Is The Torah Obsessed With Violence ? - The Parshah On Fire- Matos/Masay

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 Torah, humanity at large was acting below Hashem's standards and it prompted him to exterminate the entire human race with a model. Men, women, and children dead. Just a few paras later, the city of Sedome was acting in ways 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 Shrem, went ahead and violated Dena. The men of the city were cunningly told to circumcise themselves. 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, Yis. Not exactly a book of butterflies and cupcakes. And the violence doesn't stop there. We were given the mitzvah to hunt down descendants of a Malik and annihilate them. We were charged with eradicating the seven Kanani nations inhabiting inhabiting Israel in effective ethnic cleansing of the previous dwellers of the land. And finally in Paris Matus Mati we were instructed to wage a vengeful war on the medyanim and kill all men, women and children. Now here's the question. Aren't the Jewish people supposed to be merciful? Don't we pride ourselves in our kindheartedness and humanity? Isn't a Jews 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 and not people of the sword? Hashem commanded us to kill every last Midyani male, including the male infants. All females with the physical ability to be with a man were also killed. The Gumar Namas Sam explains how it was possible to determine which female children were able to physically cohabitate. They would march a girl in front of the Ken and if the girl did in fact have the ability to cohabitate, her face would turn green and they would kill her. Can you imagine the scene? The girl is screaming on top of her lungs, crying and pleading to be spared. We march her to the cayen. Her face turns green and we grab her and we chop off her head. How does our claim to be the beacons of mercy and morality explain this? Doesn't this seem eerily similar to jihadists that attack us relentlessly? How does our claim to be flagbearers of peace and harmony not utterly clash with the Tyra's seemingly frequent promotion of violence? Here's the answer. A deeper exploration 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 was created in order for Hashem to bestow goodness on us. In turn, we were charged with spreading morality and harmony throughout the world, ensuring that Hashem's definition of goodness is actualized the world over in its fullest form. After creation, the conditions of morality in the world slowly deteriorated until 1600 years later, Hashem just had enough. The general society of the world and its barbaric tribes were living lives of lawlessness and moral bankruptcy. morality and had broken down to an incredibly 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 start over. Much like we understand that killing a terrorist on his way to stab an innocent mother holding a baby is merciful. So to Hashem showed only mercy by extracting the evil from the world which saved the billions of future people from being contaminated by their immoral way of life. Then came Sadome. Sadome 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 manifested only in accordance with his rules of morality, the people of Saddam, who grossly abandoned that way of life, had to be eliminated. Not because Hashem was trying to be cruel to the people of Saddam, but rather because he was having mercy on the rest of the world. The the Rambam in Hil and Pericess Yadal writes that when Shiman and Levy got up and killed out 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 do nothing to stop 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 or proper conduct. Shimon and Levy 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 world. Showing mercy on those who violate others and their sympathizers is in essence showing cruelty to the scores of victims those people will one day prey upon. Shim and Ley could not tolerate such behavior. They were too merciful for that. When the Tory commands us to wage war on the Midanim and the Canananim and the Anamalik, it's not an ethnic cleansing crusade. We're not against those particular nations per se, says Tom Falh. Rather, we are against what those people promugate. We are only against the immoral and unethical habits that they celebrate. We don't just grab our spears and pagrum 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. But when it comes to a war that we choose to wage on our own, Moheus, Rashi agrees that we are required to do so. So uninterested in bloody warfare were we that we would never surround an opponent on all four sides when waging war. We would always leave a side open for the enemy to retreat and change their ways. This is something that's almost unheard of in the history of ancient military tactics. When attacking the when attacking the Midyanim in Paris Mates, it is abundantly clear that the Tyra had only one prerogative. Removing adulterous behavior from that part of the world. Thousands upon thousands of Jews were scandalously seduced by Midani 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, did he task us with weeding it out. If that meant killing any girl who was able to continue the midyani mentality of adultery, then so be it. The biggest proof that Hashem's sole interest in waging these battles is the complete eradication of immorality 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. This is demonstrated pretty clearly by