Individual and Community
It is no coincidence that the book of Numbers draws to a close with a statement of one of the fundamentals of Judaism: the sanctity of human life. As the people approach the land that will become holy, they are reminded: “Do not pollute the land in which you live; it is blood that pollutes the land” (Num. 35:33). With these words we are brought back almost to the beginning of the human story, to the scene in which the first child, Cain, murders the second, Abel, and is told by God, “The sound of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10). Likewise we recall the central law of the covenant with Noah: “He who sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God did God make man” (Gen. 9:6). Since the human person is the image of God, murder is not merely a crime; it is sacrilege. It defiles the land. It desecrates something holy, namely human life itself.
Hence the law of the cities of refuge – the six towns, three on either side of the Jordan, set aside for the protection of those found guilty of manslaughter, those who caused a human death without murderous intent. They were there to protect manslaughterers from “blood vengeance” by a member of the family of the victim. The blood feud was one of the primary drivers of violence in the ancient world.1See the previous essay and the book by René Girard cited there.
On the one hand, the Torah recognises its existence by ruling that if, after a properly constituted trial, the accused is found guilty of murder, the death sentence is to be carried out by the goel hadam, the “blood avenger” (literally, “blood redeemer”).2Num. 35:19; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Rotze’aḥ 1:2.
On the other, it equally recognises that the desire for revenge must not be allowed to interfere with the due process of the law. Therefore it becomes essential to protect the accused until he has first stood trial,3See Num. 35:12: “These cities shall serve you as a refuge from the avenger, so that a murderer not die until he can stand trial before the courts.” In other words, the cities of refuge not only protected the manslaughterer – they also protected all those accused of murder until they could stand trial. and if he is deemed innocent of murderous intent, to protect him thereafter.
The Torah tells us, however, that the protection afforded by the cities of refuge exists only so long as the manslaughterer actually stays inside. If he leaves, he forfeits his protection,4See Num. 35:26–28. and therefore places his life at risk. This gives rise to a fascinating provision of Jewish law. This is how Maimonides, following the Talmud, states it:
One who has been exiled does not leave the city of refuge at all, even to perform a mitzva, or to give evidence in a monetary or capital case, or to save someone by his testimony, or to rescue someone from a non-Jew or a river or a fire or a collapsed building. Even if all Israel needs his help, like Joab son of Zeruiah [King David’s chief of staff], he never leaves the city of refuge until the death of the high priest, and if he leaves, he makes himself vulnerable to death.5Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Rotze’aḥ 7:8.
There is a principle here that sheds much light on Judaism’s system of values. Outside the city of refuge, the person found guilty of manslaughter could be killed by the blood avenger: “But if the accused ever goes outside the limits of the city of refuge to which he has fled, and the avenger of blood finds him outside the city, the avenger of blood may kill the accused without being guilty of murder” (Num. 35:26–27).
Thus, to leave the city of refuge was to put one’s life at risk. No one in Judaism is commanded to put his life at risk to save the life of another – even to save the entire Jewish people (“even if all Israel needs his help”). Despite the fact that Judaism is an intensely communal faith, nonetheless in Jewish law, the right to life is absolute and inalienable, and whenever it is at stake, the individual takes priority over the community.
Here is another example, codified by Maimonides:
If idol worshippers say to a group of women, “Give us one of your women for immoral purposes, or we will violate you all,” they must all allow themselves to be violated rather than hand over one Jewish soul. Similarly, if idol worshippers say, “Give us one of you and we shall kill him, or else we will kill you all,” they must all allow themselves to be killed rather than hand over one Jewish soul.6Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 5:5. On this, see David Daube, Collaboration with Tyranny in Rabbinic Law (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).
On the face of it, the law is illogical. The refusal to collaborate with tyranny by handing over a victim will not save the victim. She will be violated, or he killed, whatever the group chooses to do. Why then must they all allow themselves to be mistreated or killed? The key difference is between active and passive, between what a person does and what is done to him. An entire group must passively allow itself to be assaulted rather than actively sacrifice a single one of their number. Again, the rights of the individual take priority over the welfare of the group.
