There’s a good word for what
happens to Korach, in the portion that Harry read so well earlier.
He gets cancelled.
He says something, and so out-of-order,
so unacceptable, that he pays with being removed, never again to intrude.
Except, and this is the so often
the thing about the cancel-culture debate – it just feels more complex than
that. I mean, what is the thing Korach said? “Rav Lachem - You have taken too
much on yourself.” It’s an arguable position, no? Rashi suggests Korach says – “If
you were going to appoint your brother as High Priest, you shouldn’t have also
appointed yourself as King. You two aren’t the only people who heard God on
Sinai?” Well, that’s at least an arguable position.
And yet Moses is so angered that
he insists that God creates a new form of cancellation – a means of death by
which no human has ever before died.
It all feels very contemporary.
There are debates about, oh I don’t know, race or gender or Israel or even
whether it’s time to turn the screens off and go to bed and there are arguments
to be had and points to be made, and then there comes the moment in the the argument when one party calls on the earth open up to devour one’s opponents. OK,
not literally swallowed up by the earth, at least not often.
But arguments tilt in the
direction of aggression more often, perhaps than the times in which arguments
tilt in the direction of having disputing parties genuinely seek points of
agreement and meeting and growth and transformation and all the good stuff.
Sometimes people who raise
arguments are genuinely enquiring, and the fact that they disturb our view of what
is right is a sign that our securities and assumptions need to be re-evaluated.
And sometimes people who raise arguments are a bit prickly and over-step the
mark of decency in terms of how they make their points. Sometimes they seem
motivated by wishing us ill. But it’s hard to pick one’s way through that
distinction, especially when our securities and assumptions are being
threatened. And I’m distrustful of our
ability to be fair witnesses on the question of whether those who disagree with
us should be treated as genuine debate partners or disingenuous trouble
makers.
There’s a strange tale in
Midrash Bereishit Rabba about Yaacov from Kefar Neburaya[1].
He seems to be a Rabbi who thinks you need to do Shechitah to eat fish – that
fish need to be slaughtered in the same way as animals are slaughtered, with a
blessing and a special incision made at the neck. Well, we don’t – as Kosher
keeping Rabbinic Jews do Shechitah on fish. But it’s not entirely obvious as to
why not. I mean, fish are alive in the same way as chicken are alive. It’s not
as if he’s entirely without logic in threatening to tear down the entire
apparatus of Kashrut.
But when Rabbi Chagai hears
about what Yaacov is up to, he orders him to lie down and beats him. I mean
there is a bit of argument, but the argument doesn’t get settled. Poor old
Yaacov just gets hit.
Rabbi Chagai’s response to
Yaacov is so revealing of how we all feel when we meet someone who’s a bit
difficult and awkward and doesn’t accept the same norms as I do. It’s so much
easier to deal with difficult people by dealing with them, and not their
arguments.
I’m deeply uneasy about these
kinds of stories. I don’t like the idea that when we disagree the way out of
the problem is beating someone, or calling on God to swallow them up, or
cancellation.
I suppose the point of the
Korach story is that Moses appeals to God to do something so dramatic that
everyone will know that Moses is right and Korach is wrong. And indeed God does
something utterly dramatic. But, in the world in which I live, I don’t get to
see arguments settled by God’s direct intervention. Instead, I get to see
plenty of arguments start, and plenty of arguments when people on one side accuse
the people on the other side of being disingenuous or worse. And I see plenty
of arguments where both sides seem more interested in trying to get the other
person to lie down and get beaten rather than engage across the chasm that
separates one side and the other. And God? Well God just doesn’t get directly
involved in the sorts of arguments I see.
It’s something I experience it
as a Rabbi all the time. Two people in the community are arguing and I get both
sides of the argument. One person explains their position and listening to
them, how could I possibly not see that the other person is deliberately
seeking to attack them? And then I speak to the other person, and it turns out
they just think they are making a perfectly reasonable point and it’s the other
person who is the bully. And when God doesn’t get involved how do you escape an
ever-more fractured and broken world where we are ever-more drawn into the
things that divide us and. Ahhh.
So, here are my thoughts about
how we can learn to argue better.
Let’s start with this one –
every human being is created in the image of God. We are each of miraculous and
extra-ordinary and so very, very beautiful – even if you disagree totally with
me and my worldview. Can you argue with me as if you really believe I’m
created in the image of God? Please.
And then there is a stunning
verse in Proverbs - מָוֶת וְחַיִּים, בְּיַד-לָשׁוֹן - The tongue has the power of life and death.
Words are so important. Of course, in the Bible, the universe is created by
speech. There’s a powerful Kabbalistic idea that every time we speak we create
a world around us. Or, for the less mystically inclined, what about the idea
from linguistic theory, the Sapir Worff hypothesis, that our language creates
and shapes our worldview? When we use language in ways that denigrate those we
disagree with we move into being people who … and it gets back to
where we just were … fail to see that every human being is created in the image
of God.
And one last idea – Shiviim
Panim LeTorah[3] - there are 70 facets to
the Torah. Or, as I like to think of it, the truth is too complex for my single
mind, or anyone’s single mind. And the fact that someone I disagree with might,
in my mind, be obviously wrong, or mendacious, or cruel or heartless, or any of
that isn’t actually a sign that that is absolutely the case. As Jack Nicholson
once told Tom Cruise, I can’t handle the truth. Truth is not something to be handled
by any human, it’s something that should inspire in us a certain humility. We would do
better reflecting on what we don’t know, than what we think we do. Gedalti Ben
HaChakhamim V’Lo Matzati Tov MiShtikah – said the son of the great Rabban
Gamiel – I grew up among the wisest, and I’ve found nothing better than
silence. Or as a less Rabbinic sage, Bob Dylan, wrote in Back Pages
Yes, my guard stood hard when
abstract threats too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking I had
something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now
With a humility about our own
hold on truth, curiosity is an easy next step, and curiosity draws us into
valuing other opinions and views and through that other people. That’s good.
Without it, we are drawn into
rejecting the worth of other views, and the people who espouse them. That’s not
good.
·
Value
people as created in the image of God.
·
Be
careful of the power we exercise through speech
·
And
be humble in our claims to know truth.
It’s possible to argue well,
it’s possible to disagree and through disagreement come to know more and value
more people and things. I really believe this; it’s possible to argue well and
save the world.
What a prize is in store for us.
Certainly, it beats being
swallowed by the earth.
Shabbat Shalom
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