#nachshon

[tanakhsexyman]

The Angel Who Wrestled Jacob (Genesis) vs. Nachshon ben Aminadav (Exodus)

The angel who wrestled Jacob

Nachshon ben Aminadav

Voting ended onFeb 6, 2023

[zarinaa113]

Moshe: “Everyone, proceed in an orderly fashion! Line up in groups according to your tribe and, as one, ste-”

Nachshon ben Aminadav, yeeting himself into the Red Sea: “LEEEROOOYYY JENKINS!!!!!!!”

[jincorrectquotes]

Nachshon: YOLO! *yeets himself into the Yam Suf*

[tanakhsexyman]

Tanakh Sexyman Prelims: Group Bet

Nachshon ben Aminadav

Malachi

Samson

The Snake

Seth

Adam

The Ophanim

Yoav

The rock that moses hit

Job

Voting ended onFeb 3, 2023

[trans-kafka]

Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" And he said, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?" He said, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to Me from the ground.

My (actual, literal) brother is living in Jerusalem right now, and he posted the (original Hebrew version of) this passage as a comment on the stabbings of Jewish civilians by a Palestinian assailant outside the Old City. I think his intention was to imply that the Palestinian attacker is like Cain and that his brothers’ blood, that of the people he stabbed.

Earlier I had shared a video that contextualized the current wave of violence within the structural state violence that constitutes the ongoing occupation, continual displacement of Palestinian civilians from their homes, and repeated destruction of Palestinian lives and families. It didn’t condone or excuse the terrorism against Israeli Jews, but it posited that the apartheid regime was, rather than quelling potential violence against Jews, in fact producing the environment for such violence as is now occurring.

My brother and some other members of my family didn’t like this. They reacted as if I were somehow applauding or at least being an apologist for targeted attacks on civilians. This is not at all the case, but it is a common misunderstanding. To focus on the structural causes of violence is not the same as ignoring the violence. To ask how we can act to prevent terrorists from reaching murderous points of desperation is not to argue that the murder was just.

To critique the state is not to blame the victims — although there are many who, to serve their ideological purposes, identify all individual Jews with the state of Israel, and vice versa. I resist this imposed merging of identity into politics, for myself and for the victims of these attacks.

"Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.”

What is a curse? Why would Cain be cursed, not by God, but “from the ground”? It’s almost as if the curse is an organic phemonemon, rather than a conscious act on the part of God or anyone else.

When I was younger, my mother told me that she believed the unifying lesson of the Torah, in all of its senseless brutality as well as its beauty, was that when there is injustice, then suffering follows. It is not always the suffering of the person who committed the injustice; as often as not, innocent bystanders become the victims of these wages of sin.

That is how I interpret this curse in Genesis, that Cain brings about by killing Abel. To my brother, Cain is each Palestinian assailant and Abel is each Jewish civilian hurt or killed in the latest rash of violence. But to me, this violence is a structural phenomenon. To me, Cain is the state of Israel and the IDF, and the blood of my Palestinian brothers and sisters is crying to me from the ground.

To me, this violence is not the originating action of Cain, the unprompted murder of his brother. To me, this violence is the curse, brought about by decades of Cains murdering decades of Abels. It’s obviously not the fault of the victims. It’s not even really the “fault” of the Israeli government. It’s the fault of the ground, and the blood that cries from it. It’s the fault of an enduring injustice written into the soil.

Arsen Ostrovsky, opining on the latest manifestations of this curse, is deliberately obtuse. He demands, “Is our blood cheaper? Do Jewish lives not matter?” and insists “We are being targeted for one reason and one reason only: we are Jews.”

But that’s not quite true. Jews in Israel are beneficiaries of over half a century of a bloody settler colonial project, just as white Americans are the beneficiaries of centuries of brutal Black slavery and merciless indigenous genocide. Jews in Israel and across the world wear the stain of the curse of settler colonialism. This is not to justify the violence or to blame the victims, who are exactly as innocent and exactly as guilty as I am. But to equate the liberation of Palestine with the extermination of Jews is an underhanded rhetorical trick that co-opts Jewish identity and even Jewish safety to serve a dirty political agenda.

Let me be perfectly clear: I want my literal actual brother to be safe. I want my literal actual cousins and other family in Israel to be safe. I want all Jews in Israel to be safe. I don’t think opposing the occupation makes them less safe. I don’t think the state violence that the IDF commits against Palestinians makes them more safe. I want safety for my family, and I want Israel to renounce violence and end the apartheid. I don’t think these wishes are in opposition.

As rabbi Brant Rosen titled his blog post on the topic, “Let Israel renounce violence.” In it, he writes,

Nelson Mandela (once a “terrorist” now a “statesman”) certainly understood this when then South African Prime Minister P.W. Botha offered him the chance to be let out of prison (for the sixth time) if he publicly renounced violence – and Mandela famously responded, “Let him renounce violence.”

There is a midrashic template for this: “Mi Chamocha ba’elim adonai? Mi kamocha nedar ba kodesh?” As Nachshon walked into the waters of the Red Sea, even until they were up to his lips and the second “chamocha” became difficult to choke out, he kept walking, with faith that the water would part. According to the story, it wasn’t enough for Moses to order the sea to part. What was required was the faith of the first few to take the steps into it.