A third example is exemption from military service (in the case of a milḥemet reshut, a non-obligatory war; the exemptions do not apply in the case of a war of self-defence):
The officers shall say to the people: “Has anyone built a new house and not dedicated it? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else may dedicate it. Has anyone planted a vineyard and not begun to enjoy it? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else enjoy it. Has anyone become pledged to a woman and not married her? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else marry her.” (Deut. 20:5–7)
Wars are fought for the sake of the nation as a whole. The exempt categories refer to individuals who have not yet had the chance to enjoy a fundamental human good: marriage, a home, a vineyard. Again we have a case in which a private good overrides the public good.
At stake in these and many other examples is the supreme importance, in Judaism, of a single human life. This is how a famous mishna puts it:
It was for this reason that man was created singly, to teach you that anyone who destroys a life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed an entire world, and anyone who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world. And also, to promote peace among the creations, that no man would say to his friend, “My ancestors are greater than yours….” And also, to express the grandeur of the Holy One, Blessed Be He: For a man strikes many coins from the same die, and all the coins are alike. But the supreme King of kings, the Holy One, Blessed Be He, strikes every man from the die of the first man, and yet no man is quite like his friend. Therefore, every person must say, “For my sake the world was created.” (Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5)
In these words, we feel the full revolutionary significance of the first chapter of Genesis, with its momentous declaration that the human being is in the image and likeness of God – the single most radical consequence of monotheism. The concept of God, singular and alone, gave rise to the concept of the human person, singular and alone. This is the birth of the individual in Western civilisation.7See Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism (London: Allen Lane, 2014), who attributes it, wrongly I believe, to Christianity. Nonetheless his analysis is insightful in showing the background against which this idea emerged.
It goes without saying that this was unknown in the pagan world. More worthy of attention is the difference between biblical ethics and those of ancient Greece. In Greece the highest value was the polis, the city-state, the group. Ethics was a code of devotion to the city (Athens, Sparta). The supreme glory was heroism in the field of battle, or the willingness to die for the city’s sake: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (“It is pleasant and proper to die for one’s country”). The group takes precedence over the individual. That is a fundamental difference between Greek and Jewish ethics.
One thinker who reflected deeply on this was the late Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel (1882–1945), Chief Rabbi of Antwerp and later of Tel Aviv. In his HaTzedek HaSotziali VeHaTzedek HaMishpati Shelanu (translated as Ethics and Legality in Jewish Law), he pointed out two consequences of the Jewish emphasis on the individual. On the one hand, it was vital to Jewish survival in exile. Jews were always a minority, and the minority usually conforms to the majority. Had this been the case among Jews, there would be no Judaism today. Jews, however, have had a long history of valuing the individual over the group. Jews did not bend to the majority. The one did not give way to the many.
But the very attribute that was a source of strength in exile could also be a source of weakness at times of Jewish national sovereignty:
In order to enforce order, there must be some denial of the individual’s rights in society, or sacrifice of the private to the public good. No government or political order in the world can always benefit every individual. Every form of government must strive for the public good, and if the individual must occasionally suffer, there is no great harm done. But the Jewish national character cannot bear this, for Jewish ethics preaches the absolute freedom of the individual, which cannot be abrogated on behalf of society.8Moshe Avigdor Amiel, Ethics and Legality in Jewish Law (Jerusalem: Rabbi Amiel Library, 1992), 1:71.
This gives rise to the fractious nature of Jews as a group:
Everyone considers himself qualified to judge the judges, and sets up his own altar, not accepting any authority. If Jews are more prone to these faults than the rest of mankind, it is also the result of this outlook – that society exists for the sake of the individual. Thus every individual allows himself to separate from society, until there are an endless number of parties and splinter groups. This in turn generates much baseless hatred.9Ibid., 1:79.
This is one strand of Judaism, and it generates many of its most striking characteristics, positive and negative: its diversity and argumentativeness, its ability to generate iconoclasts and pioneers, its impact out of all proportion to its numbers, but also its fractions and factions, its perennial tendency to split apart when unity is needed. Is there, within Judaism, a counterweight to individualism? There is, and with great subtlety and finesse, it is provided by the very next episode in Numbers, the one that brings the book to its close. To this we now turn.