The
Latin lex talionis means the law of retaliation. Usually we think of
the goal of this law as a core element of early biblical justice,
familiarly expressed as, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, an
arm for an arm, a life for a life.”
I was teaching a Jewish
studies class a while back about how talmudic law interprets virtually
all retaliation in terms of monetary compensation. The Talmud provides
methods to determine the value of the damages to an eye, the cost of
pain, medical expenses, loss of income, suffering, and humiliation.
Scholars
have long debated whether any society ever took the talionis law
literally. Some say that it expresses the principle that the punishment
fit the crime and that penalties for the rich and for the poor should
be equivalent, but as compensation only, not as physical injury.
Others
have argued that indeed “an eye for an eye” implied equivalent physical
punishment. If so, it could be accused of being a morally inferior
legal action. The talmudic law of strict money damages then stands as a
pure qualitative advance over the previous forms of justice via
physical retaliation, I explained to my class.
Any questions?
A
student raised his hand. “How can you say this biblical idea is
justice? It is simplistic; it is barbaric to take out an eye in any
circumstance. What kind of advance in morality did the Bible
legislate?”
Momentarily I was caught off guard. “By the
standards of our developed sense of civilization you are right,” I
replied. “But imagine, if you will, what came before the biblical
reforms. I put out your eye, then you took vengeance in a perpetual
feud with my entire family, and I in turn came to wipe out your whole
tribe. In comparison, the biblical scales of justice are a great leap
forward in civilization. And the talmudic interpreters carry justice
further forward. They say that money always compensates for damages,
never direct physical retaliation.”
Since the time of that
classroom discussion a few years back, the world has experienced a
dramatic era of regression in the practice of talionis, the act of
retaliation.
Terrorism in particular is not an enterprise that
is balanced in any way, shape, or form. Arabs who feel resentful of
occupation have taken to suicide bombing, killing hundreds of civilians
in Israel. Militants in Oklahoma with a perceived grievance blow up a
government building killing young children. Al Qaida declares itself
our enemy, then flies planes into our buildings killing thousands more
innocents. And our own government, under attack by that small group,
goes to war killing tens of thousands of others in multiple foreign
countries.
Nothing in all this is balanced in the biblical
sense of a tooth for a tooth. We have allowed our civilization to
regress far-far back, to the awful concepts of justice that predate the
Bible — more than 3,000 years old.
The new film “Munich” is a
graphic reminder of the sad state of our civilization. The 1984 book
“Vengeance” served as the basis for the Spielberg movie. The 1972
Olympics massacre is but one dramatic chapter of our barbaric modern
times. The book and the movie tell of the retaliation that allegedly
followed the massacre. Certainly, the bottom line is that that response
gives the semblance of a measured response, regardless of whether we
judge it to be perfectly moral.
In the decades that have passed
since that episode and its aftermath we have not been so fortunate as
to see much — if any — balance in the acts of violent terrorism of our
times or in the retaliation against the evils of such violence.
Tzvee
Zahavy, a local professor and rabbi, just finished teaching a course on
terrorism called “War and Peace in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” at
Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck. His blog is viewable at
Tzvee.blogspot.com.