The "Nice Guy" Trap

A week or two ago, I posted a comment on Facebook, tangentially hinting at my disapproval of the concept of State-recognized homosexual marriages.  And wow, did I get it in the neck from my friends!  I was not too surprised by the accusations of insensitivity and bigotry from my secular friends; after all, once you have removed God from the picture, there is no reason on Man’s earth why two consenting adults shouldn’t do whatever the heck they want together, and if the majority of the society they’re in feels it’s OK, then why not?  For that matter, consensual wife-swapping shouldn’t be a problem, either.  And why stop at adults?  Who says children who have reached puberty can’t decide for themselves what to do with their bodies?  And while we’re going down this route, let’s say some nutter gets hooked up with a consenting chimpanzee, and feels it’s a meaningful relationship, why should anyone else intrude?  It’s not as if it’s infringing on anyone else’s rights, is it?  Nothing to discuss here.

What perplexed me more about the reactions was the fact that so many of my religiously observant friends also jumped down my throat, giving me technical arguments like, “There’s no Torah prohibition against two men living together, so what’s the problem?” or “Keeping homosexuality illegal is not going to decrease the amount of homosexuality in the world.”  And there’s me left shaking my head.  Yes, these arguments may be technically accurate.  But for Heaven’s sake – look at the big picture!  Do these people, who profess to believe in God and the laws of the Torah, actually want our society to be moving in a direction of ever-greater licentiousness and open denigration and mockery of the moral codes that they supposedly support?  What is it that drives them to criticize me for simply stating a position that is clearly and unequivocally advocated by the Torah?

Soon after that, I was drawn into argument with a dear friend of mine who is passionately pro-Israel and very active in Israel advocacy on the Internet – yet he found it necessary to condemn the Israeli government publicly for not declaring that “price tag” vandalism should be classified as terrorism.  I took him to task on that, asking him if he really felt that writing obnoxious and threatening graffiti, terrible though that is, is morally equivalent to blowing up a bus.  We got into plenty of further discussion, but he would not climb down, and to my knowledge, his public position is still unchanged.

This got me thinking even more.  What other examples can I think of, of people taking public positions that run contrary to their stated ideology?  It didn’t take me long to draw up a short list:

• People who deeply care about Israel’s future, advocating unilateral surrender of Israeli territory to a sworn enemy that has never once given any indication that it will make peace with us – and this, “for the sake of Israel’s long-term security”.  Come again?
• People who are very concerned about security and the threat of global terrorism, yet willfully refuse to identify the perpetrators or their ideology.  (Hint: begins with “I”, ends with “-slam”.)  Result: ridiculous security checks at airports that treat a 69-year old granny with the same level of suspicion as a 23 year old Middle Eastern male wearing a bulky trenchcoat in midsummer.
• People who profess a strong belief in liberalism and human rights, and will campaign vociferously for more and more social freedoms, but who are strangely silent when in their own European hometowns, even non-Muslim women feel much safer to go outside wearing headscarves.
• The reluctance of the Republican Party in the USA to put forward a presidential candidate with clear and unequivocal socially conservative positions (e.g. on gay marriage, abortion), despite the conservative views of their membership.

What is it that makes people act this self-denigrating way?

On reflection, I identified exactly the same tendency in myself.  As one who was raised in a liberal, traditional Jewish home, I still have a strong connection with the circles in which I grew up, both family and friends, and I have a deep seated desire to be liked, and not to appear in the eyes of that liberal society as a knuckle-draggin’, bible-thumpin’, goggle-eyed retrograde wacko.  I have caught myself many times, in conversations with my less religious friends and family, actively introducing topics of Jewish religious extremists, just so that I can make it clear that I’m not one of them – or equivocating about some not-so politically correct Jewish laws, trying to find some sugar-coating to make them more palatable.  Bottom line, it’s insecurity in my own position.  And this insecurity, this desire to seem like a nice guy, has led me to compromise my own integrity, such as speaking loshon hora or denigrating Jewish laws and traditions.

What's more, being ingratiating gains nothing in terms of my own goals.  When I am cringing and apologetic for my views, I project that insecurity clearly, so whoever sees it realizes that I am pliable and unconvincing.  In real terms that may mean I find myself pushed into areas of compromising my own religious observances.  It means that Israel's political concessions are pocketed, unreciprocated, and the demands for further surrenders are simply scaled up.  When a pro-Zionist is quoted as criticizing the Israeli government, the anti-Zionists will eagerly quote him to prove that "Even your own supporters think you're immoral."  And so on.

