On Jewish revenge

[Celerity]

What might a people, subjected to unspeakable historical suffering, think about the ethics of vengeance once in power?

https://aeon.co/essays/what-role-for-revenge-in-jewish-life-literature-and-culture

‘To be My vengeance and recompense’ (translated from Hebrew; Deuteronomy 32:35): recruitment poster by Ernest Mechner and Otte Wallish, for the Jewish Brigade in Palestine, 1945. Public domain. Courtesy the Eri Wallish Collection at the National Library of Israel

Is there a distinctive Jewish perspective on revenge? The question obviously bears on the contemporary world in pressing ways. Revenge is a complex concept about which psychology, anthropology, philosophy, law and other fields offer important perspectives. But one way to answer it is to turn to the history of Jewish life, literature and culture. Here we can find a distinctive feeling and action on a matter that is as old as humanity, a human feeling in response to an injury or harm, and one closely bound to ideals of justice. The mid-20th century in particular, a formative period of Jewish and Israeli existence, has much to tell us about the relationship between violence, revenge, justice, memory and trauma in Jewish and Israeli life.

Since 7 October 2023, nekama (‘vengeance’ or ‘revenge’ in Hebrew) has emerged as one of the key words in Israeli public life. We’ve heard discussion of nekama from the government, the Knesset, the media, the army, social networks, synagogue bulletins, and in popular culture. Perhaps the most immediate and relevant invocation came on the same day of Hamas’s attack, from the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who declared: ‘The IDF will immediately employ all its power to destroy Hamas’s capabilities. We will strike them until they are crippled, and we will avenge with full force this black day they inflicted upon the State of Israel and its citizens.’ In the past few months, there were many poems on revenge written by Israelis, some of them IDF soldiers.

Like many basic concepts, there is really no consensual definition for revenge, or for its relation to near-synonyms such as ‘vengeance’ or even ‘retaliation’ and ‘retribution’. It seems certain, though, that revenge is connected to the realm of emotions and affect, for there can be a desire or a fantasy of vengeance without actualisation. But, of course, it also describes actions. The thirst for revenge animates much of the world of tragic literature, and it is a common element in art, theatre and cinema. Revenge begins within the family or tribe but it expands beyond, to town or sect or king or nation.



Revenge has a distinctive and dynamic relationship to time: it is caused by an act of wrong that happened in the past as an explanation for the present moment, but it is also directed towards the future. Austin Sarat, a scholar of law and politics, explains that vengeance attempts, consciously or not, to reenact the past, as it is ‘one means by which the present speaks to the future through acts of commemoration’. The fact that vengeance looks backwards and seeks to cancel out past actions is one reason why the relationship between revenge and justice is complex. Revenge can indeed be the opposite of justice, a product of utter despair, a kind of empty and final gesture toward restoring one’s shattered self-respect. The scholars Susan Jacoby, Martha Minow and Sarat have all written important work trying to better understand and clarify the connection between revenge and justice. They all would concede that there is an understanding that ‘revenge is a kind of wild justice,’ as Francis Bacon wrote in his essay ‘Of Revenge’ (1625). Most modern systems of law claim authority by distinguishing themselves from revenge, though conceding that feelings for revenge cannot be eradicated. Scholars of politics and law seem to agree that there is no place for revenge in modern international relations. Here too, however, as the scholar Jon Elster has shown, revenge persists, often concealed under more technical and dispassionate terminology about state or national interests.

snip

[elleng]

1. Taking revenge is prohibited in Judaism.

Maimonides writes about revenge in his code of Jewish law:

Taking revenge is an extremely bad trait. A person should be accustomed to rise above his feelings about all worldly matters; for those who understand [the deeper purpose of the world] consider all these matters as vanity and emptiness, which are not worth seeking revenge for.”1

Rather, Maimonides continues, if someone who has wronged you comes to ask a favor, you should respond “with a complete heart.” As King David says in the Psalms, “Have I repaid those who have done evil to me? Behold, I have rescued those who hated me without cause”(7:5).

In addition, Jewish law forbids us to bear a grudge. Thus, the Talmud explains, you may not even say to the person who wronged you that you will act rightly, even though he or she did not.2

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi in his code of Jewish law concludes that, “one should erase any feelings of revenge from one’s heart and never remind oneself of it.”

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1842551/jewish/What-Does-Judaism-Say-About-Taking-Revenge.htm

You shall not take revenge…

— Leviticus 19:18

[Celerity]

5. that is not borne out by the present rhetoric and actions, nor the the voluminous historical examples the author gave

[Uncle Joe]

2. I view revenge in the same light as "staring into the abyss"

time and scale are diminished or eliminated in subservience to "fighting the monster," that's all that matters.

I believe PTSD is intricately tied to this in reliving and in some cases refighting past battles as in present time.

I also believe PTSD can easily be national or even regional in scope.

Thanks for the thread Celerity.

[enid602]

3. Wahhabis

The concept of revenge will reach a whole other level if the Wahhabis take control of Saudi Arabia.

[Celerity]

4. The Wahhabis had religious control of Saudi Arabia for 2+ centuries, only since 2017 has MBS started to really uncouple

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism

For more than two centuries, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's teachings were championed as the official creed in the three Saudi States. As of 2017, changes to Saudi religious policy by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have led to widespread crackdown on Islamists in Saudi Arabia and rest of the Arab world. By 2021, the waning power of the religious clerics brought forth by the social, economic, political changes, and Saudi government's promotion of a nationalist narrative that emphasize non-Islamic components led to what has been described as the "post-Wahhabi era" of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia's annual commemoration of its founding day on 22 February since 2022, which marked the establishment of Emirate of Dir'iyah by Muhammad ibn Saud in 1727 and de-emphasized his pact with Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab in 1744, has led to the official "uncoupling" of the religious clergy by the Saudi state.

[enid602]

6. Wahhabis

Over the long term, I think Saudi Arabia will have as much success in ‘uncoupling’ as has had Israel. They say the Wahhabi make radical Shi’ites from Iran look like Boy Scouts.

[Hekate]

7. KnR