“For what reason,” asked the great tanna
Rabbi Meir, “was the Torah given to the Jewish people?” The well-known
midrash suggests it is because the Jews were especially obedient, but
Meir gives exactly the opposite explanation: “It is because they are
impudent.” The Jews, on this account, have a hard time obeying laws and
showing respect to God; therefore, they needed what the Torah itself
calls “a fiery law,” one that was strict and punitive enough to bring
them into line. “There are three impudent ones,” Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish
would elaborate: “The Jewish people among the nations; the dog among
the animals; and the rooster among birds.”
Perhaps this surprisingly critical view of Jewish character was informed by the rabbis’ own experiences trying to get the am ha’aretz,
the average man, to follow their rulings. But there is also a certain
wistfulness to the rabbis’ view of what the Jews would be like if they
were not constrained by the Torah. If only the Torah is what
keeps the Jews “fiery” nature in check, imagine what toughness and
violence they would be capable of without the law! “Were it not for the
fact that the Torah was given to the Jewish people, no nation or tongue
could withstand them,” the Talmud says. It is a paradoxically consoling
thought—one can understand its appeal to a perpetually powerless
people—and it betrays an interesting ambivalence about the whole notion
of being chosen. If this is what we’re like with God’s law, it seems to
say, imagine what we could do without it.