We'd love to believe otherwise, that we humans really are all friends with just a few differences between us, so we compromise in the expectation that our concessions will be appreciated and reciprocated by our "colleagues".  But the cold, hard truth is that this world is full of ideological battles.  Conservatism vs liberalism.  Socialism vs capitalism.  Religion vs secularism.  Religion vs other religion.  Nationalism vs universalism.  Statism vs libertarianism.  Moderation vs extremism.  Etcetera.  When you're in one of these battles, a gifted concession is not seen by the other side as a sign of good faith; it's a sign of insecurity and weak resolve.  If your cause means something to you, then stand up for it proudly and don't give an inch, unless it's in the framework of an explicit quid-pro-quo with your ideological adversary!  If you don't believe in it strongly enough, be prepared to lose it.  As Rav Noach Weinberg said: "If you have nothing you would die for, then you have nothing to live for." (HT to ER for providing the source)

Perhaps that’s the lesson of Pinchas: A respected prince of the Jewish people – no less than Zimri ben Salu! – gets up and publicly shows off the Midianite girl that he’s about to take back into his tent.  Some people are cheering, others are stunned, and some are sitting around crying helplessly.  Only Pinchas, outraged as he is, has the presence of mind to understand that this behavior has crossed all red lines; he takes radical and courageous action, and consequently merits God’s “Covenant of Peace”.  Wow, how paradoxical.  Here’s a guy who gets up and impales two people on one spear – seemingly a brutally violent act – and the Torah credits him with bringing peace! 

Incidentally, the law that Pinchas was relying on – קנאים פוגעים בו – delimits that only one who is genuinely a “kannai”/zealot, whose motivations are 100% pure, could do such a thing.  Not something for insecure wimps like me.

But perhaps we could all use a little more Pinchas-type backbone in our lives, whatever our belief systems.  I don’t mean aggression, or being specifically not nice; I’m talking about an assertiveness that allows us to be perfectly civil and respectful, while maintaining our own integrity.  For example, with all respect to my gay friends and family (and I have plenty), I love them all dearly, but I am not going to condone their lifestyle just because liberal society says I must.  Libertarian that I am, I am not going to intrude on their private lives, as long as they keep them private.  With Shabbat observance, I have generally come to a fair status quo with my non-observant friends and family; I don’t make an issue of them violating Shabbos, and they don’t make it difficult for me to keep Shabbos.  In the same way, I won’t make an issue of anyone’s sexual orientation if they don’t.  Do not demand changes in the status quo such that I must start paying extra taxes to compensate for any benefits that might become due to “married” gay couples; I will oppose it.  Do not expect me to compromise my core beliefs by supporting any new legislation that denigrates the family unit and ultimately the moral fabric of society. 

I hope Mr Netanyahu is reading this, too.  Mr Prime Minister, please, pretty please, could you stop with this insanity of pandering to the world’s expectations that we commit national suicide by carving a chunk out of our heartland to hand over to our enemies?  Stop being so insecure!  Stop trying to be nice!  Take a leaf out of David ben Gurion’s book: stand up in front of the United Nations, wave a Bible at them and tell them that’s where they’ll find our title deeds to the land.  You’re not going to get peace by suing for peace.  You’ll only get peace by being a Pinchas.

So that’s what I take out of last week’s parsha.  Hereafter I resolve to be true to my core values, and not squirm out of taking an assertive stand, even if it is unpopular.  I hope I’ve inspired you to do the same.

Girsa d'yankusa

Jewish tradition has a very strong emphasis on "girsa d'yankusa" - the things you learn when you're young. On a fresh, impressionable mind, things make a much greater impact - so it's considered really important to start out on the right foot.

I can see how true this is of myself. I grew up in a pretty liberal household in South Africa, and the things I learned under my parents' tutelage have been the things that have most stuck with me in my life. Things like basic menschkeit and honesty. Having an open mind, and encouraging questioning. A deep seated revulsion at racism of any sort - I will never forget the telling off I got when, as a 6-year-old, I repeated a racist term I had learned from my schoolmates! I also imbibed a culture of activism, and having the courage to stand up for what you believe in, especially from my mother, who was arrested several times for anti-apartheid activities. People who haven't lived in a fear society usually don't fully appreciate just what kind of mesirus nefesh it takes to be a dissident, and actively work against the regime. My parents took great risks to do what they believed was right, and I can only pray that I can be a worthy heir to this spirit.

