The following was written and delivered by Maia Young Goodman on becoming b'mitzvah for Parashat Mishpatim 5784 // February 10, 2024.
Exodus 23 4 and 5 read: "When you encounter the ox of an enemy of yours, or his donkey, wandering around—return, you must return it to him. When you see the donkey of your hated one lying down under a burden, and you stopped, and you would forsake it, you must not forsake it, you will instead forsake your enmity and help."
I was initially drawn to these two verses because of what wisdom I thought they might offer us with regards to dealing with people we don’t like, or people who don’t like us.
Because for as long as I remember, my Jewish identity has been wrapped up in being “other” and (by extension) at risk of enmity.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the Torah offered a straightforward lesson about how to treat our enemies?
But, of course, it never is that simple.
In the Mishnah Torah (13:6), Maimonides—a Sephardic Jewish scholar from the Middle Ages—specifies that we are only obligated to load and unload a beast of burden when we see the animal “in a way that can be described as an encounter” which, the Rambam explains, the Sages have determined to be a distance of 266 2/3 cubits.
Oh. 266 and two thirds cubits?
Let me get this straight.
We are only obligated to help our enemy if we don’t have plausible deniability?
We stand before Adonai and say “oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t technically ‘encounter’ him. I was 267 cubits away.”
I am reminded of the words of Black American poet June Jordan:
How many of my brothers and my sisters
will they kill
before I teach myself
retaliation?
Shall we pick a number?
South Africa for instance:
do we agree that more than ten thousand
in less than a year but that less than
five thousand slaughtered in more than six
months will
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME?
I must become a menace to my enemies.
A menace to my enemies.
Adonai promises to menace the enemies of the Israelites at the end of parsha Mishpatim.
In Exodus 23.27 they proclaim: “I will send forth My terror before you, and I will throw into panic all the people among whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn tail before you.”
Adonai vows the to set the borders of the Israelite’s land “from the Sea of Reeds to the Sea of Philistia, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates.”
How do we reconcile a text that commands us to work with one who hates us and then within 22 verses pledges to wreak havoc on those same people?
How do we reconcile a text that is still being used to justify the killing of civilians with the deep valuing of human life that is foundational to our Judaism?
In her poem “Translations,” Jewish American poet Adrienne Rich describes a “way of grief” that “is shared, unnecessary/and political.”
To what extent is enmity unnecessary? Political?
On a recent episode of Hidden Brain, NPR host Shankar Vedantam interviewed Kurt Gray, a psychologist and researcher studying political polarization at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Gray’s research suggests that we draw a series of conclusions about people who disagree with us politically—conclusions that are extremely powerful because they happen so quickly and unconsciously that we experience them as facts.
Our enemies are stupid.
Irrational.
They hate us.
They don’t care about our shared civil values.
Democracy.
They are immoral.
Bent on our destruction.
These assumptions, it turns out, are often incorrect, but they give us the license to feel righteous, like victims.
They give us permission to protect ourselves through any means necessary.
We feel vulnerable. Hated. Othered.
And this cognitive simplicity, this us and them duality, the narrative of victim and oppressor is so much easier than the alternative.
Morality gets more complicated if your opponent might actually have a point.
If they aren’t stupid, evil, wishing only your utter destruction.
It’s so much easier when God drives your enemies out before you, leaving behind only land ready for cultivation.
Or. Some would say colonization.
However, what if we were to step closer to our enemy. The person we assume hates us. What if instead of measuring 267 cubits and calling it a day, we step forward…just a third of a cubit, and thus compel ourselves to engage. To work with our enemy, forsaking our enmity.
Because perhaps enmity, like Adrienne Rich’s grief is unnecessary. Political. But very real. Like a sharp knife pressed to our tongues.
And perhaps our way through is something shared. Not shared facts. Anyone who has tried to argue with a relative over Passover dinner knows that facts rarely compel change.
No.
Perhaps it is the shared labor over the donkey. The shared concern over the harm we fear, our shared feelings of vulnerability, of feeling hated, othered.
In her poem “Red Sea,” Aurora Levins Morales, Puerto Rican Jewish poet, writes
This time we're tied at the ankles.
We cannot cross until we carry each other,
all of us refugees, all of us prophets.
No more taking turns on history's wheel,
trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.
The sea will not open that way.
This time that country
is what we promise each other,
our rage pressed cheek to cheek
until tears flood the space between,
until there are no enemies left,
because this time no one will be left to drown
and all of us must be chosen.
