By REUVEN HAMMERIllustration by Pepe Fainberg(photo credit: PEPE FAINBERG)
LAST SPRING I saw an excellent play on Broadway called “Indecent,” which related the history of a 1907 Yiddish play by Sholem Asch entitled “The God of Vengeance.”That play told the story of a Jewish family in which the overly strict and demagogic father called down the wrath of an unforgiving God upon his own daughter for her transgression. I’m not sure what Asch was trying to imply, but it occurred to me that the very title seemed to play into the hands of antisemites who revile Judaism as a religion of vengeance, governed by a cruel God. The title is undoubtedly taken from the first line in Psalm 94 – el nekamot Hashem – translated in the new Jewish Publication Society translation as “God of retribution” but in older versions as “God of vengeance.” Ironically the psalm itself does not depict a cruel and unjust God, but rather a God who is called upon to save the innocent, the helpless, the stranger, the widow, the orphan from evildoers who oppress and kill them.In any case that phrase – ‘The God of vengeance’ – is not commonly used in our literature.On the contrary, the Biblical verse that is most often cited by Jewish texts to describe God is neither vengeance nor retribution but rather God’s self-description in Exodus 34:6: “The Lord! The Lord! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness….”Note the three words that God uses to describe the qualities He reveals to Moses – goodness, grace and compassion.What Moses then learns is that God is merciful “to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin”; (Ex.34:6-7). Again the key words that indicate compassion and mercy are emphasized and repeated – compassion, grace, kindness, forgiving.This definition of God’s qualities, known in later tradition as “the 13 qualities,” is frequently quoted afterwards in the Bible whenever there is an appeal to God to forgive transgressions and show mercy and graciousness. It is repeated over and over in the liturgy of the Days of Awe when we pray for God’s forgiveness. These words form the very basis for the prayers of those sacred days. Although in the Torah these verses conclude with “yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generation,” the Rabbis omit any reference to punishment so that the quote concludes with “remitting punishment,” a complete change of the meaning achieved by omitting a few Hebrew words. Thus Rabbinic Judaism ensured God is seen as a God of mercy.UNFORTUNATELY THE canard that Judaism is a hard religion, with a strict and vengeful God, has entered into the general understanding of masses of people, including those who should know better. The origin of this is the many diatribes in the Christian Bible specifically against the Pharisees, who represented what later was called Rabbinic Judaism. They were the religious authorities of the time. Jesus describes them in the most negative of terms in Matthew 23. They are hypocrites, increasing burdens upon people, exalting themselves. He has a whole series of imprecations beginning with the line: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” We have no way of knowing if this is what Jesus really said about them or only what was put into his mouth by writers of the Gospels, but that makes no difference. As far as Christians were concerned, this was his teaching.No wonder that dictionaries today still define the word Pharisee as “distinguished by strict observance of the traditional and written law, and commonly held to have pretensions to superior sanctity; a self-righteous person; a hypocrite.”
It is only natural that such an idea would have been generally accepted and extended to the description of the nature of all Jews and Judaism. The Pharisees are strict legalists.Jews demand justice, not mercy and show no kindness to others – even Samaritans do better. The parable in the gospels is about ‘the good Samaritan,’ not ‘the good Jew.’ The God of the ‘Old Testament’ is the God of punishment and fury. The God of the ‘New Testament’ is the God of love.It is therefore no wonder that Shakespeare puts his sublime speech about “The quality of mercy” into the mouth of Portia, the Christian who is prosecuting the Jew Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice.” It is the Jew who shows no mercy and demands strict justice. He is asked to show mercy but refuses and says, “I crave the law.” Shakespeare may not have even known a Jew, though he certainly knew of Queen Elizabeth’s Jewish physician Rodrigo Lopez, a Portuguese converso who was sentenced to death for treason, to which he confessed under torture. He was publicly hanged, drawn and quartered on June 7, 1594. He is thought to have served as a model for the character of Shylock.Yet Shakespeare was too good a writer to miss the opportunity to put a speech like “Hath not a Jew…” into Shylock’s mouth, but if he wanted to depict a man who was imbued with cruelty and seeking revenge, who better than a Jew? In the play Antonio speaks of the Jewish heart as the hardest of anything that exists. Shylock is asked to show pity and forgiveness but instead answers that he has hatred “and a certain loathing” and is then called an “unfeeling man” filled with cruelty. All of this is a play that is categorized as a comedy.Centuries later Dickens fell victim to the same idea and chose to make one of the villains of Oliver Twist a Jew, Fagin. Fagin is not the lovable figure of the musical Oliver.Nor is his Jewishness an incidental matter.He is a cruel monster who is constantly referred to as ‘the Jew.’ At the end, the mob demands the death of “the Jew,” an epithet repeated over and over by the bloodthirsty mob. Since Dickens likely based this character on a real person, a Jewish scoundrel who was transported to Australia for his crimes, it is possible that Dickens may not have been antisemitic, but his depiction certainly is. To his credit it must be said that some twenty-five years later, in “Our Mutual Friend,” Dickens depicted a positive Jewish character – Riah.If the Torah’s definition of God is of a God of mercy, the writings of the Sages went even further. In the Talmud there is a daring saying in the name of Rabbi Zutra ben Tobi quoting the Amora Rav: What does the Holy One pray? “May it be My will that My mercy may suppress My anger, and that My quality of mercy may prevail over all My other attributes, so that I may deal with My children with My quality of mercy and stop short of strict justice.” This is followed by another similar saying by Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha who says that he once beheld the Holy One in the Holy of Holies who asked Ishmael to bless Him! And he did so with the same words as those of Rav – and when he did so the Holy One “nodded His head in agreement” (Berakhot 7a).IT IS not accidental that in our liturgy, a verse stressing God’s mercy is repeated several times: God being merciful grants atonement for sin and does not destroy; He restrains His wrath and does not give full vent to His fury (Ps. 78:38), followed by: Save us, O Lord, may the Sovereign answer us when we call! (Ps. 20:10).It is unfortunate that the general understanding of the nature of Judaism in the Western World – among the nations, beginning with the Roman Empire, that accepted the Christian religion – was informed with the prejudices that sprang from the fact that Christianity originated as a breakaway from Judaism and justified itself as different from and superior to Judaism. These characterizations begin in the Gospels, are extended and expanded in the writings of Paul and then in the Church Fathers. They contrast their religion to Judaism, depicting Judaism as based on law, legalism, strict justice, vengeance and deed rather than creed, love, faith and mercy.Fortunately in 1965, the Catholic Church promulgated Nostra Aetate, condemning faith-based antisemitism, including these false depictions, yet they have informed 2000 years of teachings, preaching and literature and are not so simple to erase from the collective memory.It is important for us to do whatever we can to paint a different picture of Judaism, the true picture. Rabbinic Judaism – stemming from Pharisaic ideas – is a Judaism, which teaches a God who required justice in the world but who is Himself the God of love and mercy, a religion that is based on deeds – mitzvot – which are themselves the daily expression of love of God and love of all humanity, in which ethics and morality require us to go far beyond legal demands into the realm of acts of loving-kindness and piety. The Jew that Judaism idealizes and attempts to create is not Shylock nor Fagin, but Aaron, the ideal person that Hillel once described: loving peace and pursuing it, loving human beings and drawing them closer to the Torah with its teachings of love and mercy.Rabbi Reuven Hammer is a Jerusalem author and lecturer, a former president of the International Rabbinical Assembly and a founder of the Masorti Movement in Israel.His most recent book is ‘Akiva: Life, Legend, Legacy’ (JPS), now available in a Hebrew edition published by Yedioth Books and the Schechter Institute