I only became religious at age 20, long past my "girsa d'yankusa" stage. And while I have intellectually accepted the ol malchus shamayim, internalizing it to the degree that it is a part of my personality is much more of a struggle, particularly where my religion might conflict with some of the things I learned as a child. I instinctively look for accommodations, and it's a constant challenge for me to be conscious of where the accommodation is justified, and where it's just a case of cognitive dissonance.

For example, I learned to live and let live. If someone else wants to do something that you disapprove of, unless it materially affects you, you should leave him alone to make his own choices. Judaism, on the other hand, is pretty strong about coercion, to the point where (in the presence of an authorized court) a Jew who eats pork can be flogged to within an inch of his life, and he can be sentenced to death for driving his car on shabbos. If that's not coercion, I don't know what is. But here I am, openly criticizing the ban on pork sales, advocating for civil marriage legislation, and quite willing to give directions to a Jew who is driving his car on shabbos. In each one of these instances I have, I believe, sound halachic reasons to back up my position, whether because the benefit of the coercion is outweighed by the loss, or because by giving the guy directions you are actually minimizing the chillul shabbos. But my position is not mainstream; I venture you'd find that most religious Jews would reflexively take exactly the opposite position to me in all of the above issues.

I was brought up with democracy as a fundamental value. People choose their leaders, and the leaders are answerable to their electorate, who will punish them if they fail to perform. Contrast Judaism, which on the face of things, does not have such a concept as leaders elected from the bottom up. The Jewish ideal is top-down: a king, appointed by Divine edict through a prophet, succeeded by his biological heirs, and wielding practically absolute power, albeit constrained by his own requirement to keep all the mitzvos of the Torah, as well as certain checks and balances that are under the control of the Sanhedrin. And the Sanhedrin itself is certainly not elected; it is appointed in much the same way (lehavdil elef havdolos) as the Israeli Supreme Court, only more so - there is not even a judicial selection committee for lay people to have their say; new dayanim on the Sanhedrin are appointed only by the existing members!

I reconcile this by saying that the Sanhedrin represented an unbroken chain of command from Moshe Rabbeinu and the 70 elders, who in turn appointed the best possible people to fill any vacancies. If you have a benevolent leadership like this, their judgment is probably way better than the judgment of a bunch of mostly ignorant lay people. After all, according to pure democratic principles, we have the absurd situation that a mentally retarded teenager's randomly chosen vote carries as much weight as the carefully considered position of a G-d fearing genius like Prof. Yisrael Aumann. But in our time, when we have no prophet to declare whom Hashem has chosen as king, and our Rabbinic chain of command has been all but broken, democracy is simply the best alternative we have left. We cannot continue to follow the paradigm of self-appointed, self-perpetuating structures, because look what happens if your original kernel is corrupt: you come out with an abomination like the Israeli Supreme Court, whose primary agenda appears to be stripping Israel of every last vestige of real Jewish values. We are therefore forced to fall back on the people's choice, both in terms of leadership and judiciary, because a leadership that is answerable to its people is far more likely to be benevolent than an unscrupulous dictatorship. (I include the judiciary in a guarded kind of way, because truthfully, we do have a Jewish judiciary even today - but there is no one beis din that is universally accepted by all factions, so unless all today's gedolei Torah can get together to appoint a Sanhedrin, a hypothetical Torah-true State of Israel would have no alternative but to have some kind of democratically appointed Sanhedrin, perhaps appointed by democratic vote among the gedolei hador.)

What about other clashes with Western values, such as "gender equality"? Yeah, yeah, I know all the apologetics about "separate but equal", and the different roles that men and women are supposed to play in Judaism. But am I happy to let my two sons split my entire inheritance, leaving my three daughters with nothing? Not a chance. Whatever the halachic devices are to do so, I fully intend to make sure that my daughters get their fair share of my estate. What is this? - do I think I'm smarter than the Torah? I'm uncomfortable with the dissonance between my professed beliefs and the fact that I simply don't want my inheritance to be distributed the way the Torah says it should be. Is that a bad thing?

I'm sure there are many other areas of my life where my worldview is colored by my secular/traditional upbringing, and is in conflict with authentic Jewish values - whatever those are.

What about you?
What was the "theme" of your upbringing?
How does that mesh with your current lifestyle?
What dissonances do you experience in your life?
What lessons have you learned, and what advice do you have for others to deal with dissonances?