"Everybody must get stoned"
Our Torah presents the case of a ben sorer umoreh / “rebellious and unmanageable son” (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). If, after repeated disciplinary admonitions, he refuses to obey his parents, they drag him to the city gate and tell the elders he is beyond reclamation. Then, “all the men of his town shall stone him to death.” The bar mitzvah service for one of my children fell on Shabbat Ki Tetzey, when that passage is read.
His devar torah / Torah commentary was a tour de force; he announced to a startled congregation that he was the ben sorer umoreh! I had encouraged him to take this approach. I’m proud of the defiance he showed toward an adult world hardly deserving of respect. Decades earlier, another rebel sang out this refrain: “Everybody must get stoned.”
Bob Dylan denied that “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” was a celebration of marijuana use, describing the work instead as a protest song alluding to Christian martyrdom.1 Doubt over whether to take Dylan at his word and thus how (or whether one should even try) to interpret his meanings always lingers.
Here in Israel, the legal status of cannabis is likewise ambiguous. Medical patients have access to it; for recreational purposes, its use not allowed but not severely punishable. Still, being metaphorically stoned is one thing, getting literally stoned another.
A news report from last summer reads: “a military patrol was subject to massive stone-throwing by Israeli settlers.”2 This January, Haredi protesters threw stones at Israeli police.3 In both cases, fanatical certainty that religious prerogatives supersede civil authority drove rioters’ actions.
Stone-throwing as instrument of pious retribution against secular government has been for decades commonplace in Israel’s political landscape. E.g., from a 2010 headline: “Soldiers trying to block Yitzhar settlers from approaching Palestinian village get stoned, one soldier lightly injured.”4
Holy Writ mandates shoftim/judges and shotrim/police to maintain order in society (Deuteronomy 16:18); riotous youth, being a threat to it, are marked for execution. The violent antics of today’s Israeli zealots reflect a draconian impulse of similarly biblical proportions - with roles reversed: Instead of submitting to law or else be stoned, they stone the ones trying to enforce it.
Their claim of loyalty to a Higher Law endangers the rest of us. If they are acting in the true spirit of the Torah and taking its prescriptions and proscriptions on face value, God help us. My friend Rabbi Eli Kavon (whom I thank for having spurred my thinking on the present topic and inspired this post5) put the issue to me as follows: Come on, let’s get real. Who nowadays would seriously think of imposing the death penalty on a child who disobeys his parents?
He’s right. Worse still, suppose it were okay to stone Israeli soldiers and police, the ones assigned to ensure public order, because their conduct contravenes divine teaching. Then the same punishment would apply to average citizens, whose daily conduct, in violation of Torah law, that true believer wholeheartedly believes, is a direct, ongoing affront to the rule of God.
In that case, everybody must get stoned.
Except, of course, for folks who’ll go to extremes and break any law to get their way, which they absolutely know is God’s way.
Long ago, our Rabbis distanced themselves from the Torah’s prescriptions for capital punishment and de facto banned it. The State of Israel has sided with that tradition, sanctioning the practice rarely and carrying out an execution only once (on Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann).
Revival of the death penalty might be underway, however, with efforts to cement it into law creeping into Israeli politics. Last year tendentious legislation advanced in the Knesset.6
I doubt that stoning (which rabbis of all denominations nowadays disapprove of) will be on the legislative docket any time soon, but it is go-to behavior for Palestinians hating on Israelis, Israelis hating on Palestinians, and Jews hating on other Jews.
To have to choose between the metaphorical and literal versions of getting stoned would be for me a no-brainer.
Fortunately enough, I don’t need to make that choice. Being in Israel - even with all its difficulties - is for me a natural high. Jews who go to Israel to become citizens “make aliyah,” that Hebrew word meaning “going up.” Being in Israel elevates the soul.
If that’s what being stoned means, I definitely am.
Peace and Love, Sister and Brother.
(Sunrise over Zikhron Yaakov 3.26.26)
https://www.songmeaningsandfacts.com/rainy-day-women-12-35-by-bob-dylan/ ,
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/bob-dylan/rainy-day-women-12-and-35 , and
https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/9508 ; see also: https://www.lyricslayers.com/bob-dylan/11936/
https://www.songmeaningsandfacts.com/rainy-day-women-12-35-by-bob-dylan/ ,
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/bob-dylan/rainy-day-women-12-and-35 , and
https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/9508 ; see also: https://www.lyricslayers.com/bob-dylan/11936/
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3878508,00.html
Rabbi Kavon is a scholar well-grounded in a broad array of topics relating to the intersection of Jewish religion and world history. I refer you to his articles at Linkedin.com.