A Gabbai approaches a guest in the shul and says, "I want to give you an Aliyah. What is your name?" The man answers, "Esther ben Moshe."
The Gabbai says, "No, I need your name."
"It's Esther ben Moshe," the man says.
"How can that be your name?"
The man answers, "I've been having financial problems, so everything is in my wife's name."
It is a very strange Torah law—in fact, it borders on the absurd:
The Torah tells us, in this week’s portion Emor about the ancient Jewish legal processes, which included capital punishment for certain serious crimes, like murder and other extremely severe crimes. It states that such punishment can only be applied when witnesses have testified against the person. (Even then, it was extremely difficult to get capital punishment. The conditions that needed to be met were close to impossible.)
What if there are no witnesses, but the person himself admitted the crime? Maimonides states that Jewish law does not permit punishment of a person just because of his own admission. If he claims to have murdered someone, and there are no witnesses, he is not punished as a murderer.
By contrast, in everyday legal cases concerning disputes about money and material possessions, if someone admits that he is in the wrong, this is accepted as the strongest proof possible. In the words of the Talmud, in such cases "admission by a litigant is the equivalent of a hundred witnesses". What can be more valid in court that a person’s own admission?
This is an enigma. Why is there such the distinction between the legal rules concerning one's physical body, and those concerning one's material possessions?
During the time William Shakespeare lived, it was hard to find a Jew in England. In fact, Jews had not been allowed to live there for several hundred years. The Merchant of Venice was written sometime between the years 1595-1598. England’s Jews were expelled from that country in 1290, some 300 years before the play was written. They only returned to England in the mid-1600s, about 40 years after Shakespeare’s death. A community of crypto-Jews was living in London while Shakespeare was busy writing his plays, but it’s not known if he had any contact with them.
Yet he wrote a play “The Merchant of Venice,” in which he portrayed the image of a Jew, Shylock, still very popular today. Who has not heard of Shylock? Which famous Jew has not been called a Shylock at one time or another, to his face or behind his back?
For those who missed reading the play, here’s a brief synopsis:
Antonio, the merchant of Venice that is referred to in the play’s title, borrows a large sum of money from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender who has endured misery from many a Christian including Antonio, to be returned in three months. Shylock makes a strange deal: if Antonio defaults on the loan, Shylock will receive one pound of Antonio’s flesh as payment. A contract is prepared and signed stipulating the condition.
When news arrives that Antonio’s has lost his assets—his ships have been lost at sea, Shylock demands his payment and his revenge upon the Christian world which has persecuted him. Antonio naturally lacks the funds and Shylock demands his “pound of flesh.” Shylock takes his case to court.
When Christian friends of Antonio ask Shylock not to be so mean, Shylock sarcastically asks them why not? Aren’t Christians always mean to him, particularly Antonio?
…He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew's eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison
us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that.
The verdict of the judge is this: Shylock is entitled to his pound of flesh but he must stick to the contract: “one pound of flesh.” Not more and not less. But how can you determine that you are cutting exactly one pound of flesh, not a drop more? The judge thus gave the verdict: Shylock can have his flesh, but if after removing the flesh it turns out that Shylock took even one bit more or less than exactly one pound of flesh he shall be put to death. Shylock lost the case and is forced to convert to Christianity.
Diana Katz, who leads Jewish historical tours, described in a recent article herself taking a group to Venice, to the Rialto, the bridge in Venice mentioned in the play from which you could see the merchant ships coming from abroad in the old days, and where businessmen, including Jews, used to hang out. Now if we really want to be historical, no Ashkenazi Jew was permitted to engage in commerce, only in money lending; such were the laws of Venice. Still, moneylenders probably did hang out on the Rialto.
“And so Friday finds us marching through Venice behind our drill-sergeant of an Italian-Jewish tour guide, who feels we must see the famous Rialto Bridge. The bridge is so mobbed with tourists, it is ridiculous. I ask another Asian tourist group jostling their way onto the bridge for the obligatory photo, “Why do you come to the Rialto?” “To walk in the footsteps of Shylock, the famous Jew,” they reply.
“But there never was a Shylock,” I say. “He never existed. It is a play, a piece of fiction. The whole story never happened.”
Somewhat confused, they mumble something to the effect, “Well, perhaps so, but if Shylock would have lived, this is the bridge where he would have made his speech.”
Such is the power of Shakespeare’s play.
In fact, long ago, the education officials who construct curricula decided one cannot have a high-school education in the US, an educated man, without reading at least three Shakespeare plays: Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Merchant of Venice. A few decades ago, when Jewish parents finally had some clout with the school boards (starting in New York City), they removed Merchant of Venice and replaced it with Hamlet. That’s how powerful a play it is.
More than four centuries have passed since Shylock appeared on the world stage and it has since evoked profound emotions, both positive and negative. For many, Shylock sadly came to reflect the image of the Jew as a money-hungry blood-sucker who is ready to kill just to get his money.
Shylock inspired this—and countless other—anecdotes of this nature:
A nasty anti-Semite walks into a bar and is about to order a drink when he sees a guy close by with kippa, tzitzit. He doesn't have to be an Einstein to know that this guy is Jewish. So he shouts over to the bartender so everyone can hear, "Drinks for everyone in here, bartender, but not for that Jew over there.
Soon after the drinks have been handed out, he notices that the Jewish guy is smiling, and waves to him and says, "Thank you."
This infuriates him and in a loud voice, he once again orders drinks for everyone except the Jew. But as before, this does not seem to worry the Jewish guy who continues to smile, and again says, "Thank you."
So the guy says to the bartender, "What's the matter with that Jew? I've ordered two rounds of drinks for everyone in the bar except him, and all he does is smile and thank me. Is he nuts?
