A CLOSED FIST

Choosing violence and non-violence

There is a familiar stance in martial arts, with open hands, it looks a little bit like ‘hands up’. You approach a person or as you are approached, you present hands which appear passive and show a desire to de-escalate. The stance, in spite of its appearance, is an attacking stance ready to react to another party's aggression. 

This week’s Parsha, the weekly Torah portion, is all about response to damage, what occurs when you are attacked, when your property or animals are damaged or hurt. We are in the ancient world, our Torah laws come in a form that we should find jarring, out of touch with our contemporary language, but the questions raised remain crucial and relevant. 

There is one word from the Parsha which piqued my curiosity, a word I have not come across before: ‘אֶגְרֹף’, eg-roff, closed fist. It only appears here and one other place in our whole Torah [Isaiah 58:4]. The word suggests a premeditation or at the very least some kind of preparation for violence:

וְכִי־יְרִיבֻן אֲנָשִׁים וְהִכָּה־אִישׁ אֶת־רֵעֵהוּ בְּאֶבֶן אוֹ בְאֶגְרֹף וְלֹא יָמוּת וְנָפַל לְמִשְׁכָּב׃ 

When [two] parties quarrel and one strikes the other with stone or fist ‘eg-roff’, and the victim does not die but becomes unwell…EXODUS, 21:18

The midrash, our rabbinic interpretation, borrows this word, ‘אֶגְרוֹף’ eg-roff, when asking about Moses’s attack against the Egyptian slave driver. Moses was adopted into Pharaoh's palace, grows up there and now opens his eyes and sees the injustice of the Israelite slavery. It is Moses’s first act of rebellion, resistance against the brutal Egyptian slavery. The Midrash asks: ‘בַּמֶּה הֲרָגוֹ רַבִּי אֶבְיָתָר אָמַר הִכָּהוּ בְּאֶגְרוֹף, וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים מַגְרֵפָה שֶׁל טִיט נָטַל וְהוֹצִיא אֶת מֹחוֹ’, how did Moses kill? One option was that he beat him with his closed fist, ‘אֶגְרוֹף’ eg-roff; another option is that he was beaten with a rake handle [MIDRASH, EXODUS RABAH, 1]; the final option the Midrash presents is that Moses utters some kind of incantation which killed the task master - a more gentle stance. 

The Parsha, examining what happens when you strike someone, continues to look at equivalency for damage done. And we arrive at one of the well-known parts of the Parsha ‘וְנָתַתָּה נֶפֶשׁ תַּחַת נָפֶשׁ׃ עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן’, ‘the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye’. The Rabbis of the Talmud immediately complicate this simplistic verse of Torah, it simply does not work for them, there is a work through of why: what if the person who injures is already injured, they may not live if they are further injured; what if a child; what if their experience of pain is different from the person originally injured? This is the game the rabbis are constantly playing, reframing holy Torah law beyond its original scope and in some cases, in effect changing its application entirely. They arrive at an understanding of the practical application of ‘eye for eye’ according to the rabbis - ‘ ״עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן״ – מָמוֹן’ [BABYLONIAN TALMUD, BABA KAMA 83B]. The entirety of this passage has been flipped, from a compensation through infliction of actual harm on a person, to a financial compensation for damage done!

This is the development of Jewish law in action. 

There are two lessons we might learn from this Torah, this section of Parsha. One is that our rabbis and our Judaism understood, in an ultimate sense, the futility of violence; you could hit someone and they would hit you back, lop bits of someone and have them do the same to you but it is ultimately a zero-sum game. The presentation here is that our ethical tradition puts in place a way of dealing with conflict which steps outside the cycle of violence and destruction. 

There is another part of the story…this Torah also teaches that violence is a normal part of human experience (not preferential or ideal). Moses does not come to represent pacificism, he takes violent action to oppose oppression and our Torah fully acknowledges violence and damage as a part of regular life. There are moments in the story of our people, where we have struck out, we have come under attack and we in turn attack. We might approach these moments with open hands, in the hope that the exchange will not come to blows; we should ask questions, is there another option in this instance? When it comes to the protection of life, when it comes to preservation of life and community, we must stand up to protect ourselves. 

My prayer for Shabbat is that we will dream of living in a world of less violence, with civil ways of resolving conflict which are outside of the cycle of violence. We also pray that when we must defend ourselves that we have the strength and capacity to do so and that ultimately our leaders know the difference between these two stances and how in wisdom to incorporate both for the protection of our people and the care of all humans. 

Shabbat shalom