This time it's all of us or none.
Exodus 23 4 and 5 read: "When you encounter the ox of an enemy of yours, or his donkey, wandering around—return, you must return it to him. When you see the donkey of your hated one lying down under a burden, and you stopped, and you would forsake it, you must not forsake it, you will instead forsake your enmity and help."
I was initially drawn to these two verses because of what wisdom I thought they might offer us with regards to dealing with people we don’t like, or people who don’t like us.
Because for as long as I remember, my Jewish identity has been wrapped up in being “other” and (by extension) at risk of enmity.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the Torah offered a straightforward lesson about how to treat our enemies?
But, of course, it never is that simple.
In the Mishnah Torah (13:6), Maimonides—a Sephardic Jewish scholar from the Middle Ages—specifies that we are only obligated to load and unload a beast of burden when we see the animal “in a way that can be described as an encounter” which, the Rambam explains, the Sages have determined to be a distance of 266 2/3 cubits.
Oh. 266 and two thirds cubits?
Let me get this straight.
We are only obligated to help our enemy if we don’t have plausible deniability?
We stand before Adonai and say “oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t technically ‘encounter’ him. I was 267 cubits away.”
I am reminded of the words of Black American poet June Jordan:
How many of my brothers and my sisters
will they kill
before I teach myself
retaliation?
Shall we pick a number?
South Africa for instance:
do we agree that more than ten thousand
in less than a year but that less than
five thousand slaughtered in more than six
months will
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME?
I must become a menace to my enemies.
A menace to my enemies.
Adonai promises to menace the enemies of the Israelites at the end of parsha Mishpatim.
In Exodus 23.27 they proclaim: “I will send forth My terror before you, and I will throw into panic all the people among whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn tail before you.”
Adonai vows the to set the borders of the Israelite’s land “from the Sea of Reeds to the Sea of Philistia, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates.”
How do we reconcile a text that commands us to work with one who hates us and then within 22 verses pledges to wreak havoc on those same people?
How do we reconcile a text that is still being used to justify the killing of civilians with the deep valuing of human life that is foundational to our Judaism?
In her poem “Translations,” Jewish American poet Adrienne Rich describes a “way of grief” that “is shared, unnecessary/and political.”
To what extent is enmity unnecessary? Political?
On a recent episode of Hidden Brain, NPR host Shankar Vedantam interviewed Kurt Gray, a psychologist and researcher studying political polarization at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Gray’s research suggests that we draw a series of conclusions about people who disagree with us politically—conclusions that are extremely powerful because they happen so quickly and unconsciously that we experience them as facts.
Our enemies are stupid.
Irrational.
They hate us.
They don’t care about our shared civil values.
Democracy.
They are immoral.
Bent on our destruction.
These assumptions, it turns out, are often incorrect, but they give us the license to feel righteous, like victims.
They give us permission to protect ourselves through any means necessary.
We feel vulnerable. Hated. Othered.
And this cognitive simplicity, this us and them duality, the narrative of victim and oppressor is so much easier than the alternative.
Morality gets more complicated if your opponent might actually have a point.
If they aren’t stupid, evil, wishing only your utter destruction.
It’s so much easier when God drives your enemies out before you, leaving behind only land ready for cultivation.
Or. Some would say colonization.
However, what if we were to step closer to our enemy. The person we assume hates us. What if instead of measuring 267 cubits and calling it a day, we step forward…just a third of a cubit, and thus compel ourselves to engage. To work with our enemy, forsaking our enmity.
Because perhaps enmity, like Adrienne Rich’s grief is unnecessary. Political. But very real. Like a sharp knife pressed to our tongues.
And perhaps our way through is something shared. Not shared facts. Anyone who has tried to argue with a relative over Passover dinner knows that facts rarely compel change.
No.
Perhaps it is the shared labor over the donkey. The shared concern over the harm we fear, our shared feelings of vulnerability, of feeling hated, othered.
In her poem “Red Sea,” Aurora Levins Morales, Puerto Rican Jewish poet, writes
This time we're tied at the ankles.
We cannot cross until we carry each other,
all of us refugees, all of us prophets.
No more taking turns on history's wheel,
trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.
The sea will not open that way.
This time that country
is what we promise each other,
our rage pressed cheek to cheek
until tears flood the space between,
until there are no enemies left,
because this time no one will be left to drown
and all of us must be chosen.
This time it's all of us or none.
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