In Parshat Re’eh, we learn about the case of the Ir Hanidachat, the city that has been led astray into idolatry and that is condemned to be destroyed.
If you hear it said of one of your towns… that scoundrels have come out from among you and led the inhabitants of their town astray, saying: Let us go and worship other gods that you have not known — you shall inquire, investigate, and interrogate thoroughly. If it is true, and the charge is confirmed, that such an abhorrent thing has been done in your midst, you shall put the inhabitants of that town to the sword, and utterly destroy it and everything in it, its cattle included. Gather all its spoil into the town square, and burn the town and all its spoil as a whole offering to the LORD your God; it shall remain an eternal mound [ruin], never to be rebuilt. Let nothing that has been condemned stick to your hand…
Devarim 13:13–18
The sages in the Mishna discuss the logic behind the command to destroy the idolatrous city. Rabbi Shimon states that God perceives the city’s obliteration in a positive way—as if an olah (completely burnt offering) had been sacrificed. Another sage suggests that as long as there are wicked people in the world, anger (charon af) exists too; once the wicked are eliminated—by the city being destroyed—such anger disappears. The devastation of the wicked city returns the world to peacefulness. For this reason, it is welcomed by God.
The Talmud dissents
Yet the Talmud in Sanhedrin (71a and 111b—113a) questions the logic—and perhaps even the morality—of the commandment.
The discussion brings up mitigating circumstances based on the literal reading of the text. Perhaps the city is indeed idolatrous, but has not been “led astray by scoundrels”. Or perhaps the city has no town square in which its spoils might be gathered to be burned.
Rabbi Eliezer ultimately concludes that no city was ever obliterated in this way. He assumes that any city would almost certainly possess at least one mezuzah (in which God’s name always appears). There is thus a seeming clash of commandments. On the one hand, the city must be demolished; on the other, God’s name cannot be destroyed. He concludes the whole case must be hypothetical.
Why then does the Torah bring up such a commandment? The Gemara answers: דרוש וקבל שכר. So that we may expound it—as the Gemara so diligently does—and receive reward.
Rabbi Yonatan meanwhile disagrees. He claims that not only was such a city once destroyed, he actually sat on its ruins.
What is at stake is how Jewish thought relates to conflicts between the sages’ sense of morality and the received Torah text.
Morally problematic laws
What is at stake in this discussion is not just the specifics of a particular city, but rather different approaches to how Jewish thought relates to conflicts between the sages’ (subjective) sense of morality—or their understanding of what values the Torah sought to promote—and the received Torah text.
The condemned city is not the only case in which such a clash exists. The Torah also includes the commandments to kill a “rebellious” son, to wipe out Amalek, and to exclude mamzerim (children born from forbidden relationships) from communal life.
Some—though not all—sages felt uncomfortable with these Divine commands.
Their responses fall into four broad models for dealing with the dissonance between the text and subjective morality:
Model 1 – The literal approach, seeks to justify the plain meaning of the text. Anything that appears in the Torah is assumed to be inherently moral. In the case of the Ir Hanidachat, the wickedness of the city causes anger in the world, and thus needs to be removed. In the case of the rebellious son it is assumed that he will one day become a murderer, and thus it is preferable to kill him before that comes about. Mamzerim are presumed to possess a type of genetic defect due to the sin of their parents. Amalekites are presumed to be inherently evil—even the babies.
At its core, this model believes it is not for humans to question the wisdom of the holy text—our job is simply to implement the commands.
The other three models broadly reject this position and attempt to soften, to neutralize, or even to cancel biblical commands.
Model 2 – It’s unfair, but nothing can be done. This approach presents rabbinic verbal condemnation of specific commandments, even while leaving the problematic halacha on the books. The sages express their frustration with the law. They believe it to be unfair, or claim that one day—or in olam haba—it might be fixed. But that is up to God, not them.
In an extraordinary passage in Vayikra Rabbah, Daniel the Tailor expounds on a verse in Proverbs that describes oppressors with power, and victims who have no comforter. According to Daniel, those oppressors are actually the rabbinic establishment! Why are they considered oppressors? Because they unfairly punish mamzerim who, through no sin of their own, are excluded from the community. And where is God? God, according to Daniel, is on the side of the oppressed mamzer children and seeks to comfort them. “In this world they are sullied,” God is reported as saying, “but in the world to come they are pure gold.”
For all its rhetorical originality and radicalism—the rabbinical establishment is the bad guy in this story!—this approach does nothing to fix the law of mamzerut. The mamzerim receive no practical help in the here and now.
