Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Shabbat Mishpatim
January 31, 2003
The Antidote to Violence Is Not More Violence
Last spring, my colleague Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis of Flower Mound, Texas, presented a Brotherhood Breakfast program here. Rabbi Dennis has a very interesting background. He is a Jew-by-Choice who was a practicing nurse for a number of years before studying for the rabbinate. I like Geoff Dennis, and I want to share a couple of his experiences with you this evening. He writes:
“It was a warm summer’s night in New Mexico and Robin (his wife) and I had decided to retire early. As I lay in bed, adrift between waking and sleep, an urgent cry summoned me back to consciousness. ‘Help! Help!’ I heard coming from our front yard.
“Instantly awake, I leaped from bed and pulled my Mossberg 500 shotgun from the closet, and ran out the door. Everything happened in a second. I saw a young man running toward me from the street. On the street three men were getting out of a car and shouting. Immediately I bellowed ‘What the hell is going on here?’
“Everybody froze; the three men took one look at me, jumped back in their car and took off with tires squealing. The youth stood there breathless, just staring in terror and surprise.
“To this day,” writes Geoff Dennis who, at the time of this story, was not a rabbi, “I don’t know what made those three men flee. Was it the gun I brandished, my ferocious battle cry, or the fact that I was stark naked? I will never know, but that moment remains for me the incident which highlights the problem of guns in our society. In the immediate aftermath of that night, I felt like the hero of American mythology who imposes order on lawlessness from the barrel of a gun. Yet on sober reflection, I suspect the reality was much more ambiguous and subtle than the myth I created for myself. I now know my exultation had more to do with the exercise of power than the imposition of law. For those brief moments I had held absolute power. I controlled the destiny of four people. But, at the same time, was anything controlling me?
“With a gun in our hands we become semi-divine, possessing the power of life and death. Yet such divinity is of a pagan sort. We become powerful like the gods of ancient myths. Yet, like them, we also become angry, unpredictable, even vicious.”
Last week’s Torah portion depicted one of the most cherished myths in Jewish history, that incandescent moment when our ancestors stood at the foot of a quaking and smoking Mount Sinai and heard the majestic Ten Commandments proclaimed amidst thunder and lightening. The spectacular grandeur of the setting was a fitting backdrop for the impressive pronouncements. They proclaimed the fundamental teachings of our faith: absolute monotheism, uncompromising opposition to idolatry, the holiness of Shabbat, the sanctity of human life and marriage, the inviolable rights of our neighbors. The moment was massive and so were the laws to which it gave birth.
This week’s Torah portion is very different. This week we have a compendium of commandments – 53 of the 613 mizvot in the Torah. Twenty-four positive commandments and 29 negative ones are given in this week’s Torah portion. In contrast with last week’s big ten, many of this week’s mishpatim – little laws, ordinances – appear almost too petty for the Almighty to bother with them. These commandments deal with wounds inflicted during arguments, the treatment of slaves, oxen that gore, livestock which graze in a neighbor’s field, gossiping. Is it not almost beneath God’s dignity to talk about such ordinary everyday experiences?
The mitzvot in this week’s Sedra address all aspects of life, because Judaism recognized no sphere of human activity as beyond the scope of law. The Ten Commandments are the foundation stones of Judaism. The ordinances contained in this week’s sedra – the civil, criminal, cultic, marital and ethical injunctions – concretize and establish in practice the spirit of the Ten Commandments. It is laws like those found in this week’s Torah portion which enabled our ancestors to create a civil society. While Jewish myths about creation, the exodus, the Messiah or Mount Sinai may inform how we perceive the world, it is through the mishpatim, our little laws, that we live in the world.
We live today in a society which is rapidly losing respect for the rule of law. The resulting rise in everyday violence is evident for all of us to see. At the heart of our increasingly uncivil society is a struggle over the place of guns. In responding to the lawlessness around us, we Americans appear to be increasingly divided into two camps. One side assumes that in order to insure a safer and freer society we must, paradoxically, keep guns beyond the scope of law and regulation.
The other side insists that if we are going to be a society based on the rule of law rather than on raw power, guns must be subject to regulations – just like any other sphere of American life. I believe the second alternative is in keeping with the values of Judaism. Our own tradition makes mishpat – law, not myth – the cornerstone of civil society. The philosopher Philo once observed: “Those who live in accordance with the law are free.” The exodus may have rendered the Israelites free as individuals, but it is the mishpatim, the little laws at Sinai, which made us into a free society.
In the Talmud we are told that a man should not go out on Shabbat wearing any sort of weapon. When Rabbi Eleazar objects that these are only his ornaments, the sages respond, they are in fact a reproach to him.
Government by law is the ornament of a free people. By contrast, governance by fear and threat of force is the currency of oppression and anarchy. Those who resist the legal regulation of guns, approach these weapons from a mythic viewpoint, what we might call “the great American gun myth.” The essence of the myth is that, throughout American history, guns have been instrumental in making us safer, freer and better.
For example, let’s take the notion of safety. Applying the great American gun myth to today, gun advocates argue that somehow, by keeping firearms above the law, a more law-abiding society will result. This notion was once summarized by a gun rights advocate who said: “If everyone were wearing a .45 on his hip, it would make for a very polite society.”
The absurdity of this statement should be self-evident. Even American mythology itself refutes this logic. Does anyone ever refer to American frontier days as the “kinder, gentler Old West”? Of course not. We call it the “wild, wild West,” and with good reason. Despite the gun myth, it was not carrying sidearms which tamed the American West. Just the opposite is true. Only the legal curbing of carrying firearms made America a safer, more genteel society.
