(Kveller hosted a moment of grief for the Bibas family. I share the video in place of a song this week.)
“I just want subjects, verbs, and values.” I said with exasperation to Mel this morning.
“You should put that on a tee-shirt.” she replied.
I don’t have the time for tee-shirt design, but the desire isn’t going anywhere. Too many of our leaders — often myself included — speak in ways to avoid making enemies or being pinned to a particular point of view. We don’t want to have to defend, refine, rewrite, or worst of all, be ostracized for speaking plainly about what we believe and how we intend to behave. So we speak and write without subjects, verbs, and values.
Such was the case this morning when Mel and I were discussing the news. We were talking about the latest example of a senator trying to defend (what we believed) was indefensible — and doing so by means of a word salad. Mel read me their quote, and while this individual used many words, they conveyed no real meaning. If one doesn’t make an argument, then one cannot be refuted — which is to say — they can never be held to account.
Later this morning, I read the musings of a colleague on the murders of the Bibas family. The victims were referred to as “deceased,” not “murdered” or “slaughtered.” This felt familiar to me. On many college campuses, if the victims of October 7th were mentioned at all, speakers would say (even on October 8th) that they “lost their lives.” By contrast, Yarden Bibas — Ariel and Kfir’s father and Shiri’s husband, — has requested that “the world know how my children were slaughtered,” pleading to let the world know that his baby boys were strangled by an adult’s bear hands then mutilated after the fact to obscure their true cause of death. Ariel and Kfir didn’t lose anything. Whether through jargon or euphemism, academic spaces have been morally and intellectually degraded through language that elides agency and responsibility — especially when it comes to judging those who murder Jews.
Many of us do not want to be on the hook for staking moral and linguistic claims about what constitutes killing, murder, resistance, and terrorism. (And often the ones who do so with abandon — or a surfeit of confidence — don’t elevate the discourse either.) So most of us retreat to the world of euphemism or the vocabulary of pop-psychology to say much and convey little — just enough to feel as though we are speaking to the moment while holding almost no one (beyond our predetermined/imagined ideological adversaries) to any kind of real account.
The desire to obscure agency even comes into my Hebrew grammar classes. When I teach my students about active and passive verbs, I draw their attention to which contexts use the active and passive binyanim (grammatical structures.) When we would read articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, students would see that Israeli newspaper writers employed the passive voice often.
We often read: The terrorist “was neutralized,” “was eliminated, or “was liquidated.” There is rarely a subject in the sentence. It is always at that moment of teaching Hebrew when I pause and say, “grammar is rarely just grammar, and a Hebrew root almost always conveys multiple layers of intentional and unintentional meaning.” All of a sudden, the driest part of what I teach becomes a crucial element in understanding a painful, complex, and often problematic moral discourse. I need to take a moment and make clear: people aren’t “neutralized,” they are killed. And someone — a person — kills them.
Subjects, Verbs, and values.
Millennia ago, when this week’s portion, Mishpatim, was written, our ancestors spoke to us about understanding the intersection of language, context, and moral judgment. We learn in Exodus 22:1
אִם־בַּמַּחְתֶּ֛רֶת יִמָּצֵ֥א הַגַּנָּ֖ב וְהֻכָּ֣ה וָמֵ֑ת אֵ֥ין ל֖וֹ דָּמִֽים׃
If the thief is seized while tunneling and beaten to death, there is no bloodguilt in that case.
Our Torah teaches that if an intruder is killed while “tunneling,” the killer bears no guilt. What does “tunneling” mean? Rashi claims that it means “breaking into another’s house by force.” Chizkuni translates this word as, “acting so as not to be discovered.”
What does it mean to “bear no bloodguilt?” Rashi writes:
This is not regarded as a murder; it is as though he (the thief) has been dead from the beginning of his criminal act (אין לו דמים is taken to mean: he, the thief, had no blood — no vitality). Here the Torah teaches you the rule: “If one comes with the intention of killing you, be quick and kill him”. — And this burglar actually came with the intention of killing you, for he knew full well that no one can hold himself in check, looking on whilst people are stealing his property before his eyes and doing nothing. He (the thief) therefore obviously came with this purpose in view — that in case the owner of the property would resist him, he would kill him (Sanhedrin 72a).
Rashi is setting up a distinction between “killing” and “murder.” When one kills an intruder, he is not regarded as a murderer because he is defending himself, and the perpetrator knows that he should expect a person to defend her home. Murder, by contrast, is the intentional killing of another for a reason unrelated to one’s defense. At the core of Exodus there is a moral, linguistic, and legal distinction drawn between killing someone in the act of self-defense and murdering someone out of hatred, avarice, or rage. The Torah’s language — while written with few words — is both clear and nuanced. It makes a clear moral claim about how intent and context impact moral and legal culpability.
It is possible to speak simultaneously with nuance and clarity. However, we reach for word salads, jargon, and euphemisms when we don’t want to commit ourselves to either.
God is the ultimate example of how to speak and act with nuance and clarity at the same time. In Exodus 22:21-23, after making multiple detailed distinctions about different kinds of crimes, contexts, and punishments, God speaks with unalloyed moral clarity:
כׇּל־אַלְמָנָ֥ה וְיָת֖וֹם לֹ֥א תְעַנּֽוּן׃
You [communal leaders] shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan.
אִם־עַנֵּ֥ה תְעַנֶּ֖ה אֹת֑וֹ כִּ֣י אִם־צָעֹ֤ק יִצְעַק֙ אֵלַ֔י שָׁמֹ֥עַ אֶשְׁמַ֖ע צַעֲקָתֽוֹ׃
If you do mistreat them, I will heed their outcry as soon as they cry out to Me,
וְחָרָ֣ה אַפִּ֔י וְהָרַגְתִּ֥י אֶתְכֶ֖ם בֶּחָ֑רֶב וְהָי֤וּ נְשֵׁיכֶם֙ אַלְמָנ֔וֹת וּבְנֵיכֶ֖ם יְתֹמִֽים׃ {פ}
and My anger shall blaze forth and I will put you to the sword, and your own wives shall become widows and your children orphans.
Different kinds of crimes need to be discussed and addressed differently. We should pay heed to differences in context, intent, and effect. Speaking clearly, humbly, and carefully about crimes and punishments is essential. And also, God is disgusted when we oppress those who cannot defend themselves, and God will avenge their blood with righteous fury. While none of us are God, and none of us can judge from God’s vantage point, we learn something essential here. We can be precise and thoughtful about language and context without abdicating our moral responsibilities, especially to those most vulnerable.
Rushing to judgment is not Godly, nor is running away from it.
And when we do judge, we should do it with subjects, verbs, and values.
May we pray for Shiri’s return, and may the Bibas family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
May we have the courage to speak carefully and plainly, to take responsibility for our actions, and exercise moral judgment with clarity and humility.
Shabbat Shalom.