The Holiest Bad Influence: Commentary on Parashat BeChukkotai 5784
By Rabbi Jonah Rank, Rosh Yeshivah of Hebrew Seminary
Heaven help me for the way I am
Save me from these evil deeds
Before I get them done
—Fiona Apple, “Criminal”
Even before Fiona Apple asserted in 1997 that doing wrong was purely in her nature, popular musicians had long suggested that they really had no choice other than to be morally corrupt. Backed by his band The Destroyers and distancing himself from the “good” in his last name—George Thorogood reported in 1982:
On the day I was born
The nurses all gathered ’round
And they gazed in wide wonder
At the joy they had found
The head nurse spoke up
Said, “Leave this one alone”
She could tell right away
That I was bad to the bone
Being “Bad to the Bone,” as it were, was not new then, and taking pride in conducting one’s self unscrupulously remains a beloved trope in the songs that top Billboard’s charts. Unsurprisingly, Billie Eilish reached no. 1 on the Hot 100 list and stuck around for 49 weeks when she declared “I’m the bad guy” in her hit song “bad guy,” which she co-wrote with her brother Finneas, Jason Boyd, and Justin Bieber. On the other hand, when Bieber sang “I’m not all bad” on his song “All Bad”—which he cowrote with Boyd, Ryan Toby, and Andre Harris—listeners granted this song a much more lukewarm reception, with only one week on the Hot 100 list.
Dilemmas frequently confront us, urging us to choose between one resolution that appears bad and some alternative resolution that feels almost as bad. If multiple people, each in different places, require our care at the same time, how do we choose whom to aid? No solution lends itself to pleasing all the parties at once. More rarely and more fortunately, we encounter the blessing of deciding between something that is obviously good or that is obviously bad. If a friend is in need and we have some resources to spare, should we help? Of course. Doing good tends not to produce the anxiety that doing bad might; guilt, however, may weigh heavily on us whenever we choose any ‘bad’ path out of a conundrum. This burdensome sense of culpability might overwhelm us and entice us to label ourselves “bad.”
In truth, none of this alone should render us bad. Independent adult human beings all inevitably rendezvous with tough decisions. Living is no sin, and life demands that we come face-to-face with ethical ambiguities. Anticipating the debate of nature vs. nurture—whether genetics determine the moral fortitude of a human being or whether a person can learn and develop their sense of wrong and right over time—Parashat BeChukkotai intimates that all of nature can be nurtured.
God has offered humanity in this week’s Torah reading a relatively simple choice: to adhere to God’s laws and to receive divine blessings (Leviticus 26:3–13); or to follow an ungodly path and to become subject to a multitude of curses (Leviticus 26:14-43). The notion that human beings have free will appears in the Torah from time to time; however, the idea that non-human organisms might be morally adaptable usually eludes the Hebrew Bible—but not here.
On the surface, the reader might presume that God found little potential in the animal kingdom when God promised as a reward to those who observe God’s laws “וְהִשְׁבַּתִּ֞י חַיָּ֤ה רָעָה֙ מִן־הָאָ֔רֶץ” (“then I shall cease evil animals from the earth”) (Leviticus 26:6). We know this to be inconsistent with God’s own earlier evaluation, that the creation of animals was inherently “טֽוֹב” (tov, “good”) (Genesis 1:21 and 1:25). In, Avodat HaKodesh (עבודת הקודש, “The Service of the Sacred”), his commentary on Leviticus, the Italian kabbalist Rabbi Mosheh David Valli (1696–1777) posited that the behavior of animals could be subject to demonic forces. Commenting on our verse, Rabbi Valli juxtaposed the no-bad-animals reward with God’s promise (in the same verse) “וְאֵ֣ין מַחֲרִ֑יד” (ve’eyn macharid, “nor shall there be any terrorizer”) wrote:
״ואין מחריד״ דא ס״מ חייבא, שכל חרדת אדם באה מצדו כענין שנאמר חרדת אדם יתן מוק״ש, שעולה כמנין מו״ת. והיינו טעמא לענין אמרו בסמוך:
״והשבתי חיה רעה מן הארץ.״ דאיהי נוק׳ דיליה, לילית חייבתא… ונקראת כאן ״חיה רעה״ לעומת ״חיה טובה״ דאיהי רזא דמלכותא קדישא. גם נקראת חי״ה רע״ה, לפי שעולה כמנין רצ״ח, שהרי כל הרציחות והמלחמות באות מצדה
“There shall be no terrorizer” is [a reference] to סם מות (sam mavet, “the potion of death”) of a sinner, for all terror to humanity comes from that dimension of sam mavet. [This accords with] an idea [that has been implicitly taught earlier], for it says [in Proverbs 29:25], “חֶרְדַּ֣ת אָ֭דָם יִתֵּ֣ן מוֹקֵ֑שׁ” (cherdat adam yitten mokesh, “Terror of a human gives [way] to entrapment”). For [the word מוֹקֵ֑שׁ (mokesh, “entrapment”), according to gematriyyah (גימטריה)—an ancient assignment of numbers to every Hebrew letter—]is equal to the total [in gematriyyah] of the word מות (mavet, “death”). The [fuller] reason for this matter is [derived from the following, which God] stated in juxtaposition:
“Then I shall cease evil animals from the earth” (Leviticus 26:6). This is [a reference to] the feminine aspect of that [sam mavet], the sinner לילית (Lilit, “Lilith”)… She is called here [in Leviticus 26:6] “חיה רעה” (chayyah ra’ah, “evil animals”), compared against “חיה טובה” (chayyah tovah, “good animals”), which is an allusion דמלכותא קדישא (deMalkhuta Kaddisha, “to the holy kingdom,” [the mystical realm where Divinity meets earthly existence]). Further, she is called chayyah ra’ah, for [this phrase, according to gematriyyah] Is equal to the total [in gematriyyah] of the word רצח (retzach, “murder”). For all murders and wars come from her dimension.
