Torture

Rabbi's Notes - September 2005

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

I never imagined that it would fall to me to have to try to explain why people shouldn't torture each other. If anything in the world should be self-evident, I would think this would be the one. But I am learning otherwise. A couple of months ago I helped draft an open letter from rabbis against US-sponsored torture (I ran a copy of the letter here in the Megillah back when we wrote it.) The letter traveled to rabbis all over the virtual USA. Within a week or two, 500 rabbis had signed it, which was great. But some didn't, including leaders of some big Jewish institutions. Some said it was too controversial. Others said they had hesitations. Controversial? Hesitations? I was shocked…

Since then my shock has died back a bit, and, with my colleagues at Rabbis for Human Rights North America, I've set to the business of trying to articulate why we shouldn't torture people. And this has led me to a little rumination on security.

Since September 11, 2001, security has been at the forefront of many of our minds. Life feels less secure. We can't board a plane without thinking of hijackers or cross the Golden Gate Bridge without thinking about terrorists. And/or we can't check a book out of the library or send an e-mail without wondering what kind of paper trail we are creating and who might knock at our door one day on account of it. Living here on the Coast some of this might feel a bit removed. But Elana Berenson was living for a semester in Madrid when the train was bombed there, and Ella Russell was just in London when the subways and a bus were blown up. Amy Katz was teaching school four blocks from the World Trade Center on September 11. And Ruth Rosenblum's beloved brother was at work in the towers that day and perished. It's a small world, and we're part of it.

It is a natural impulse to want to protect ourselves, our loved ones, our community and our way of life. We protect ourselves in all sorts of ways every day. When we put money in the bank rather than keeping it in our sock, we are protecting ourselves. When we get our property surveyed, lock our door, work it out with neighbors so that no one's well sucks everyone else's dry, when we pass Measure H and eat organic food, we are trying our best to protect ourselves, to secure our well-being. Not to do these things, or whatever else you best estimate will keep you safe, would not be human. The need for safety is at the wide bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

The drive for security is fundamental. But life is fundamentally not secure. Every one of us will die of something, and few deaths are to be wished for. And even short of death -- our livelihoods, houses, animals, health, relationships, gardens, watersheds -- none of it can be absolutely secured. It is important to be prudent. But to guard against every possible threat would be crazy-making, would defeat the purpose of having a house or a garden or a relationship in the first place. Life is vulnerable.

There is some sort of balance to be struck between reasonable protectiveness and assuming the risk of living life each day. We all know this in the personal sphere.

None of us would torture our neighbors. It is unthinkable, beyond the pale. Even writing that sentence seems like an absurdity. Some of us might trap and kill a skunk or a raccoon in the house; others of us wouldn't. But none of us would torture it. If someone is unfairly taking advantage of us, hurting us, damaging our property, threatening our livelihood, we might fight back. We might sue or organize or protest, write letters to the editor, call the sheriff. We might shun that person, might even tell other people that they should too. We might scream at them, threaten them. Some of us might even get physical in a moment of confrontation, throw a punch, and vandalize a house or a car. But we wouldn't torture them. Even if through their depredations we lost our job, got sick, lost our home, were injured -- I dare say even if it cost our life -- we wouldn't torture our assailant.

Or would we? How far are we willing to go for the sake of security? Would we humiliate? Retaliate? Escalate? If we imagine a spectrum between total surrender at one end and ultimate, absolute defense at the other, where would we locate our entitlement to security?

Our country has, on our behalf, on account of our vulnerability, begun to torture people that are judged to be a threat. And I think that at root there may be a spiritual issue here.

In a month we will stand together and recite: "On Rosh Hashana it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, who shall live and who shall die; who in old age and who before old age; who by fire and who by drowning, who by sword and who by beast…" The prophet Isaiah speaks: "All flesh is like grass… Grass withers and blossom fades when the breath of God blows upon it; indeed the people is grass." (Isaiah 40:6-7)

As we draw to the end of a bloody year, we might want to reflect on the paradox of security: that it is both a primary need and impossible to achieve. We might want to think about our personal defense policy: how we secure our personal holdings -- spiritual, emotional and physical. We might wish to think about the drive to security as it plays out in our intimate relationships. And we might want, too, to reflect on the ways in which our personal need to be secure drives our community and our country, and the Jewish people and the land of Israel, to act in our names.

It seems clear to me that the resolution to the conundrum has to be somewhere in the middle of that spectrum: that it is both wrong to refuse to protect oneself at all and equally wrong to take extreme measures for self-protection. We may each locate that balance point somewhere else along the bar, but I hope that all of us would agree that some acts at each extreme are unacceptable.

Then there is the paradox within the paradox: sometimes taking more intense measures to secure our safety actually makes us less secure. Or put the other way, sometimes laying down our arms actually protects us. It seems sometimes to be true in our personal lives and in the civic world as well.

I think that this year more than ever, as we begin to do our personal heshbon ha-nefesh, accounting of our souls, we are called on to see ourselves as souls in a world, souls whose individual needs and decisions have large ripples of consequence. I hope that this Ellul we will each be able to do the inner reckoning that will put torture back in the realm of the unthinkable, in our own lives and in the warring world as well.

© 2005 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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