the law of irranidas, a city so morally corrupt it must be raised to the ground. We are charged with destroying a city filled with Jews. If those Jews had lost their moral way, those Jews can be our siblings. They can be our relatives, our friends. It makes no difference who those people are. Hashem commands us to destroy it. Sounds cruel. It's interesting to note that one of the only times Hashem mentions mercy in the entire Tyra is his promise that the people that wage war against the irony dahas will not subsequently subsequently become cruel people and we will be rewarded with having heightened mercy of other people by demonstrating the ultimate mercy by weeding out the Hashem rewards those individuals in kind with lives of nothing but 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. Malik was not granted the rights to build a bik. Why? Because despite for the most part waging wars that were mandated by Hashem, he on his lofty level did not display enough internal mercy while fighting those wars. Because the Tory is the blueprint to a moral, ethical, and merciful world. These three ingredients fill the world with goodness. We are tasked with promulgating them as well as weeding out those that don't. Not out of love of violence, but 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 Hebrew word for mercy rahim and our the name of our forefather Avam are the same 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 its light to the rest of the world. You don't need to look very hard to find examples of history's muddied morality and cruelty. For a sad majority of world history until surprisingly recently, 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 what we would call 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 handicaps were put to death. 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 of the wall. The Romans entertained themselves in their coliseum, watching innocent people get killed by bears and lions. Child sacrifice, perhaps history's most grotesque example of its immorality and ethical decay, was found all over the world. The Maya, Toltech, Aztec, Olme, Chimu, 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 of the temples in Komaalo. and the skinny band of the Ponyie tribe as recently as the mid 1800s conducted morning star ceremonies in which a young girl was kidnapped, placed on an elaborate scaffold, and when the morning sun was about to rise, the girl's chest was cut open while the onlooking men shot her with arrows. Writings of Plato mentioned that the Caragians performing child sacrifice as well as child sacrifice taking place all over Africa. So you're going to say, well, you're bringing examples of things that happened like thousands of years ago. This is not something that exists exclusively in history books. Modernday Uganda, Mazambi, Mali, all continue the practice of ritual killing. In the city of Kala, businessmen pay huge sums of money to a healer who abducts a child and then murders it and then places it its body underneath the foundation of their building as a good luck charm to their gods. Completely utterly despicable. The Tyra abhores such behavior. The Tyra states unequivocally that we are never to give our children over to Moolik, an ancient god whose worshippers offered their own firstborns as sacrifices. And the Tyra does not elaborate because it does not need to. For such behavior is the very antithesis of the Tyra. The Tyra brought mercy into the world. It introduced humanity to novel concepts like having a fair trial or being kind to one's slave. It taught the world the proper way to treat women and foreigners and children and hang handicapped people and the elderly and widows and deaf people and blind people. 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 no matter what the burden is like. Unlike lots of ancient and not so ancient cultures that would simply kill the sick and mentally ill. The Tyra tells us numerous times to go out of our way to feed the poor and needy. The Tyra even requires the utmost mercy on animals. We are forbidden to cause any undue pain to an 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 would foster in us. We can't take the eggs of a bird while the mother bird is watching which many mafar explain is because of the pain it would cause to the mother bird. We have led we have we have we have countless mitzvah there to make us the most merciful people on earth. The Tyra's absolute insistence that we lead merciful lives is what created a nation that is completely fueled by mercy. a nation that is run entirely with. We have organizations that help people in financial trouble and organizations that help struggling teenagers and organizations that help people going through postpartum postpartum depression and those that help couples struggling with infertility. We have organizations that help people with flat tires and organizations that help families who've lost a relative to cancer. If there is a need for something, chances are there is an organization that is out there filling it. Jews were the largest percentage of donors of plasma during the COVID pandemic. Israel is often the first country to send humanitarian aid to a country suffering from a disaster, even if that country is an enemy to Israel, such as sending aid to Syria during its civil war. Ellie Beer, the man behind the Unitedella, has helped hundreds of countries in quickening their emergency medical response time, which