(A previous version of this text was published on this blog in Portuguese under the title "Faz sentido perguntar “quantas esposas é demais”?!")
When I was a child, I must admit, I used to sing the Brazilian nursery rhyme "Atirei o Pau no Gato" without thinking much about animal welfare. The song, which translates to "I Threw the Stick at the Cat," tells the story of a person throwing a stick at a cat and the cat's cry of distress. Perhaps if the stick had been aimed at a dog, and not a cat, I would have had more empathy for the victim of the action. But, as I was never a big fan of felines, I never truly registered the violence of the act.
As a teenager, I started hearing different versions of the song that, with an educational purpose, changed the lyrics to "don't throw the stick at the cat because it's not the right thing to do, the kitten is our friend, we mustn't mistreat animals." [1] While we would sing these new lyrics mockingly, making light of the concern to change a children's song to avoid encouraging violence against animals, I realised for the first time that the original lyrics were, in fact, violent and encouraged undesirable behaviour.
When we look back at the past, it's quite common to see inappropriate behaviours that we once accepted as natural, but which are no longer considered acceptable today. In the spirit of chesbon hanefesh, the spiritual process of personal assessment in preparation for the High Holidays, we identify the areas of our lives in which we lived up to the person we want to be and those in which we fell short of that ideal. It is also an opportunity to broaden our perspective and recognise which inappropriate conducts have become normalised and must now be re-evaluated.
In this week's parashah, Shoftim, the Israelites are given permission to have a king after they enter the Promised Land. The text makes it clear that this leader would be a man, while also setting limits on the monarch's power: he must be an Israelite, he cannot accumulate excessive wealth in gold, silver, or horses, he shall not send his people back to Egypt, and he shall not have many wives. The text doesn't specify what "many" means, but there seems to be a consensus that up to eighteen wives would be acceptable; above that number, it would be considered an excess.
For a long time, the commentators on this passage (all men) debated whether the number eighteen was excessive or not, whether it could be exceeded if all the wives were "good," and whether the limit would also apply to a person who was not a king.[2] No one ever asked, however, why the wives were listed alongside the other forms of wealth that the king could accumulate, albeit with limits. Perhaps the greatest innovation that Judaism brought to the world was the idea that all human beings were created in the image of God and are, therefore, endowed with inalienable dignity. Do the instructions to the king that treat his wives as property truly reflect this profound Jewish value?
We can find similar examples in which women were not treated with due dignity in other stories from Jewish tradition (the book of Esther or the story of King Solomon and his 700 wives, for example) and from other cultures. However, the time has come to revisit the behaviours implicitly accepted in these narratives and to point out what we are no longer willing to accept. In the past decade, the #metoo movement has shone a light on how powerful men abuse their social and professional positions to commit harassment and violence, practices that many were aware of but considered to be "part of the game."
Parashat Shoftim also deals with the structuring of a judicial system that makes the pursuit of justice a central characteristic of Hebrew society. On this point, Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits wrote: “To seek justice is to relieve the oppressed. But how else are the oppressed to be relieved if not by judging the oppressor and crushing the ability to oppress! (…) The toleration of injustice is the toleration of human suffering. Since the proud and the mighty who inflict the suffering do not, as a rule, yield to moral persuasion, responsibility for the sufferer demands that justice be done so that oppression be ended.” [3]
May this Shabbat allow us to seek justice for all, particularly by challenging the naturalised abuses of the powerful, and thus begin the process of transforming ourselves into the version of ourselves we wish to be.
Shabbat Shalom!
[1] This vídeo includes both versions of the song: https://youtube.com/shorts/jBJQQavNjyE
[2] See, for example, the commentaries of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Aderet Eliahu on Deut. 17:17.
[3] As cited in Harvey Fields, A Torah Commentary for Our Times, vol. 3, p. 140.
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