I wrote this missive at the beginning of the crisis in Gaza, but only sent it to my little congregation. Seems important, as we continue to see devastation in Gaza, to speak this publicly.

Dear friends-

When I started seminary at Pacific School of Religion in 1995, I took a class called The Bible and the Near East from a visiting Israeli scholar (Dr. Shalom Paul).  He approached the Hebrew Bible from a comparative literature perspective, and we read other ancient writings from other religions/ethnic groups from around the same time.  It was an interesting approach for sure.

One lesson that has stuck with me was about “an eye for an eye” that is found in Leviticus:

19 If someone injures a fellow citizen, they will suffer the same injury they inflicted: 20 broken bone for broken bone, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The same injury the person inflicted on the other will be inflicted on them. (Lev. 24:19-21, Common English Bible).

We have all heard this saying even if we weren’t clear about where the saying came from.  You also might remember the famous Gandhi quote “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”  I have seen that on numerous bumper stickers over the years.  Dr. Paul spent an entire class session talking about what this verse has meant to our Jewish siblings over the millennia as well as how this law was quite unusual in its ancient context.

According to our Israeli professor, an eye for an eye is not about revenge as one might guess.  An eye for an eye was about setting limits to revenge.  In an ancient context where “justice” was meted out in radically disproportionate ways (i.e. someone stole a piece a fruit and they would lose their whole arm), an eye for an eye was commanding that punishment fit the crime.  It was about a proportionate response to whatever crime or misdeed had happened.  While I do not believe in capital punishment, an eye for an eye regarding killing a human limited the response to only executing the person responsible for the death. Many other laws in that historical context would call to execute the whole family, or destroy the whole village.  Even if it can feel brutal in our context, an eye for an eye was about limiting the retribution, and that was a radical thing in the ancient near east.

Now, I cannot say with confidence that this interpretation is indeed the dominant interpretation in most Jewish contexts.  As we know, Biblical interpretation can vastly differ from community to community.  But I have carried that lesson with me for almost 30 years and I have been thinking about this so much in the last 10 days…the devastation in Israel/Palestine brings this question up for me in profound ways.

I have heard many people say, “This conflict is so complicated.”  I have said it in the past as well.  But it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that it is not that complicated.  The Israeli response to the Hamas massacre is beyond an eye for an eye.  It is beyond a proportionate response.  It is beyond “defending” itself.   The government of Israel has dropped 6000 bombs on Gaza in 10 days.  For context, the US dropped 6000 bombs in a year during an active war in Afghanistan.  6000 bombs have been dropped on 2.2 million people living in an area the size of Las Vegas, but with 3 times the population.  Gaza City is more densely populated that New York City.  And unlike any other city in the world, there is nowhere to flee.  Nowhere.

Yesterday in Washington DC, hundreds of people, mostly American Jews, protested in the capital.  These protesters were lamenting the loss of innocent lives in Israel and those who remain in Hamas custody.  But all of them were calling for a ceasefire.  One protestor said, “Killing Palestinian babies won’t bring back the murdered babies of Israel.”  Israel cannot kill its way out of this conflict, but the right-wing Zionist government of Israel is showing no signs of mercy.

I have no idea how we get beyond this terrible place. But I do know that a genocide of indigenous people in Gaza and in the West Bank is not the answer.  An Apartheid state for Palestinians is not the answer.  Western colonial expansion is not the answer.  The answer must be rooted in human dignity and agency…or we will never find our way out of this mess.

Not in our name.  That is what the protestors said yesterday.  Not in our name.

In love and solidarity,
Deb