Judaism's doctrines and texts have sometimes been associated with violence or anti-violence. Laws requiring the eradication of evil, sometimes using violent means, exist in the Jewish tradition. However, Judaism also contains peaceful texts and doctrines. [1] [2] There is often a juxtaposition of Judaic law and theology to violence and nonviolence by groups and individuals. Attitudes and laws towards both peace and violence exist within the Jewish tradition. [1] Throughout history, Judaism's religious texts or precepts have been used to promote [3] [4] [5] as well as oppose violence. [6]
Normative Judaism is not pacifist and violence is condoned in the service of self-defence. [7] J. Patout Burns asserts that Jewish tradition clearly posits the principle of minimization of violence. This principle can be stated as "(wherever) Jewish law allows violence to keep an evil from occurring, it mandates that the minimal amount of violence be used to accomplish one's goal." [8] [9] Notwithstanding the inherent friction associated with the various Jewish religious movements in the state of Israel all vying for official recognition, in 1997 Avi Shafran of the Agudath Israel of America pushed back on assertions made by Ismar Schorsch that the State's elevation of Rabbinic Judaism as the sole arbiter over personal status issues would inevitably lead to violence. [10] Sure enough, in a May 2022 incident which took place at the Western Wall, Orthodox Jewish seminarians waving World Zionist Organization flags, whose delegation was organized by the World Shas Movement and Eretz Hakodesh—an American affiliate of United Torah Judaism —jeered at, drowned out with whistles and spat upon members of the Women of the Wall group over religious and ideological differences. [11]
Similar to the world's other major religions, Judaism's religious texts endorse compassion and peace. The Hebrew Bible contains the well-known commandment to "love thy neighbor as thyself". [2] According to the 1937 Columbus Platform of Reform Judaism, "Judaism, from the days of the prophets, has proclaimed to mankind the ideal of universal peace, striving for spiritual and physical disarmament of all nations. Judaism rejects violence and relies upon moral education, love and sympathy." [6]
The philosophy of nonviolence has roots in Judaism, going back to the Jerusalem Talmud of the middle 3rd century. While absolute nonviolence is not a requirement of Judaism, the religion so sharply restricts the use of violence, that nonviolence often becomes the only way to fulfilling a life of truth, justice and peace, which Judaism considers to be the three tools for the preservation of the world. [12] : 242
The biblical narrative about the conquest of Canaan, and the commands related to it, have had a deep influence on Jewish as well as Western culture. [13] Throughout Jewish history, mainstream Jewish traditions have considered these texts purely historical or highly conditioned, and in any event, they are not considered relevant to later times. [14]
The Second Temple period experienced a surge in militarism and violence which was aimed at curbing the encroachment of Greco-Roman and Hellenistic Jewish influences in Judea. Groups such as the Maccabees [15] the Zealots, the Sicarii at the Siege of Masada, [16] and later the Bar Kochba revolt, all derived their power from the biblical narrative of Hebrew conquest and hegemony over the Land of Israel, sometimes garnering support of the rabbis, [17] and at other times their ambivalence. [18]
In modern times, the early history of Zionism saw the emergence of the Brit Shalom organization (lit. 'Covenant of Peace'). Deriving inspiration from the writings of Ahad Ha'am, its members sought to prod the nascent Zionist movement into a direction of peaceful coexistence with the Arabs in Palestine in a bi-national state. [19] These ideas eventually fell out of favor as Zionist militias employing violence began to emerge as a response to the 1921 Jaffa riots and the subsequent Israeli–Palestinian conflict. [20] Since then, warfare which has been conducted by the State of Israel is governed by Israeli law and regulation, which includes a purity of arms code that is based in part on Jewish tradition; the 1992 IDF Code of Conduct combines international law, Israeli law, Jewish heritage and the IDF's own traditional ethical code. [21] However, tension between actions of the Israeli government on the one hand, and Jewish traditions and halakha (Jewish law) on the conduct of war on the other, have caused controversy within Israel and have provided a basis for criticism of Israel. [22] Some strains of radical Zionism promote aggressive war and justify them with biblical texts. [23] [24]
Forced conversions occurred under the Hasmonean kingdom. The Idumaens were forced to convert to Judaism, either by threats of exile, or threats of death, depending on the source. [25] [26]