We ignore the lessons of our past, at our peril. Despite the fact that last year roughly 30,000 Americans were murdered with guns, pro-gun lobbyists continue to insist that by making guns more abundant and less regulated, a saner, more lawful society will result.
The great American gun myth promotes the notion that keeping a firearm at home for self-defense will make your family safer. Magazines like The American Rifleman regularly have anecdotal stories of how a gun was successfully used by some citizen in self-defense. My friend, Rabbi Dennis, says he at one time also believed that myth; and, therefore, he kept a handgun at home for “protection.” But then he sadly reports an anecdote of his own.
“It was 12 years ago that Daniel ran away from the group home where I worked. That was not an unusual occurrence; he had run away before. Accordingly, I left a message on his parents’ answering machine, notified my supervisor and waited for him to resurface.
“He did, a few hours later, on the 10 o’clock news. It seems that Daniel went home and, finding no one there, took his father’s 357 revolver and pick-up truck. When his parents came home they noticed the truck missing but, instead of listening to the answering machine, they called the police to report the truck stolen. Shortly thereafter, the police spotted the truck and pulled Daniel over. As the police approached the vehicle, Daniel took out the revolver, stuck it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. In the blink of an eye, a weapon which had been kept for family protection instead decimated that family.”
Rabbi Dennis concludes: “I was in shock that night. But even without knowing the full truth, I understood the implications of what had happened. After I got off work that night, I went home, I took my pistol out of the drawer and, using hammer and anvil, reduced that weapon to slag.”
Listen carefully to these statistics. The vast majority of the 17,000 successful suicides in this country each year are committed with firearms. Each and every day, nine young Americans (under age 24) die from gun violence. The rate of gun deaths among America’s children is 12 times higher than those of the 25 other wealthiest nations combined. Whether we look at homicide or suicide, studies show that keeping a gun in your house will not make you safe. A firearm kept at home is 22 times more likely to be used for an unintentional shooting, homicide, or suicide than it is for one incident of self-defense. Nearly 100,000 Americans enter hospital emergency rooms every year with serious or fatal gun injuries. The great American gun myth is just that – a myth, a pernicious myth to boot.
Our Mishna asks the question: “Why does using an iron tool to construct the altar of God render that altar profane?” And the rabbis answer: “Because iron is used to forge weapons which shorten life, while the altar is intended to lengthen life.” It is inherently self-defeating to try and construct something which enhances life out of something which destroys it.
The advocates of unlimited gun ownership fail to recognize this contradiction in their position. They continue to claim that weapons of violence are the key to a less violent society. It is as if they have erected an altar in our midst founded on violence while all the time crying “peace, peace, safety, safety.” Because of the great American gun myth, every day we make blood sacrifices upon that altar, and the civility of our society weakens a little more with each life lost.
Opponents of gun control argue that placing legal restrictions on firearms is an infringement of our freedom. To buttress this claim they point to the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Again, the American gun myth has mislead us. While gun advocates insist the Second Amendment guarantees unfettered ownership of guns, American law courts disagree.
Generally when gun control laws are challenged in court, these laws are held to be constitutional. That is why the NRA virtually never fights gun laws through the courts; they know the law does not stand behind the myth they propagate. The fact is, gun control laws are both constitutional and correct. As Jews and as Americans committed to the rule of law over the tyranny of power, I believe we have an obligation to bring these most destructive of human tools under the rule of law.
We should to start where the need is greatest. The type of gun used in the commission of most crimes and successful suicides is the handgun. Handguns are designed solely for killing other human beings; they are suited neither for hunting nor for even effective home defense. They serve no beneficit purpose. As bearers of an ageless moral code, Jews ought to be in the vanguard of those seeking to impress upon our legislators that handguns are indeed “stumbling blocks,” which must not fall into the hands of the “blind.” Radically curtailing the production and sale of these weapons would be an important first step in curbing the violence which plagues America.
Frankly, I am for much more sweeping nation-wide changes.
Let’s ban all assault weapons. Period.
Let’s insist that each and every gun be registered and that gun owners be trained and licensed.
Let’s require that all handguns be sold with child-safety locks.
Let’s ban the Internet sale of guns.
Let’s extend the Brady Bill’s background check requirement to gun
shows and swap meets.
Last week – Sinai – Thou shalt not murder, steal or covet. This week – Mishpatim – the ordinances which make the big pronouncement possible. Where to begin? I encourage you to start , by joining and supporting one of the organizations which are working to make our society safer. Those who would keep guns beyond the reach of the law have one of the most powerful lobbying machines in this country. The Moses of the movies is its president. Only a grass roots effort by people of conscience who are outraged by the devastation guns wreak is going to be able to counteract the money and influence of the pro-gun lobby. I have placed information sheets from our Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center on tables in the Miller Auditorium. I hope you’ll take these sheets home and seriously consider what you can and should do.
Our sages of blessed memory knew nothing of guns, but they knew that the capacity to do violence was antithetical to the rule of law. They said: “Violence enters the world because justice is denied and because justice is perverted.” The antidote to violence is not more violence, but a more just and law-abiding society. Let us no longer allow the worship of power to deny the legal governance of firearms. Let us no longer allow the perversion of the Constitution for the sake of a pernicious myth. Judaism exhorts us not to stand idly by the blood of our neighbor. “Guns are not healthy for children and other living things.” Amen
