Is The Torah Cruel? - The Parshah On Fire - Matos/Masay

[Music] If you were to look at the Tyra with a bird's eyee view, you would find that it seems to contain an unexpectedly strange attachment to violence. In the very second para of the entire Torah, humanity at large was acting below Hashem's standards and it just prompted him to exterminate the entire human race with the mobble the great flood. Men, women, and children dead. Just a few parios later, the city of Saddam was acting in a way not approved of by heaven and the city was completely burnt in a sulfur firestorm. Again, men, women, and children dead. Next, we read about how Kamar, the prince of Sham, went ahead and violated Dena. The men of the city were cunningly told to circumcise. And then, while recovering in bed, they were all slaughtered, every single one of them. Then we read about how the sons of Yakov plotted and nearly executed the murder of their own brother, Yoseph. This is not exactly a book of butterflies and cupcakes. And the violence doesn't stop there. We were given the commandment to hunt down descendants of Amalik and annihilate them. We were charged with eradicating the seven Cananan nations inhabiting Eritis, an effective ethnic cleansing of the previous dwellers of the land. And finally, in this week's para, we are instructed to wage a vengeful war on the Midyan nation and kill all men, women, and children. Aren't the Jewish people supposed to be merciful? Don't we pride ourselves in our kind-heartedness and humaness? Isn't a Jew's ability to show mercy one of the three foundational traits that sets us apart? Why do we seem to take a very militant approach in dealing with our enemies? Aren't we people of the book, not people of the sword? Hashem commanded us to kill every last midyani male including the male infants and all females with the physical ability to have intercourse were likewise killed. So the garam samak explains how it was possible to determine which female children were able to physically cohabitate and which weren't. So they would march a girl in front of the coain's breastplate and if the girl did in fact have the ability to cohabitate her face would turn green. Can you imagine the scene? You have a three-year-old girl. She's screaming on top of her lungs, crying and pleading to be spared. We march her to the coain. Her face turns green and we grab her. We chop her head off. How does our claim to be the beacons of mercy and morality explain this? Doesn't this sound eerily similar to jihadists that attack us relentlessly? How does our claim to be the flag bearers of peace and harmony not utterly clash with the Torah's seemingly frequent promotion of violence? A a deeper explanation of these commandments beyond their superficial understanding not only offers us a significantly less violent interpretation of the Tyra, it offers us a refreshing glimpse of the Tyra's unparalleled mercy. Let's begin at the beginning. We believe that the world is created in order for Hashem to bestow goodness on us. Hashem doesn't need us to do mitzvah. He doesn't need us to blow chauffeur and shake lulof. He created the world for us to achieve goodness. In turn, we are charged with spreading morality and harmony throughout the world. Thus ensuring that Hashem's definition of goodness is actualized the world over in its fullest form. The problem was that the conditions of morality in the world slowly deteriorated until 1600 years after creation. Hashem had enough. The general society of the world and its barbaric tribes were living lives of lawlessness and moral bankruptcy. Mor mor morality had broken down to an incredible gruesome extent. So much so that the absolute most merciful thing Hashem could have done for the future inhabitants of the world was to wipe out the current humanity and just start over. Much like we understand the killing of a terrorist on route to stabbing an innocent mother holding a baby is merciful. So Hashem also showed only mercy by extracting the evil from the world. thus saving the billions of future people from being contaminated by this immoral way of life. Then came Saddam. Saddam was not merely a city bereft of morals. It was a city that threatened and intimidated others into following its morally bent way of life. Therefore, being that Hashem's ultimate goodness is only manifested in accordance with his rules of morality, life is really bad when there are murderers and idolattors and adultery everywhere. So the Sudan the the inhabitants of Saddam who grossly inhabited that way of life had to be eliminated not because Hashem was trying to be cruel to Saddam rather because he was having mercy on the rest of the world. The Rambam in Malimal writes that when Shim and Levy got up and killed the city of Shrem they were not acting as gruesome jihadists. The city in its entirety had watched as their prince violated the helpless Dena. And not only did they knew nothing about it, they celebrated it as an opportunity to make a pact with the family of Yakov, the people in the city were demonstrating a complete disinterest in a life of laws of or proper conduct. Shimon and Ley knew that not only was this an awful way to live, this was a cancerous way of life that can spread to others and wreck havoc in the whole world. Showing mercy on