In Eusebíus, Christianity, and Judaism Harold W. Attridge claims that "there is reason to think that Josephus' account of their conversion is substantially accurate." He also writes, "That these were not isolated instances but that forced conversion was a national policy is clear from the fact that Alexander Jannaeus (c. 80 BCE) demolished the city of Pella in Moab, 'because the inhabitants would not agree to adopt the national custom of the Jews.'" Josephus, Antiquities. 13.15.4. [27]
Maurice Sartre has written of the "policy of forced Judaization adopted by Hyrcanos, Aristobulus I and Jannaeus", who offered "the conquered peoples a choice between expulsion or conversion". [28]
William Horbury has written that "The evidence is best explained by postulating that an existing small Jewish population in Lower Galilee was massively expanded by the forced conversion in c. 104 BCE of their Gentile neighbours in the north." [29]
After the conversion of the kingdom of Himyar in the late 4th century to Judaism, [30] two episodes of "coercion and brutality" by Himyar Jewish kings took place during the fifth and early sixth centuries. [31] In an early example of persecution of Christians, thirty-nine Christians were martyred in the third quarter of the fifth century, [31] and a massacre of Christians took place in 523. [31] The Yemeni Jewish Himyar tribe, led by King Dhu Nuwashad, offered Christian residents of a village in Arabia the choice between conversion to Judaism or death, and 20,000 Christians were massacred. [32] Inscriptions show the great pride he expressed after massacring more than 22,000 Christians in Zafar and Najran. [33]
While the principle of lex talionis ("an eye for an eye") is clearly echoed in the Bible, in Judaism it is not literally applied, and was interpreted to provide a basis for financial compensation for injuries. [34] [35] Pasachoff and Littman point to the reinterpretation of the lex talionis as an example of the ability of Pharisaic Judaism to "adapt to changing social and intellectual ideas." [36] Stephen Wylen asserts that the lex talionis is "proof of the unique value of each individual" and that it teaches "equality of all human beings for law." [37]
While the Bible and Talmud specify many violent punishments, including death by stoning, decapitation, burning, and strangulation for some crimes, [38] these punishments were substantially modified during the Rabbinic era, primarily by adding additional requirements for conviction. [39] The Mishnah states that a sanhedrin that executes one person in seven years – or seventy years, according to Eleazar ben Azariah – is considered bloodthirsty. [40] [41] During the Late Antiquity, the tendency of not applying the death penalty at all became predominant in Jewish courts. [42] According to Talmudic law, the competence to apply capital punishment ceased with the destruction of the Second Temple. [43] In practice, where medieval Jewish courts had the power to pass and execute death sentences, they continued to do so for particularly grave offenses, although not necessarily the ones defined by the law. [43] Although it was recognized that the use of capital punishment in the post-Second Temple era went beyond the biblical warrant, the Rabbis who supported it believed that it could be justified by other considerations of Jewish law. [44] [45] Whether Jewish communities ever practiced capital punishment according to rabbinical law and whether the Rabbis of the Talmudic era ever supported its use even in theory has been a subject of historical and ideological debate. [46] The 12th-century Jewish legal scholar Maimonides stated that "It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death." [39] The position of Jewish Law on capital punishment often formed the basis of deliberations by Israel's Supreme Court. It has been carried out by Israel's judicial system only once, in the case of Adolf Eichmann. [45]
The Book of Esther, one of the books of the Jewish Bible, is a story of palace intrigue centered on a plot to kill all Jews which was thwarted by Esther, a Jewish queen of Persia. Instead of being victims, the Jews killed "all the people who wanted to kill them." [47] The king gave the Jews the ability to defend themselves against their enemies who tried to kill them, [48] numbering 75,000 (Esther 9:16) including Haman, an Amalekite that led the plot to kill the Jews. The annual Purim festival celebrates this event, and includes the recitation of the biblical instruction to "blot out the remembrance [or name] of Amalek". Scholars – including Ian Lustick, Marc Gopin, and Steven Bayme – state that the violence described in the Book of Esther has inspired and incited violent acts and violent attitudes in the post-biblical era, continuing into modern times, often centered on the festival of Purim. [4] : 2–19, 107–146, 187–212, 213–247 [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58]
