“And because of that one kid, everyone is going to be punished.”
To this day, I remember my indignance at the injustice. Why should I suffer because some other kid was a jerk? I suspect many other people feel the same way: isn’t it inherently wrong to punish the collective for the sins of the few? Shouldn’t we each only be judged by our own actions, not the actions of others?
Alas, the real world does not work that way. Most people, most of the time, are seemingly helpless in the face of larger and more powerful forces.
This is most pronounced in wartime: Every war has collateral damage, the death of innocents. And it is terrible, it really is. No successful war, no matter how carefully or ethically it is waged, avoids collateral damage.
But why? Why does it have to be this way?
I think I might have the glimmering of an answer, and I found it by asking the same question about events in the Torah. When there is a plague (e.g. the frogs plaguing the Egyptians), everyone suffered, whether they really deserved it or not. And G-d hardly plays favorites – there are numerous plagues that strike the people in the wilderness, mowing them down by the thousands and even tens of thousands. What did the victims do to deserve such an outcome? Nothing at all!
Except.
Except when the only thing those not affected by the plague did was … nothing. The plague strikes those who fail to act for good.
It seems that G-d is trying to teach us a very difficult and painful lesson – but what makes it sting is that the lesson is really not that different from what I heard from those awful, mean, lazy summer camp counselors: we are all responsible for everyone else. Letting little things “go” may mean blowback on everyone.
All the innocents who suffer during wartime? Fair or not, collateral damage is an unavoidable consequence of being at war in the first place. When war is unleashed, the result, for anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, is hell.
There is a word in the Torah, negef, which refers to collective consequences. It is not about specific divine justice, but a more general result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.[1] Negef is about collateral damage, as when a pregnant women is struck during a violent altercation between men.
So, for example, after Korach rebels, G-d’s wrath starts sweeping the camp and killing people. Were they all guilty? No. And it is hardly the only example. The same happens with the golden calf (when the Levites stop the plague) and with the daughters of Moab (when Pinchas stops the plague by running a couple through with a spear). In every case, innocent men, women, and children die along with the guilty. This is deeply distressing, but it is in black and white in the text.
We already know this is realistically true – every day innocents die – but the bigger question is simpler: why does G-d kill in the very same way that an indiscriminate bomb does? After all, G-d could decide to only punish the guilty, right? How can He possibly justify punishing the innocent along with the guilty?
My answer is a hard one, but I think it is correct: According to what G-d is trying to teach us, bystanders are never innocent, because “bystanding” is not a defense when there is a wrong to be righted.
And I think this lesson applies to our world today just as much: it is not defensible to simply knuckle under to tyranny. We do not get to simply keep our heads down and mind our own business: the Torah is trying to tell us that not acting is also risky, because the inevitable consequences will be indiscriminate and widespread. When we choose passivity, then sooner or later, people we love will die. Even innocent children.
We do not merely have “free will” – we have ongoing and interconnected responsibilities for what we choose to do with our free will. There are ongoing ripples that flow from every decision we make, and the effects are amplified when we are closer to G-d.
The text reinforces this point when it explains how negef is mitigated. A negef that starts with the Korach rebellion ends when the Levites swing swords. The negef that starts when the people sin with the daughters of Moab ends when Pinchas runs a couple through with a spear. Here’s the common key: the way to stop the suffering of collateral bystanders is to act (even violently!), showing that we recognize that inaction is no defense.
Torah Judaism is all about standing against the inexorable forces of entropy and chaos. And we do that by showing that we will pre-emptively act.
Here, for example, is one section that now makes sense (at least to me) based on the above understanding:
When you take a census of the Israelite men according to their “being noticed,” each shall pay G-d protection for himself on being noticed [this word is first used when G-d “notices” Sara and grants her a child], that no negef may come upon them through their being noticed. This is what everyone who is entered in the records shall pay: a half-shekel by the sanctuary weight—twenty gerahs to the shekel—a half-shekel as an offering to G-d. Everyone who is noticed, from the age of twenty years up, shall give G-d’s offering: the rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel when giving G-d’s offering as protection for your souls. You shall take the protection money from the Israelites … it shall serve the Israelites as a reminder before G-d, as protection for your souls.
Why do we need protection? Because negef accrues to those who garner divine attention – as we saw with the Calf, the Korach Rebellion, and the daughters of Moab (and other examples as well). And none of us can closely coexist with the divine presence, as we are still partly animals. So the “protection” (using the same word, kpr, as the pitch that protected those in Noah’s Ark from the deadly water), allows for closer proximity without negef.
Note that the protection is the same, regardless of the person. The reason token gestures work in the first place is because it is indeed “the thought that counts” – as astonishing as that is. Which might go some distance toward supporting those of us who fight for the good in the culture wars, using nothing more than a keyboard.
- Negef does not seem to be caused by specific divine attention, but rather the mere proximity of G-d’s presence to a person. This is because lifnei Hashem refers to G-d’s presence, not his will. E.g. Cain went out from the presence of G-d and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. And so the spies died because they got too close to G-d: those who spread such calumnies about the land died of plague, by the presence of G-d. Negef is like an automatic and punitive reaction when G-d is close to human misdeeds. ↑