The silence of Jacob

There is a strange passage at the beginning of this week’s reading, Gen 35:2. “Jacob said to his household: Get rid of the foreign gods” אֶת-אֱלֹהֵי הַנֵּכָר
Foreign gods? Why does the household of Jacobs have foreign gods, in other words, idols? This household has been monotheistic for three or four generations since God spoke to Abraham. They are supposed to have got rid of idolatry. Then why do they still keep these idols?

There is one moral explanation {Malbim, ad loc.]. These foreign gods are not actual idols. The expression must be read as a metaphor. These verses instruct the sons of Jacob to undergo a process of purification of bodies and clothes. Because they are about to build a Temple in Bet El; you must purify yourself before building a Temple.

There is, though, another reading which links this passage to the previous chapter, the rape of Dinah. Shechem, the son of Hamor, rape Dinah, the daughter of Jacob. After the rape, the family of Shechem offers to Jacob what we call a “shotgun wedding”. Jacob’s sons -the brothers of Dinah- agree, on condition that the male inhabitants of Shechem accept to be circumcised.
Shechem agrees. But when they are recovering from the circumcision and then are weak, Simeon and Levi, two sons of Jacob, attack the city of Shechem. Simeon and Levi kill all the men of Shechem, loot the animals, and all the wealthy of the city, including the precious statues and idols they have, אֶת-אֱלֹהֵי הַנֵּכָר the foreign gods.

It is a disconcerting episode. Even more disturbing is Jacob’s reaction. Once he learns of the massacre, he reproaches his sons. He says the land’s inhabitants will gather against him and his family. Simeon and Levi give their father a chilling reply: “Is our sister a prostitute?” They have exterminated an entire city and do not regret it. It has been an act of revenge, And Jacob, at this point, is silent. This is the most chilling part of the whole episode. The silence of our Patriarch when he learns that his son has committed a massacre and does not regret it at all.

I have always found Jacob’s silence very distressing and ethically problematic. I grew up in the 90s when rape and revenge were part of the horrible wars in the Balkans, nearby Italy, where I lived. Did Jacob give his approval to a similar action?

I recently read the commentary of the Maharal, who sees this episode as part of a war. The Maharal explains that Shechem was at war with the Israelites. The rape of Dinah was an act of war. Shechem proposed not a marriage but a ceasefire of three days. When the truce ends, Simon and Levi attack Shechem.

Now, if we read the story this way, the matter of the foreign gods makes sense. Jacob’s family were keeping these idols that were looted from the city. They were a souvenir of the military enterprise, which is terrible on several levels. Spoils of war must be removed from the households of Jacob when they are about to build for the first time. Part of a process of purification, indeed.

Reading today, the story of the rape of Dinah and the massacre of Shechem as part of the war forces us to confront the contemporary situation. Because in this current conflict, rape is an act of war. It is what Haamas has done against our brethren in the Land of Israel. Hamas terrorists have been instructed by their religious authorities to rape the Jewish women. They filmed their deeds and posted videos online on social media to encourage others to do the same. And, let me remind you, the so-called moderate Palestinian authority, that of Abu Mazen, still has not condemned those rapes. Nor, if you have noted, many Leftist feminist organizations.

The Israeli soldiers do not rape Arab women. Even avowed antiZionists admit that rape is not part of the toolkit of the Israeli Army. The sociologist Tal Nitzani, a ferociously anti-Israel academic, published a study in 2004. In such a masterpiece of social science, Nitzam explains that Israeli soldiers refrain from raping Palestinian women because they have been taught to dehumanize the Palestinians. Nitzan also maintains that soldiers don’t want the Arab population to increase through pregnancies. Let me quote:
“As Israelis/Jews, who view themselves as moral, the soldiers find it difficult to commit military rapes. Jews identify themselves as non-rapists, non-assimilationists, and as a nation unique in the embrace of God. Rape and non-rape are two sides of the same coin, and in different situations, the use of either can lead to the same results”.

Understood? Israeli soldiers do not rape the Arab women because they are racist. What an extraordinary sample of anti-Zionist logic… Anyway, it proves my point. Israelis do not commit rape. To the Palestinians, as we have seen, things are precisely the opposite. Rape, to them, is a legitimate weapon.
Does the systematic rape of Israeli women justify the bombing of a city or a similar action, as we have seen against the inhabitants of Shechem?
I don’t know. No one knows.

Ramban suggests that the town of Shechem was an evil place worthy of destruction. There is indeed a long list of horrible things that have happened there. Maimonides justifies the actions of Simon and Levi by accusing the town of moral failure. He states that all the inhabitants of Shechem had to die. They saw the rape and the kidnapping, and they were aware of the horror, but they did not prevent it. Maimonides argues not only that kidnapping and rape must be punished, but woe to the society that allows this to go on unchecked — as this is the case in Gaza nowadays.

I am not Ramban, nor Mainonides. The death of civilians horrifies me, although I am aware that civilian casualties outnumber military deaths in every war since WWI. I also know that those hostages who have escaped from their prison in Gaza have been captured and brought back to their torturers. This suggests that the population of Gaza is not so opposed to the Hamas rulers as the BBC and others pretend they are.

And so, like Jacob, I am silent. I have no answer. I do not dare to preach “peace! peace!” or “ceasefire! ceasefire!” from the comfortable place where I live, in Southern England: Brighton, Hove. I do not admonish those Jews whose sisters and mothers have been raped, tortured and murdered by Hamas, with the support of many Palestinians.

I follow Jacob’s example.

My heart is with them, and I wish the war end soon.