Other scholars, including Jerome Auerbach, state that evidence for Jewish violence on Purim through the centuries is "exceedingly meager", including occasional episodes of stone throwing, the spilling of rancid oil on a Jewish convert, and a total of three recorded Purim deaths inflicted by Jews in a span of more than 1,000 years. [59] In a review of historian Elliot Horowitz's book Reckless rites: Purim and the legacy of Jewish violence, Hillel Halkin pointed out that the incidences of Jewish violence against non-Jews through the centuries are extraordinarily few in number and that the connection between them and Purim is tenuous. [60]
Rabbi Arthur Waskow and historian Elliot Horowitz state that Baruch Goldstein, perpetrator of the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, may have been motivated by the Book of Esther, because the massacre was carried out on the day of Purim [4] : 4, 11, 315 [61] [62] [63] [64] but other scholars point out that the association with Purim is circumstantial because Goldstein never explicitly made such a connection. [65]
In the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the motives for acts of violence which have been committed against Palestinians by Religious Jews in the West Bank are complex and varied according to Weisburg. While religious motivations for these acts of violence have been documented, [66] [67] [68] [69] the use of non-defensive violence is outside of mainstream Judaism. [70] [71] [72] [73]
Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Mandate Palestine, stated that the Jewish people's settlement of the land should only proceed by peaceful means. [74] Contemporary settler movements follow Kook's son Tzvi Yehuda Kook (1891–1982), who also refused to advocate an aggressive conquest of the Land of Israel. [74] Critics claim that Gush Emunim and followers of Tzvi Yehuda Kook advocate violence based on Judaism's religious precepts. [75] Ian Lustick, Benny Morris, and Nur Masalha assert that radical Zionist leaders relied on religious doctrines for justification for the violent treatment of Arabs in Palestine, citing examples where pre-state Jewish militia used verses from the Bible to justify their violent acts, which included expulsions and massacres such as the one at Deir Yassin. [76]
After Baruch Goldstein carried out the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in 1994, his actions were widely interpreted as being based on the radical Zionist ideology of the Kach movement, and they were condemned as such by mainstream religious and secular Jews but they were praised by a number of radical Zionists. [4] : 6–11 [77] [78] [79] [80] Dov Lior, Chief Rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba in the southern West Bank and head of the "Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria" has made speeches legitimizing the killing of non-Jews and praising Goldstein as a saint and martyr. Lior also said "a thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail" according to journalists. [81] [82] Lior publicly gave permission to spill blood of Arab persons and has publicly supported extreme right-wing terrorists of Jewish faith. [83]
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Following an arson incident in 2010, in which a mosque in Yasuf village was desecrated, apparently by settlers from the nearby Gush Etzion settlement bloc, [84] [85] [86] the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger condemned the attack and he also likened the arson to Kristallnacht, he said: "This is how the Holocaust began, the tragedy of the Jewish people of Europe." [87] Rabbi Menachem Froman, a well-known peace activist, visited the mosque and replaced the burnt Koran with new copies. [88] The rabbi stated: "This visit is to say that although there are people who oppose peace, he who opposes peace is opposed to God" and "Jewish law also prohibits damaging a holy place." He also remarked that arson in a mosque is an attempt to sow hatred between Jews and Arabs. [87] [89]
According to Haaretz, in July 2010, Yitzhak Shapira who heads Dorshei Yihudcha yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, was arrested by Israeli police based on suspicion that he had written a book that encourages Jews to kill non-Jews. The book, The King's Torah, (Torat HaMelech) claims that, under the Torah and Jewish Law, the killing of Gentiles is legal and in some cases, the killing of the babies of enemies is also legal. [90] [91] Later in August 2010, police arrested rabbi Yosef Elitzur-Hershkowitz –co-author of Shapira's book –on the suspicion of incitement to racial violence, possession of a racist text, and possession of material that incites to violence. While the book has been endorsed by radical Zionist leaders including Dov Lior [66] and Yaakov Yosef, [92] it has been widely condemned by mainstream secular and religious Jews. [66] Rabbi Hayim David HaLevi stated that in modern times no one matches the biblical definition of an idolater, and therefore ruled that Jews in Israel have a moral responsibility to treat all citizens with the highest standards of humanity. [84]