effectively saving millions upon millions of lives every year. And this is all in addition to the thousands of individuals who without any 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 have taken it upon themselves to pray and to shed tears and to daven for those 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's precisely our commitment to mercy that propels us on occasion to weed out those that promulgate cruelty. Now listen to this. The history of Shita is a dramatic example of the Jewish people's steadfast commitment to mercy at all costs. In September of 1893, the country of Switzerland became the first country to formally introduce a legislative ban on arguing that it was 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. And this anti-shita tactic became quite popular in Europe and it was the perfect pretext for attacking Jews on the grounds of being cruel. This continued with bans in the kingdom of Saxony and Bavaria in February in 1894, in the landag of Schwartzenberg in July of 1897 and the German Reag. On April 21st, 1933, the Nazis outlawed in the entire country. And Theodore Fran and promoted the Nazi position in his book, which published 39 editions and 200,000 copies by the year 1935. And in it he wrote, "The Jew denies the existence of cruelty in their ritual slaughter. Considering that the Jew has no mercy for human beings, it is unsurprising that he possesses no pity for the animal." One of the greatest ironies in all of human history was the fact that the Nazis were fanatic animal lovers, utterly obsessed with animal warfare. Germany had the strictest and most far-reaching animal protection regulations in Europe. A German caught abusing an animal would be would be sent to a concentration camp as punishment. Joseph Gobbles wrote in his diary that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and a passionate animal lover. He also said that Hitler was planning after German victory in the war to ban animal slaughter houses altogether. The Nazi ban onita in 1933 effectively stopped the consumption of meat for the Jews in Germany. Dozens of Jewish people protested and campaigned that was in fact a human method of killing animals for beef. But unsurprisingly, those complaints fell on deaf ears. The Germans required knocking the animal unconscious before butchering it, a method prohibited by the Tyra. So the Jews looked for neighboring countries to import meat. But the Germans banned all meat from Poland, Lithuania, Czechlovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania. So these Yemen were stuck. The German Jews attempted to find a new method that would satisfy both Jewish halaka and German law. Because the German legislation did not banita 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 traa. They experimented with electrical shocks and nitrogen inhalation which were both found to be unsatisfactory by the leading journum of the 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 injection of unicron which both rendered the animal unconscious and caused no harm to the animal at the same time. So the method went through extensive testing and seemed likely to get the support of the Hak authorities of the time and ecstatic the German Jews called together the Rabon and to discuss this method and hopefully allow its widespread usage throughout Germany ending the poor Jews dir of meat. But 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 cows. They were looking to slaughter Jews. Cutting off their meat s 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. Six 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-shita Jews are cruel to animals idea. In modern day Denmark, is only allowed in the presence of a statelicicensed veterinarian. As the case is in as the case is 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 cruelty to animals. But as the debate throughout Europe raged on, constantly being used as a club on the Jews heads, there were individuals who were fed up and decided to put it through a test to show the world once and for all. There were people who got together in 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 hook up an animal to a device and it would essentially 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 of suddenly the world had tangible evidence that an animal experiences less pain for a shorter time withita than any other method. This shocked all but the Jews. For the Jew knows that there is no more humane way of life than following the life described by the Tyra. It was, it is, and will forever be the ultimate authority undefining mercy. Even the Tyra's command to wage war is not a crusade using violence as a way to shove our religion down the throat of others. It is a charge to ensure that universal mercy is what reigns supreme. The difference between Jewish 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. The average response time of ambulances in the United States is 7 minutes in urban areas and 14 minutes in rural areas. The average response time of is 90 seconds. Because when you are that merciful, you figure out a way to be there and be there fast. The FBI recently published its annual crime report. Do you know which city in America with at least 100,000 inhabitants has the lowest violent crime rate? Yep, you guessed it. Lakewood, New Jersey. The city with the highest concentration of Torah Jews in the United States happens to have the lowest violent crime rate. Coincidence? I doubt it.