In Rabbi Valli’s mind, what makes wild animals evil is not their own nature but the influence of Lilith, a demonic force who interferes with God’s potency on Earth. The animals themselves are fine—not murderers (even if Lilith tempts them with the idea of murder). If the Israelites can behave according to the precepts of the Torah, God can ensure that no Lilith-like behavior will overcome the animals.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Shim’on (presumably the, respectively, father-and-son duo) debated the meaning of God’s promise “then I shall cease evil animals from the earth.” Rabbi Yehudah figured that this was God’s euphemism for “מעבירם מן העולם” (ma’aviram min ha’olam, “I will displace them from the universe”), and Rabbi Shim’on interpreted God as offering, “משביתן שלא יזוקו” (mashbitan shello yizzoku, “I will cease them, such that they may cause no [further] injury”). Rabbi Shim’on, refusing to believe that God would destroy all these creatures, explained:
אימתי הוא שבחו של מקום? בזמן שאין מזיקין או בזמן שיש מזיקין ואין מזיקים? אמור בזמן שיש מזיקים ואין מזיקים. וכן הוא אומר “מזמור שיר ליום השבת” – למשבית מזיקין מן העולם; משביתן שלא יזיקו.
When is there [greatest] praise for the Ubiquitous [God]? Whenever there are no entities who cause injury? Or when there are entities who could cause injury but do not cause injury? You should say [in response: There is greatest praise for the Ubiquitous God] when there are entities who could cause injury but do not cause injury. And this is what [the Psalmist in Psalm 92:1 meant when] saying, “מִזְמ֥וֹר שִׁ֗יר לְי֣וֹם הַשַּׁבָּֽת” (mizmor shir leyom hashabbat, “This is the psalm of the day of הַשַּׁבָּֽת [hashabbat, ‘the ceasing’]”): [There is praise] למשבית (laMashbit, “for the One who ceases”) in the universe those who cause injury. Mashbitan shello yizzoku. (Sifra, BeChukkotai 2:1:1 on Leviticus 26:6.)
Generally speaking, the God of creation is not in the business of erasing God’s creations. In fact, the tension that accompanies our knowing that we—humans and animals—are all capable of doing good or of doing bad gives us reason to pray. A world without risk may yield a world of apathy—with no ups or downs to cultivate gratitude or petition in prayer, and perhaps in the rest of life.
Animals in reality are just like us; real humans and real animals are neither heroes nor villains. We all carry the capacity to evolve as ethical beings, and we are all neighbors to the misfortune of bad influences. In the 2nd century B.C.E., the sage Nittai Ha’Arbeli warned his fellow Jews “הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן רָע” (harchek mishakhen ra, “Keep distance from an evil neighbor”) (Mishnah, Avot 1:7). As members of a social species, we are all candidates for peer pressure. We are not born innately bad, but Jewish wisdom demonstrates that forces external to us lead us to making poor, if not outright reprehensible, decisions. Maintaining that we are all impressionable souls, Jewish thought would agree less with George Thorogood and more with Carly Pearce’s apologetic song “Country Music Made Me Do It” (cowritten with Josh Osborne and Shane McAnally). Empathetic as our tradition has been and understanding that bad influences may come our way, the Jewish religion ultimately holds us accountable for our actions, recognizing that many of our actions may be laudable mitzvot and others may be serious transgressions. In our prayerbooks, the weekday Amidah prescribes for us three times a day to ask God for forgiveness for the sins we commit—with the presumption that we may even have the time and desire to iron out our differences with fellow humans between prayer services. We are imperfect and malleable—but we are culpable and capable.
We are holy because we can do good or bad. We are sacred because we can consider the actions and ideas of the people around us before we ultimately decide how we will act. If the animals that Rabbi Valli knew were subject to bad influences—and thus bad-decision-making—then humans, toting more complex language and technology than wild beasts can, inhabit an even greater moral spectrum. The ethical decisions we make sit somewhere on a scale between absolute depravity to the greatest heights of altruism and sacredness. If we seek blessings in return for our actions, we have all been sufficiently positively influenced to learn not only the direction in which we should tip our scales. We are holy for knowing that we can tip the scales.
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