those who violate others and their sympathizers is in essence showing cruelty to the scores of victims that they will one day prey upon. Shiman and Ley could not tolerate such behavior. They were too merciful for that. When the Torah commands us to wage war on Midun and Cananan and Amalik, it is not an ethnic cleansing crusade. We are not against those particular nations per seam. We are rather against what they promulgate. We are only against the immoral and unethical habits that they celebrate. We don't just grab our spears and begrum the city. According to the Rambam, we are required by law to first ask for peace before every war. We are required to attempt to inspire our enemies to change their ways. Even Rashi, who maintains that we are not required to ask our enemies for peace, only holds this in a war mandated by Hashem, a mu mitzvah. when it comes to a war that we choose to wage on our own. And Muhammad Rush Rashi agrees. We are required to ask for peace to beg the inhabitants of that city to change their ways to become good people. So uninterested in bloody warfare were we. We would never surround an opponent on all four sides when waging war. We would always leave one side open for the enemy to retreat and change their ways. Can you believe it? This is something that's almost unheard of in the history of military tactics. When attacking the midonim and paras matos, it is abundantly clear that the Torah has only one prerogative. Removing adulterers, adulterous behavior from that part of the world. Thousands upon thousands of Jews were scandalously seduced by minion women who wanted only to revel in watching Jews sin. They used adultery as a weapon to spit in Hashem's face. And Hashem would have none of it. Not because he wanted revenge, not because he is violent. On the contrary, precisely because the world is a better place without adultery. He tasked us with weeding it out. If that meant killing any girl who was able to continue the midjudi mentality of adultery, then so be it. The biggest proof that Hashem's sole interest in waging these battles is the complete eradication of morality from the world is the fact that he gives us Jews the very same warning he gives the other nations of the world. If we act in a morally corrupt way, we too will feel Hashem's wrath. We see this clearly in the laws of Iranas, a weward city which must be raised to the ground. We are charged with destroying a city filled with Jews if those Jews have lost their moral way. Those Jews can be our siblings, our relatives, our friends. It makes no difference who they are. Hashem commands us to destroy. It sounds cruel. It's interesting to note that one of the only times in the entire Torah Hashem mentions mercy is in his promise that those that wage war against the will not subsequently become cruel people. They will be rewarded with heightened mercy of others. This is impartious. By demonstrating the ultimate mercy, by weeding out the weward city, by removing that behavior from the world, by sparing the countless victims that these people might pray upon, Hashem rewards those individuals in kind with heightened mercy. Hashem requires us to carry on lives of love and compassion, even while waging war on our enemies. Failure to do so is met with Hashem's wrath. David Amel was not granted the rights to build the bas. You ever wonder why? Because despite only waging wars that were mandated by Hashem, he on his lofty level did not display enough internal mercy while fighting these wars. And that according to according to the interpretation of the that is the reason why lost out the right to build the Torah is the blueprint to a moral ethical and merciful world. Those three ingredients fill the world with goodness. We are tasked with promugating them as well as weeding out those that don't. Not out of love of violence, out of sheer mercy for humanity. No nation in world history can claim to be as merciful as the Jewish people. The numerical value of the word mercy is raim and the name of our forefather Aram is the same at 248. Mercy runs in our blood. While nations of the past were steeped in immorality of the worst degree, the Jewish people by and large were holding Hashem's torch high and shining it light to the rest of the world. One doesn't need to look very hard to find examples of Hashem's muddied morality and cruelty. For a sad majority of world history, only up until several decades ago, handicapped people were not only dealt with unkindly, they were often burnt and hung and strangled to death. Huge numbers of countries throughout world history, including the majority of sophisticated and developed ones, believed that infanticide, the killing of unwanted babies, was morally okay. Both Aristotle and Plato believed in it. Between the years 1500 and 1700 alone, an estimated 8 to 20 million women suffering from mental difficulties were put to death. 