Hosts seated upon a high and exalted throne. He said to me, “Ishmael, my son, bless me!” I replied, “May it be your will that your mercy subdue your wrath, and your mercy prevail over your other attributes, so that you deal with your children according to the attribute of mercy; and may you, on their behalf, stop short of the limit of strict justice! And he nodded his head toward me.” (From the Talmud’s tractate Berakhot, as translated in The Book of Legends.)
I find it particularly interesting to think of “God” as a resolute destroyer, prepared every day to obliterate our world but deterred by the arousal of his feeling of mercy. And I find it astounding to picture “God” asking a human being for a blessing and being urged by that human being always to turn to mercy instead of “the limit of strict justice.”
Throughout Israel’s destruction of Gaza, I’ve been thinking about this Jewish reality principle, which seems to be almost entirely missing from the Israeli government’s calculations. Netanyahu and his Orthodox cohort are only too glad to invoke the Biblical metaphor of Amalek, the dastardly enemy who must be obliterated to the root, but they seem oblivious to far more profound Biblical metaphors that have helped Jews, across the centuries, aspire to be “a light unto the nations.”
But what would it mean, really, to bring mercy into play in response to Hamas’ grotesque attack? I’ve been asking various friends, including those who use words like genocide to describe Israel’s war: What would you have wanted Israel do on October 8th, 9th, 10th, etc.? Given Gaza’s crazy population density, given Hamas’ hundreds of miles of underground compounds and its merciless attitude towards Israel, what would you have done?
For me, nonviolence is the only merciful answer: to absorb the blow and say, We’re not going to kill tens of thousands of Palestinians in order to destroy Hamas. We’re not going to allow terrorism to destroy our souls. We’re going to bury our dead, sue for our captives to be returned, atone for whatever participation we’ve had in the creation of this horrible mess, and then ask the world to recognize and reward our righteousness.
Ha! We all know that any Israeli leader who advocated such a path would be chased out of office and stoned on the street. In truth, any leader in any country who advocated such a path would more than likely be booted.
Which is why our world continues to totter on the edge of obliteration.
We have so, so much to learn — like “young children, studying with their teachers, and the students of the wise sitting in their houses of study” — about mercy.
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