On November 7, 1938, a young Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan attacked and shot German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in the German embassy in Paris five times, mortally wounding him with bullets to the spleen, stomach and pancreas. [93] [94] The attack occurred against the backdrop of the racial policy of Nazi Germany, which led to Grynszpan's family, together with more than 12,000 Polish-born Jews, being expelled by the Nazi government from Germany to Poland in the so-called Polenaktion on October 28, 1938. Grynszpan, trying to pass himself off as a spy, asked if he could see "His Excellency, the ambassador" to hand over the "most important document" he claimed to have. [95] Instead, according to the French police account, he shouted right before pulling out his gun: "You're a filthy boche! In the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews, here is the document!" [96] At his trial, Grynszpan wanted to use the "Jewish avenger" defense successfully used by Sholem Schwarzbard at his trial in 1927, but Grynszpan's French lawyer Vincent de Moro-Giafferi pursued a defense based on Rath being a homosexual who tried to seduce Grynszpan, an approach which succeeded in delaying the trial indefinitely. Jewish organizations were horrified by Grynszpan's action. The World Jewish Congress "deplored the fatal shooting of an official of the German Embassy by a young Polish Jew of seventeen", but "protested energetically against the violent attacks in the German press against the whole of Judaism because of this act" and "reprisals taken against the German Jews". In France, the Alliance Israélite Universelle "rejected all forms of violence, regardless of author or victim" but "indignantly protested against the barbarous treatment inflicted on an entire innocent population." [97]
The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir was motivated by Amir's personal political views and his understanding of Judaism's religious law of moiser (the duty to eliminate a Jew who intends to turn another Jew over to non-Jewish authorities, thus putting a Jew's life in danger [98] ) and rodef (a bystander can kill a person who is pursuing another person in an attempt to murder him or her if he or she cannot be stopped in other ways). [5] : 91 Amir's interpretation has been described as "a gross distortion of Jewish law and tradition" [99] and the mainstream Jewish view is that Rabin's assassin had no Halakhic basis to shoot Prime Minister Rabin. [9]
In the course of Jewish history, some individuals and organizations have endorsed or advocated violence based on their interpretations of Jewish religious principles. Such instances of religious violence are considered extremist aberrations of Judaism by adherents of mainstream Judaism, and as a result, they are not considered representative of the tenets of Judaism. [100] [101]
Some critics of religion such as Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer argue that all monotheistic religions are inherently violent. For example, Nelson-Pallmeyer writes that "Judaism, Christianity and Islam will continue to contribute to the destruction of the world until and unless each challenges violence in 'sacred texts' and until each affirms nonviolent, including the nonviolent power of God." [114]
Bruce Feiler writes of ancient history that "Jews and Christians who smugly console themselves that Islam is the only violent religion are willfully ignoring their past. Nowhere is the struggle between faith and violence described more vividly, and with more stomach-turning details of ruthlessness, than in the Hebrew Bible". [115] Similarly, Burggraeve and Vervenne describe the Old Testament as full of violence and evidence of both a violent society and a violent god. They write that, "[i]n numerous Old Testament texts the power and glory of Israel's God is described in the language of violence." They assert that more than one thousand passages refer to YHWH as acting violently or supporting the violence of humans and that more than one hundred passages involve divine commands to kill humans. [116]
Supersessionist Christian churches and theologians argue that Judaism is a violent religion and they also argue that the god of Israel is a violent god, while Christianity is a religion of peace and they also argue that the god of Christianity is one that only expresses love. [117] While this point of view has been commonly held throughout the history of Christianity and while it currently remains a common assumption among contemporary Christians, it has been rejected by mainstream Christian theologians and denominations since the Holocaust. [118] : 1–5
The Book of Esther, also known in Hebrew as "the Scroll", is a book in the third section of the Hebrew Bible. It is one of the Five Scrolls in the Hebrew Bible and later became part of the Christian Old Testament. The book relates the story of a Jewish woman in Persia, born as Hadassah but known as Esther, who becomes queen of Persia and thwarts a genocide of her people.