8 to 20 million. The Egyptians built their cities while throwing babies into the Nile. The ancient Chinese Empire built the Great Wall of China while mixing prisoners and enemies into the very cement that built that wall. The Romans entertained by themselves in their coliseum, watching thousands of innocent people get killed by bears and lions and gladiators. Child sacrifice, perhaps history's most grotesque example of its immorality and ethical decay, was found all over the world. The Mayan, the Toltech, the Aztec, the Mech, the Chimu, the Inca tribes all practice child sacrifice on a disturbingly large scale. Archaeologists in 2005 discovered mass graves of one and two-year-old children who had been sacrificed at the base temples of Kamakalo. The Skati band of the Panei tribe as recently as the 1800s conducted morning star ceremonies in which a young girl was kidnapped placed on an elaborate scaffold and when the morning sun was due to rise the girl's chest was cut open while onlooking men shot her with arrows. This is not something that exists exclusively in history books and the world has come a long way. Modern-day Uganda, Mazambi, Mali all continue to practice of ritual killing. In the city of Kala, businessmen pay huge sums of money to a quote unquote healer who abducts a child, murders it, and then places the body underneath the foundation of their building as a good luck to their gods. Utterly despicable. The Tyra abhores such behavior. The Tory states unequivocally that we are never to give our children to mole as a child sacrifice. And the Torah does not elaborate because it doesn't need to. For such behavior is the very antithesis of the Torah. The Torah brought mercy into the world. It introduced humanity to novel concepts like having a fair trial or being kind to one's slaves. It taught the world to the proper way to treat women and foreigners and children and handicapped people and elderly and widows and deaf and blind. The Tyra goes to tremendous lengths to ensure that we remain the most merciful human beings on earth. We are required to take care and visit the sick. Unlike lots of ancient and not so ancient cultures that would simply kill the sick and mentally ill. The Torah tells us numerous times to go out of the way to feed the poor and the needy. The Tory even requires utmost mercy on animals. We are forbidden to cause any undue pain to any animal. We can't slaughter a cow the same day our calf was slaughtered, which the explains is because of the undue pain caused to the animal and the insensitivity it would foster in us. We cannot take the eggs of a bird while the mother bird is watching, which many commentators explain is because of the pain it would cause the mother bird. If we sit down to a meal and our animal hasn't eaten yet, we must feed that animal first. The Tyra's absolute insistence that we lead merciful lives is what created a nation that is completely fueled by mercy. We have organizations that help those in financial trouble and help struggling teenagers. We have ones that help people going through postpartum depression and help those struggling with infertility. We have organizations that help people with flat tires and organizations that help people who lost a relative. If there's a need for something, there is an organization that is out there to fill it. Jews were the largest percentage of donors of plasma during the COVID epidemic. Israel is almost always the first country to send humanitarian aid to a country suffering from a disaster, even if that country is an enemy of Israel. Ellie Beer, the man behind United, has helped hundreds of countries in quickening their emergency medical response time, effectively saving millions upon millions of lives every year. And this is in addition to the thousands and thousands of individuals who without fanfare or attention take it upon themselves to visit the sick and encourage prisoners and cheer up the elderly or raise money for every cause under the sun. Not to mention the hundreds of groups of people who take it upon themselves to pray and shed tears for those who are suffering. One can only look at the Jewish people and be in sheer awe of the mercy that flows through their collective veins. Jews are never charged by Hashem to be cruel. It is precisely our commitment to mercy that propels us on occasion to weed out those that promugate cruelty. The history of Jewish ritual slaughter is a dramatic example of the Jewish people's steadfast commitment to mercy at all cost. In September of 1893, the country of Switzerland became the first government to formally introduce a legislative ban on Shita of animals. Arguing that it was immensely cruel and insensitive to the animal, the Swiss were out to ban it entirely. And thus began a long and systemic crusade to label Jews as a cruel and merciless people who revel in the pain and blood of animals. spreading like wildfire. This anti-shita tactic became quite popular in Europe and as the perfect pretext for attacking Jews on the grounds of being cruel. This continued with bans in the kingdom of Saxony in Bavaria in February of 1894 and in Schwarzburg in July 1897 and in the German Reich stag in 1899. On April 21st 1933, the Nazis outlawed in the entire country. Theodore FR explained and promoted the Nazi proposition in his book Hanbok to Judenfra which published 39 editions and 200,000 copies by the year 1935. And in it he wrote quote the Jew denies the existence of cruelty in ritual slaughter. Considering that the Jew has no mercy for human beings, it is unsurprising that he possesses no pity for the animal. End quote. One of the greatest ironies in all of human history was the fact that the Nazis were fanatic animal lovers. Utterly obsessed with animal welfare, Germany had the strictest and most far-reaching animal protection regulations in the entire Europe. A German caught abusing an animal will be sent to a concentration camp as punishment. As Joseph Gobles wrote in his diary, Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and a passionate animal lover. Think about that. Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. He also said that Hitler was planning after German victory in the war to ban animal slaughter slaughter houses altogether. The Nazi ban onita in 1933 effectively halted the consumption of meat for the Jews in Germany. So scores of Jewish people protested and campaigned that was in fact a humane method of killing animals for beef. These complaints fell unsurprisingly on deaf ears. The Germans required knocking the animal unconscious before butchering it, a method prohibited by Torah law. The Jews looked to neighboring countries to import meat, but the Jews the Germans banned all meat from Poland and Lithuania and Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Yugoslavia and Romania. They were stuck. So the German Jews attempted to find a new method that would satisfy both Jewish hala and German law. Because the German legislation did not ban shrita outright, but only required the animal to be rendered insensible prior to the German Jews experimented with various stunning methods that would not make the animal a traifically terminate terminally ill animal which is forbidden to eat. They experimented with electrical shocks and nitrogen inhalation which were both found to be unsatisfactory by the leading German rabbis of that time. And one day a breakthrough was discovered by a man named Bruno Kish, a professor of experimental pathology at Cologne University and he used an a an injection of unicron which both rendered the animal unconscious but carars no harm to the animal whatsoever. The method went through extensive testing and seemed likely to get the support of the Hakik authorities of the time and ecstatic the German Jews called together the rabbis to discuss this method and hopefully allow its widespread usage throughout Germany ending the poor's Jews der of meat. But alas, in November of 1938, as the date of the meeting was drawing near, an outbreak of violence occurred near the homes of the meeting attendees, gently discouraging the meeting from taking place. The Nazis were not interested in finding the most humane way to slaughter beef. They were looking to slaughter Jews. Cutting off their meat supply was a step in the direction of slaughtering 6 million Jews. a bunch of rabbis and a sympathizing scientist would not be allowed to get in their way. And 6 million deaths later, the atrocities of the Holocaust eventually came to an end. And although the Nazi political party crumbled, some pre-war ideologies survived the Nazi defeat. And one of them was the anti-hittita jewels are cruel to animals idea. And in modern day Denmark, is only allowed in the presence of a statelicicensed veterinarian as well as in Ireland and the Netherlands and in Finland and in Spain. To this day, religious slaughter is banned entirely in Switzerland and Norway and Sweden on the basis of Jews are cruel to animals with their as the debate raged on throughout Europe, constantly being used as a club to knock the Jews on their heads. There were individuals who were fed up and decided to put it through a test to show once and for all the world. The department of veterinarian veterinarian medicine of the university of bari gathered together in Valenzoro Italy and performed a test referred to as the Alisa test which was able to determine the exact plasma cortisol levels in an animal while going through the process. They would essentially hook up an animal to a device and it would determine how much pain the animal was feeling and for how long. And what they discovered shocked the world. The traditional stun gun slaughter process caused more pain to the animal than did the Jewish way. Finally, the world had tangible evidence that an animal experiences less pain for a shorter time withita than any other method. This shocked everybody but the Jew. For the Jew knows that there is no more humane way of life than following the life described by the Tyra. It was, is, and will forever be the ultimate authority on defining mercy. Even the Tyrus command to wage war is not a crusade using violence as a way to shove a religion down the throat of others. It is a charge to ensure that universal mercy is what reigns supreme. The difference between Jewish ritual slaughter and the world's method is a mere few seconds of pain. And yet, the Tyra in the strongest manner forbids us to use their slaughter methods. Why? Because for us, a few seconds of pain is too much pain. And being the most merciful people on earth, no amount of pain is ever overlooked. Call us outdated, call us cruel, the world will one day see who are the only merciful ones left standing. In 2002, the FBI published its annual violent crime report. The city with at least 100,000 inhabitants that experienced the least violent crime was Lakewood, New Jersey. The city with the highest concentration of Torah Jews in the United States is Lakewood, New Jersey. Coincidence? I doubt it. [Music]