In our mouths and in our hearts: Day 48
(Introduction.)
Today: Mourning and monarchy
586. “If a man has a wayward and defiant son …. Thereupon the people of his town shall stone [the son] to death.” (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) = don’t be a wayward and rebellious son
587. “For her he may defile himself.” (Leviticus 21:3) = the exception to #590 is that a priest may become tamei (unclean) by coming into contact with a dead body when a close relative dies; likewise, everyone (not just priests) is to mourn for deceased relatives.
588. “[The high priest] may not defile himself even for his father or mother.” (Leviticus 21:11)
589. “[The high priest] may not go in where there is any dead body.” (Leviticus 21:11)
590. “[A priest] may not defile himself for any [dead] person among his kin, except for the relatives that are closest to him.” (Leviticus 21:1)
591. “Set a king over yourselves, one chosen by Adonai your God.” (Deuteronomy 17:15)
592. “You must not set a foreigner over you, one who is not your kin.” (Deuteronomy 17:15)
593. “[The king] shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray.” (Deuteronomy 17:17)
594. “[The king] shall not keep many horses.” (Deuteronomy 17:16)
595. “[The king] shall not amass gold and silver to excess.” (Deuteronomy 17:17)
596. “You must proscribe them — the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites.” (Deuteronomy 20:17)
597. “You shall not let a soul remain alive.” (Deuteronomy 20:16) = of the nations in #596
598. “You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” (Deuteronomy 25:19)
599. “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 25:17)
600. “Do not forget.” (Deuteronomy 25:19) = what Amalek did to you
“If a man has a wayward and defiant son …. Thereupon the people of his town shall stone [the son] to death.â€
This passage has always been a huge obstacle for me, perhaps the biggest (oh, yeah – and the genocide commanded a few lines down bothers me as well!). From a non-Orthodox perspective, we can see it as a vestige from a more primitive time, but it infuriates me that the Orthodox continue to defend a literal understanding of Torah in the face of statements like these. Even the Rabbis were embarrassed by it; as I recall, they tried to sort of sweep it under the table. Several of them said, “It rarely happened”, and one of them got pissed off and said, “It NEVER happened!”
I’d be interested in hearing other points of view.
cipher:
1) after 13 years of ortho Jewish education, I can promise that there is no single unified ortho reading of the torah.
2)ortho readings are often far from literal, as the written torah is seen through the lens of the oral torah, midrash, and later commentaries. so this verse would most often be understood as, “God phrased it in terms of death penalty to impress upon us the seriousness of it, but then kindly gave us certain oral torah laws to make it impossible to carry out.
3) I’m wondering if you meant to critique a point of view in which the torah is the infallible dictation of God’s word.
“I’m wondering if you meant to critique a point of view in which the torah is the infallible dictation of God’s word.”
That is what I meant and I said it in a clumsy manner. I realize that the MO wouldn’t read it literally; I’m not so certain about the Hareidim. And it obviously troubled the rabbis of the Talmudic period, so I have to assume that they were reading it literally.
cipher-
There are no Orthodox Jews anywhere — Modern, haredi, or anything else — who “defend a literal understanding of Torah”. There are plenty of critiques to be made of Orthodox Judaism, but “literal” isn’t one of them (or else this wouldn’t exist — people would just be careful not to cook a kid in its mother’s milk).
“[I]f you describe Orthodox or any other rabbinic approach to Scripture as ‘literal’ I will be forced to whack you over the head with a copy of Artscroll’s Shir Ha-Shirim until you do teshuvah.” —Baraita
Don’t worry, no one (even in Meah Shearim) is actually carrying out the stoning of the rebellious son.
But yeah, of course I agree with you that this passage in the Torah is problematic and that a literal understanding is not called for, but I don’t think there will be much argument there.