20 voor 6: tijd voor de fles?


After the story about Rabbi Eli'ezer, tha talmudic narrative continues via the double narrative of two Rabbis arrested by the Romans to thematize explicitly the contest between escape from martyrdom through tricksterism and manfully provoking death:

Our Rabbis have taught: When Rabbi El'azar the son of Perata and Rabbi Hanina the son of Teradyon were arrested for sectarism, Rabbi El'azar the son of Perata said to Rabbi Hanina the son of Teradyon:
"Happy art thou who has been arrested for only one thing. Woe unto me who has been arrested for five things!" Rabbi Hanina the son of Teradyon said to him: "Happy art thou who has been arrested for five things and will be rescued. Woe unto me who has been arrested for one thing and will not be saved, for you busied yourself with Torah and with good deeds, while I only busied myself with Torah!" ~ This is in accord with the view of Rav Huna who said that anyone who busies himself with Torah is as if he had no G d.

The story of Rabbi Eli'ezer that appeared & that was discussed before provided only one option, but now the options are multiplied and confronted in the form of dialogue between the two rabbinic protagonists.
As in the case of Rabbi Eli'ezer with which the whole cycle opened, here, also, the Rabbis are very anxious about justifying G d's punishment of apparently righteous men via their arrest by the Roman authorities.
There were both Jewish & Christian thinkers at the time who believed that martyrdom was 'an atonement
for sin committed in this or a previous life!' The notion, not by itself remarkable, that the oppressive Empire is G d's whip, raises the question of resistance to a high theological pitch at the same time that it reinstates a rather simple theodicy, as we hopefully might see. The Rabbis, like Job's friends, cannot stand the thought of a G d who punishes without cause.

In order, however, to both preserve the sens of Rabbi Hanina's blamelessness and yet justify G d's actions toward him, the Talmud cites a text indicating that one time he was holding two types of public money and he confused them and thus distributed the money intended for one purpose to the poor by mistake. For that lack of care in the administration of public money, he was arrested and martyred ans, moreover, it is this carelessness that justifies the judg-ment put in his own mouth to the apologetic and incoherent one of the traditional commentators.

We can also find a somewhat similar issue having to do with the misuse of public funds in a roughly con-temporaneous Christian text.

The text goes on with the details of the trials of the two prisoners:

They brought Rabbi El'azar the son of Perata. They asked him: "Why did you teach and why did you steal?" He answered them: "If book, no sword and if sword, no book! Since one must be absent, the other must as well!"

Rabbi El'azar the son of Perata uses trickster wits to get himself out of trouble.
He declares that there is a self-contradiction in the charges against him, for one cannot be both a scholar and a thief. Since, he says, the two accusations contradict each other, they cancel each other out.

The premise of the argument itself makes sense in terms of contemporaneous cultural norms.
The occupations of robber and scholar were considered logically incompatible within the cultural fram of this text, as we also can learn from the Hellenictic novel Leucippe and Cleitophon, in which the hero reports a beating in which he was passive and then remarks: "He grew tired of thumping me and I of philosophizing!" Philosophizing is thus equivalent to nonthumping, ergo violence and sagacity are imcompatible!

This kind of logic also is a particularly typical form of talmudic reasoning according to which, when a state-ment includes two propositions that are mutually exclusive, they are both considered to be untrue.

At the same time that it functions in the plot to establish Rabbi El'azar's cleverness, this proverbial utterance of the Rabbi's announces a theme of the text.

Torah is incompatible with the sword, thus repeating the theme established through the typology of Esau,
the Roman, and Jacob, the Jew.

Some read this text quite differently, arguing that just as Rabbi El'azar's disclaimer of studying Torah was disingeneous, so was his claim of having been a "robber,", that is, a violent rebel against the Romans, and he does have a point here ~ if not an ineluctable one.

Indeed, they speculate that the "good deeds" with which the Rabbi busied himself were these acts of active rebellion: in other words ~ I can no more disprove one reading that I can approve it since different assumptions produce different hermeneutics.

In al dit soort teksten
van vele eeuwen geleden
kun je dus eenzelfde thematiek ontdekken
als die waarmee we vandaag de dag nog steeds kampen
met iets andere woorden, argumenten & voorbeelden:
wanneer een land bezet is door een vijand,
wat is dan de positie van de onderdrukte bevolking
en hoe is het dat je te weten kunt komen
wat 'juist handelen' is?
Je onderwerpen zonder verzet?
Collaboreren of je teweer stellen?
Met of zonder [grof] geweld?
Hoeveel geweld wel of niet
en waarom dan wel?
Moet je militaire dienst weigeren
als je bevolen kunt worden fout te handelen
en op welke gronden dan wel precies?
Moeten we ons passief teweerstellen
door middel van geweldloos verzet
[als Gandhi] of meer militant?
Mag martelen & tot hoever & waarom
wel of niet tot een bepaalde grens?
Hoe pas je al dit soort van probleemstellingen toe
in [wereld]oorlogen, politieke/religieuze argumenten?
Hoe onder de nazis, de commies, de fascisten?
Engelse, Franse, Nederlandse, Duitse kolonialen e.d.?
In de Vietnamoorlogen, Chile, Argentina, Braziel, Cuba,
Congo, Zuid-Afrika, Ethiopia/Eritrea,
Iran/Irak & Dafur &
Afghanistan?
De lijst
vol overeenkomsten,
variaties en verschillen
is eindeloos!
Wat met de Balkan,
Kosova, Srebrenica,
Macedonia, Cyprus, Israeli's,
"Palestijnen" & al die
omringende landen met
hun verschillende bevolkingsgroepen
als christenen & moslims,
ongelovigen &
'heidenen'?

Bommen ...
Doodgewoon?
Ik bedoel maar:
je kunt minstens terugkijken
op de afgelopen 2000 jaar & 'hetzelfde' of
'iets anders' ontdekken, herkennen,
vaststellen & 'er
iets van leren'?!
Wat zijn
'vrijheidsstrijders'
& 'terroristen'?
Wie
'bezetters'
&
'verlossers'?
blozen
20 jul 2008 - bewerkt op 20 jul 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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Asih, man, 81 jaar
   
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