Rabbi Ari Kahn posits how the Divine measure for measure may have been meted out to the purported three Pharaonic advisers at the beginning of the Exodusian enslavement: Bilaam was killed for advocating for genocide; Iyov, who theoretically did no evil but manifested indifference, suffered so that he would develop the empathy he lacked; and Yisro, who at least actively manifested some form of protest, begat descendants who would continue along that line of thinking.
The
first question would be: does Rabbi Kahn overstate the case by claiming Jethro
“is forced to flee when his advice is sneered upon”? Does the text in Sotah 11a indicate that he
lodged a protest before, or even upon his way out? It actually may not matter: the distinction
between Iyov and Yisro isn’t in the verbal silence that both may have
manifested, but that Iyov thought that a noncommittal approach would allow him
to maintain an ostensibly moral stance while maintaining his position, while
Jethro realized that it would be impossible.
In
theory, a similar thing happened even among the Hebrews themselves. The Netziv writes in his haggadah that the
reason G-d had to—as it were—remove the Jews from Egypt with a “strong hand”
[yad chazakah] AND “outstretched arm” [zeroa netuya] was because there were
almost two classes of Hebrews at the time: the slaves in eternal peril who
needed to be rescued, and the ones with more privileged positions who needed to
be pried out because they were too confortable to leave. [And…that didn’t even take into account the
80% [or 99.97%?] that didn’t make it out and supposedly all died during
choshech.] In theory, the “comfortable”
ones who were redeemed [Malcolm X would have called them the “house slaves”]
might have been reluctant to jeopardize their more privileged positions, but
didn’t actively undermine their brethren or resist the opportunity to leave
[even if it was coerced], while the ones who met their demise during the plague
of darkness may have gone over to the “dark side” one way or another.
So
how were they distinguished? As I’ve
discussed before,
there was a tension between how the enslaved Hebrews maintained their
ethno-cultural and religious identities [not changing their names, clothes, or
language] and still finding themselves steeped in such a spiritual morass that
on the eventual eve of their departure they’d gone as far down as they could
go.
This
leaves us with several parallel tensions both within the character of the
people as a group and between the various groupings among the people. It got me thinking about a contemporary
parallel of two Jewish subgroups that don’t easily overlap but that might be
equally loathed from varying quarters: for arguments sake, call them the
black-hat orthodox on one side and the Zionists on the other.
The
irony here is that everyone outside seems to want to “deal wisely” with all of
the groups, while each group here from within seems to want to “deal wisely”
with the other [not to the same genocidally oppressive extent, to be sure, but
with some element of deligitimation].
The question in this case would be: is there a difference between the
kind of pressures dealt with by the attempts to delegitimize the Zionist
project, and attempts to delegitimize the—for lack of a better term—the “black
hat” project?
The
difference is striking: the Zionist project was theoretically to create a state
for the Jews the same way other nationalities had their states, exemplifying
the commonalities with the world at large; the “black hat” project ostensibly
adheres to “hivdilanu min hato-im”, and their cultural patterns are supposed to
exemplify the clear distinction—one that is Divinely ordained.
Which
raises the question: why would it be legit to criticize a “black hat” culture
for its ostensible foibles [I’m not even going to get into what they are, but here’s one],
and not criticize Israel for hers?
Simple: the Zionist project doesn’t announce that it’s on a higher moral
plane. Pum farhkehrt. “Black hat” culture—even its artifacts—are
outgrowths of “hivdilanu min hatoim”. So
it does announce that, even tacitly. [L’havdil:
a smiliar thing happened during a Bowl game when BYU players got into a fight
with Memphis State players and BYU came in for more criticism—to the point that
people were agitating for shutting down the BYU football program. So sometimes it isn’t just us.]
In
short: some groups take all criticism as a prelude to “hava nitchacma lo”. It isn’t always. And yes—I’ll go out on a limb here, in case I’m
being too subtle—even the more trenchant criticisms of “black hat” cultural
artifacts are more salient than criticisms of Israel.
