TAKE COUNSEL AND SPEAK

If you are looking for an unpleasant Biblical reading, you can't do much better than Judges 19-21. In it, a group of "worthless fellows" from the tribe of Benjamin gang rape and murder the concubine of a visitor from Ephraim. The Ephraimite (who more or less gave his concubine to these men, by the way) takes her body, cuts it into twelve pieces, and has it sent to all the tribes of Israel "And all who saw it said, There was no such deed done or seen from the day that the Israelites came up out of the land of Egypt to this day; consider it, take counsel, and speak.” (Judges, 19:30). What should be done?

Does that make you angry?  We read that it made the tribes angry and they went to war against the tribe of Benjamin. Suppose you read that God told the Israelites to take revenge on the tribe of Benjamin. Would that make you even more aggressive? Apparently it would. In a report in the March issue of the journal, Psychological Science, Brad Bushman and colleagues got people to read this Biblical passage with and without a Divine sanction of revenge. (In the Bible, by the way, God is silent on the matter.). Then they gave their subjects a chance to play a competitive game in which you could blast your opponents with loud noises --- an aggressive act. People who read that God wanted the Israelites to smite the Benjaminites gave their opponents louder blasts than those who did not have that added line. Interestingly, this effect was reliable whether or not the participants said that they believed in God though it was a bigger effect in believers.

This result could be interpreted in many ways. I thought of several control experiments that I would want run before I would venture much of an interpretation but one reasonable interpretation might be that Divine permission is one of many ways to make aggression a more plausible behavior. No doubt, there will be press reports that this study shows that religion makes you more aggressive. That goes beyond the data, I think.

I was attracted to this article for Sinai News purposes this month because of the end of the line that I quoted about. “Consider it. Take counsel and speak.” Temple Sinai’s mission does not involve much in the way of smiting of our enemies. Of that, I feel quite certain. I would feel less certain if I were asked to say what all of us, as a congregation, do see as the Temple’s mission. To answer that question, we need to take counsel. That is one way to describe the purpose of the “congregational conversation” that will take place in several places over the next couple of months. A flier in this issue of the Sinai News repeats information you should have received in the mail. It tells you that there will be a series of meetings at Temple and in people’s homes where we can discuss what brings us together as Jewish community and where we can consider how we could achieve those goals. We hope that everyone will be willing and able to take part. We want to hear as many voices as possible as we think about the future.

We know that religion can be used as a weapon to divide people. We know that this fact about religion can be used as a cudgel to discredit religion. But we also know that we are committed to a different brand of religion. Come take counsel and speak as we try to nurture a religious community that empowers people to sustain each other and repair the world. I hope to hear your voice in the congregational conversation this spring.