Model 3 – Neutralize the law. This approach changes the focus. The law remains on the books, but it is limited so severely that it is essentially neutralized. For example, some sages argue that the Amalekites (who must be exterminated) and the Ammonites (who are forbidden to convert) are no longer identifiable because the Assyrian Ruler Sennacherib “mixed up all the peoples” as part of his imperial strategy. They likewise contend that for the rebellious son to be actually executed, he must be within a specific (almost impossibly small) age range, just before bar mitzvah. He also must be brought to the Bet Din by both parents at the same time.
These scenarios are technically imaginable (perhaps DNA tests for all suspected Ammonites?) But the sages have limited the principle so far that it is near-impossible to carry out.
In his article, “The Punishment of Amalek in Jewish Tradition: Coping with the Moral Problem,” Avi Sagi terms this approach the “practical model.” It uses what the Rabbis term an “empirical” fact cited in the sources, such as the mixing up of the nations, “as a vehicle for their moral intuitions.” He writes: “Aware of their limited ability to reinterpret the canonical text so as to make halachic norms accord with their moral views, they rely on a fact that allows them to restrict the scope of a ruling about which they have moral reservations.”
The advantage of this practical model is its ability to claim strict adherence to the canonical text. In practice, however, the commandment is never implemented.
As Rabbi Norman Solomon observes in his book Torah from Heaven: The Reconstruction of Faith, a “satisfactory halacha has been produced.” Based on the rabbis’ reading, discrimination against individuals on racial grounds has been eliminated.
What is missing though, is a “satisfactory theology,” We still do not know why these Torah commandments exist in the first place.
Model 4 – “It never happened!”. This approach is found in only two cases—the law of the rebellious son, and the story of the condemned city—and is more radical still. Like Rabbi Eliezer earlier, it pushes the hermeneutical formula so far (the rebellious son’s parents must look the same, the condemned city must not have a mezuzah) that the only possible conclusion is that these situations never actually happened. Instead, in both cases, we read דרוש וקבל שכר—we should learn the laws in order to receive reward.
Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits in Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Halakha, claims that this kind of reasoning embodies the concept of svara, which he calls “human intellect functioning within the embracing socio-ethical context of the halacha.” The reasoning of the sages is guided by two of halacha’s ideals: “you shall live by them (the commandments) and not die by them” and “all its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are those of peace.”
The inevitable challenge of hard texts
In his book Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes that every religion that is based on a body of holy writings contains “hard texts: passages which, if taken literally and applied directly would lead to results at odds with that religion’s deepest moral convictions” and concludes that “such texts need interpretation.”
While Rabbi Sacks does not specify which texts he is referring to, elsewhere, he discusses the condemned city. “Why create a law that is inapplicable?” he asks. In order to teach that “idolatry, once accepted in public, is contagious.” There is thus an underlying logic in the command, even if the application is only hypothetical. He concludes that “law exists not just to regulate, but also to educate.”
Going further, perhaps the Talmudic phrase דרוש וקבל שכר, is a demand not just to learn the text in order to receive reward, but לדרוש, to interpret it. Based on this reading, we would be commanded to interpret sacred text in line with Torah values—values that are, as Berkovits reminds us, of pleasantness and peace.
Yet it is worth remembering that none of these models provide us with both a satisfactory halacha and a satisfactory theology.
In his work, Jewish Law as Rebellion, Rabbi Cardozo brings an even more radical idea of the theological approach that motivates the sages. Using the examples of the rabbinic arguments within the cases of mamzerut, the rebellious son, and the condemned city, he explains that the Torah received by Moshe on Mount Sinai is only one translation out of many, which has its origin in the “Torah Kedumah”, the primordial, original, Torah, which in turn is rooted in God’s mind. He sees the Torah text we have as being merely a point of departure rather than the ultimate arrival; that what we received at Sinai was an instantaneous photograph, bound by the human nature and condition at the time at which it was given. It needed to evolve as our moral minds evolved. Rather than God giving a new Torah every few centuries, it was the responsibility of the sages to update it in line with their moral conscience via the Oral Torah. The sages rereading the text are thus uncovering divine secrets that were always latent in the primordial Torah.
Despite all these ideas, we should note that in both the case of the rebellious son and the condemned city, there is one sage, Rabbi Yonatan, who rejects these hermeneutical arguments. He believes Torah commands are not only there to educate, but to implement. He maintains these cases did come up, and that he personally sat on the ruins of the condemned city and on the grave of the rebellious son.
Sacred text has the potential to be reinterpreted—and we need to accept that responsibility. Yet Rabbi Yonatan’s claim is a reminder that some will read text more literally. And that when these “hard texts” are met without challenge, the result is not a lesson to be studied—or even to gain reward from—but rather a grave that needs to be dug.