Esther, originally Hadassah, is the eponymous heroine of the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible. According to the biblical narrative, which is set in the Achaemenid Empire, the Persian king Ahasuerus falls in love with Esther and marries her. His grand vizier Haman is offended by Esther's cousin and guardian Mordecai because of his refusal to bow before him; bowing in front of another person was a prominent gesture of respect in Persian society, but deemed unacceptable by Mordecai, who believes that a Jew should only express submissiveness to God. Consequently, Haman plots to have all of Persia's Jews killed, and eventually convinces Ahasuerus to permit him to do so. However, Esther foils the plan by revealing and decrying Haman's plans to Ahasuerus, who then has Haman executed and grants permission to the Jews to take up arms against their enemies; Esther is hailed for her courage and for working to save the Jewish nation from eradication.
Baruch Kopel Goldstein was an American-Israeli mass murderer, religious extremist, and physician who perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, an incident of Jewish terrorism. Goldstein was a supporter of Kach, a religious Zionist party that the United States, the European Union and other countries designate as a terrorist organization.
Amalek is described in the Hebrew Bible as the enemy nation of the Israelites. The name "Amalek" can refer to the descendants of Amalek, the grandson of Esau, or anyone who lived in their territories in Canaan, or North African descendants of Ham, the son of Noah.
Holocaust theology is a body of theological and philosophical debate concerning the role of God in the universe in light of the Holocaust of the late 1930s and early 1940s. It is primarily found in Judaism. Jews were killed in higher proportions than other groups; some scholars limit the definition of the Holocaust to the Jewish victims of the Nazis as Jews alone were targeted for the Final Solution. One third of the total worldwide Jewish population were killed during the Holocaust. The Eastern European Jewish population was particularly hard hit, being reduced by ninety percent. While a disproportionate number of Jewish religious scholars were killed, more than eighty percent of the world's total, the perpetrators of the Holocaust did not merely target religious Jews. A large percentage of the Jews killed both in Eastern and Western Europe were either nonobservant or had not received even an elementary level of Jewish education.
Jewish fundamentalism refers to fundamentalism in the context of Judaism. The term fundamentalism was originally used in reference to Christian fundamentalism, a Protestant movement which emphasizes a belief in biblical literalism. Today, it is commonly used in reference to movements that oppose modernist, liberal, and ecumenical tendencies within societies as well as modernist, liberal and ecumenical tendencies within specific religions and it is often coupled with extremist ideologies and/or political movements. The use of this definition is important in a Jewish context because the two movements which are most commonly associated with Jewish fundamentalism, Religious Zionism and Haredi Judaism, stray far from biblical literalism due to the importance of the Oral Law within Judaism. In fact, Karaism, the Jewish movement which is well-known due to its emphasis on biblical literalism, is rarely considered fundamentalist.
Religious Zionism is a religious denomination that views Zionism as a fundamental component of Orthodox Judaism. Its adherents are also referred to as Dati Leumi, and in Israel, they are most commonly known by the plural form of the first part of that term: Datiim. The community is sometimes called 'Knitted kippah', the typical head covering worn by male adherents to Religious Zionism.
Haman is the main antagonist in the Book of Esther, who according to the Hebrew Bible was an official in the court of the Persian empire under King Ahasuerus, commonly identified as Xerxes I but traditionally equated with Artaxerxes I or Artaxerxes II. As his epithet Agagite indicates, Haman was a descendant of Agag, the king of the Amalekites. Some commentators interpret this descent to be symbolic, due to his similar personality.
The Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, also known as the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre or the Hebron massacre, was a mass shooting carried out by Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli physician and extremist of the far-right ultra-Zionist Kach movement. On 25 February 1994, during the Jewish holiday of Purim, which had overlapped in that year with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Goldstein, dressed in Israeli army uniform, opened fire with an assault rifle on a large gathering of Palestinian Muslims praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. He killed 29 people, including children as young as 12, and wounded 125 others. Goldstein was overpowered and beaten to death by survivors.
Religious violence covers phenomena in which religion is either the subject or the object of violent behavior. All the religions of the world contain narratives, symbols, and metaphors of violence and war. Religious violence is violence that is motivated by, or in reaction to, religious precepts, texts, or the doctrines of a target or an attacker. It includes violence against religious institutions, people, objects, or events. Religious violence includes both acts which are committed by religious groups and acts which are committed against religious groups.