"Nope," replies the bartender. "He owns the place."
For others, Shakespeare was giving this Jewish money-lender a voice, a heart and an opportunity to vent his anger in response to Christian anti-Semitism. That Shakespeare was a literary genius is no question. Was he a moral genius? That’s another question. Many have used “The Merchant of Venice” to debate whether or not Shakespeare himself was anti-Semitic. The debate goes on to this very day. Apparently, to prove Shakespeare’s anti-Semitism, his neutrality, or even his pro-Semitism, is as impossible as asking him directly.
Yet, all commentators on this play, the defenders and antagonists failed to see and address the core of the matter. All—besides one man. There was one individual who did observe the core of the issue and proved how the play was—to borrow Talmudic phraseology falsified from within, meaning, that its very foundation and premise was completely distorted.
This man was a Jewish Talmudic scholar, one of the preeminent rabbis and prolific halachik writers of the 20thcentury, editor of the Talmudic Encyclopedia, the Jerusalem based Rabbi Shlomo Y. Zevin. In his essay (The Case of Shylock Analyzed Halachically)” Rabbi Zevin asks a simple question: What is the perspective of Jewish law on the agreement signed between Shylock the Jew and Antonio the Christian? If Antonio and Shylock would show up in a Bet Din, a Jewish court guided by Torah law, and they would ask the Jewish court to formulate this contract, what would the response be? Or in other words, when Shylock asks of Antonio for a pound of flesh if he can’t pay his debt, from where did he glean this proposition? Was it, perhaps, from his Jewish roots, or from his own imagination, or from Venetian law?
The answer to this question demonstrates that the one who should have been offended by this play were the Christians, not the Jews.
And then Rabbi Zevin shocks us. He excavates a one-liner from the code of Jewish law written by the first Chabad Rebbe. As stated above, there is a biblical prohibition against maiming, wounding and injuring another human being. (Even just to hit another person just to strike him down is forbidden). This is clearly stated in the Torah. But there is another prohibition: Even if your friend gives you permission to maim him, you are forbidden to do person to maim and mutilate himself!
But why? If you allow me to beat you up, what can possibly be the problem? It is here that the Alter Rebbe reveals to us the underlying principle behind the law: According to Jewish law, we do not own our bodies!
"My body belongs to me," some people say, "and therefore I can do what I like with it, as long as I do not harm other people." It sounds logical enough. We live with our bodies all the time. We can understand that there should be rules about what we do to other people. But my body is "me", so why should anyone else care? Why should the Torah care? Why should the Torah give rules for how I treat my own body?
Yet, the Torah perspective is that our body, in fact, does not belong to us, it is totally Divine property. Our bodies are G-dly entities, entrusted to us as a loan in order to nurture, protect and honor. In this, it is different from the possessions that we own, our money, computer, house, car. It is true that in general terms "the whole world belongs to G-d," but nonetheless, G-d has given us material possessions which we actually possess, although of course, we have to use them in the right way, as guided by the Torah. Just like I may not maim your body, I may not maim my own body—as it is not mine. It is G-d’s.
This explains the above-mentioned rule that although an individual is always believed when he claims he owes someone else a sum of money or a physical object, an individual is never believed when he claims that he owes his life because he has committed a capital crime. Our physical possessions belong to us and therefore we can willingly give them up. Our lives and our bodies belong to G-d and we do not have ultimate control over them.
Based on this, we now come back to Shylock and Antonio. Rav Zevin came to a surprising conclusion:
“The power of life that resides in the body of a human being is not his own—it does not belong to this person, that is the crucial point… When one sells or gives or mortgages the flesh of his own body in order that it be cut up for someone else, this resembles one who sells an object that is not his own. G-d gave life to a person in order that he uses it. It was never given to him to do with it whatever he wishes. The right to take this life back is given only to the One who gave it in the first place—Hashem.”
Therefore, according to Rabbi Zevin, the contract signed between Antonio and Shylock is invalid for the simple reason that Antonio never had the right to offer the flesh of his own body as collateral to be used in case of delay in repaying the loan.
For Antonio to offer his flesh, and for Shylock to demand it, is akin to you borrowing one million dollars from the bank and then putting up my home as collateral! The entire contract is one big joke. It has no legal basis. It is a mockery. Why? How you can put up my house which belongs to me as collateral for your loan (unless I consent)? It is not yours! Ditto with your body. It is not yours. It is G-d’s, and it remains His! The entire basis for this contract from a Jewish perspective is null and void—it is a meaningless piece of paper.
Here we reach the crux of the issue:
The Venetian law accepted the validity of the contract where Antonio obliges himself to allow Shylock to take a pound of his flesh. But from a Jewish point of view, the contract is null from the outset and has absolutely no validity!
Shakespeare, with all due respect, created a brilliantly absurd play, contradicting itself from within. He accuses Shylock the Jew in doing a certain cruel act, creating a legal contract demanding that pound of flesh, where in essence the entire validity of this cruel contract gleans its power only from non-Jewish law! Shylock as a Jew could never even entertain this entire notion.
A number of years ago, there was a woman in Israel who refused to have her gangrenous leg removed because she argued that the future world is the eternal world and she didn't want to be resurrected with only one leg. The Chief Rabbi of Israel came to her bedside and convinced her that Jewish law insists that she have the operation. For we do anything to save a life! The Bible itself forbids suicide because. As the human being is created in G-d's image, no one has the right to take his own life.
Our youth must hear this message today. The soul is Yours G-d, and the body is Yours G-d! Our lives do not belong to us. They belong to G-d. We have the duty and privilege to preserve it and enhance it, never to harm it.
Respect your body, nurture it, honor it—respect and honor another human body and life—that is how you show respect to G-d.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
Tom Peacock wrote...