Zvi Yehuda Kook was an ultranationalist Orthodox rabbi. He was the son of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine. Both father and son are credited with developing Kookian Zionism, which became the dominant form of Religious Zionism. He was Rosh Yeshiva (dean) of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva.
Religion in Israel is manifested primarily in Judaism, the ethnic religion of the Jewish people. The State of Israel declares itself as a "Jewish and democratic state" and is the only country in the world with a Jewish-majority population. Other faiths in the country include Islam, Christianity and the religion of the Druze people. Religion plays a central role in national and civil life, and almost all Israeli citizens are automatically registered as members of the state's 14 official religious communities, which exercise control over several matters of personal status, especially marriage. These recognized communities are Orthodox Judaism, Islam, the Druze faith, the Catholic Church, Greek Orthodox Church, Syriac Orthodox Church, Armenian Apostolic Church, Anglicanism, and the Baháʼí Faith.
Dov Lior is an Israeli Orthodox rabbi and political figure part of a far-right, nationalist movement for an ethnic and religious state. He served as the Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Arba, a Jewish settlement near the West Bank town of Hebron, until late 2014. He is the dean of the Kiryat Arba IDF-Hesder Yeshiva and leads the council of rabbis for the West Bank settlements. Lior founded the hard-right Tekumah party together with Arutz 7's owner Rabbi Zalman Melamed and Rabbi Chaim Steiner.
Esther was the chief character in the Book of Esther. She is counted among the prophetesses of Israel. Allusions in rabbinic literature to the Biblical story of Esther contain various expansions, elaborations and inferences beyond the text presented in the book of the Bible.
Normative Judaism's views on warfare are defined by restraint that is neither guided by avidness for belligerence nor is it categorically pacifist. Traditionally, self-defense has been the underpinning principle for the sanctioned use of violence, with the maintenance of peace taking precedence over waging war. While the biblical narrative about the conquest of Canaan and the commands related to it have had a deep influence on Western culture, mainstream Jewish traditions throughout history have treated these texts as purely historical or highly conditioned, and in either case not relevant to contemporary life. However, some minor strains of radical Zionism promote aggressive war and justify them with biblical texts.
Herem or cherem, as used in the Tanakh, means something given over to the Lord, or under a ban, and sometimes refers to things or persons to be utterly destroyed. The term has been explained in different and sometimes conflicting ways by different scholars. It has been defined as "a mode of secluding, and rendering harmless, anything imperilling the religious life of the nation", or "the total destruction of the enemy and his goods at the conclusion of a campaign", or "uncompromising consecration of property and dedication of the property to God without possibility of recall or redemption". It is translated into Latin as devotio, a word used for human sacrifice, and into Greek as anathema, which was a sacrifice to the gods.
Kahanism is a religious Zionist ideology based on the views of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League and the Kach party in Israel.
This is a bibliography of literature treating the topic of criticism of Judaism as a religion, sorted by alphabetical order of titles.
Several passages in the Hebrew Bible are interpreted as referring to genocide that God commanded the Israelites commit, notably the case of Amalek, and the Canaanites. Various interpretations have been given of these passages throughout history, with some interpretations holding the commandments as necessary or allegorical. Critics of Christianity and Judaism have often cited the passages to prove that the biblical god was a malevolent being. Still others have invoked the passage to incite genocide or ethnic cleansing against religious or ethnic minorities, such as was done during the Rwandan genocide. A reference to the commandment by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the Israel–Hamas war was cited as proof of genocide in the Gaza strip in South Africa's genocide case against Israel. In mainstream scholarship, the passages are not seen as entirely historically accurate.
No "national" commandment such as that of "conquest and settling the land" occurs in any of these [Judaic] summaries [of the Torah]… [arguments for applying herem to modern Israel] introduces a distinction that Scripture does not recognize; nowhere are the obligations referred to in the summaries contingent on the achievement of the land-taking or the destruction of Israel's enemies. To suppose that they may be set aside or suspended for the accomplishment of national ends is a leap far beyond scripture.... The [biblical] injunctions to take the land are embedded in narrative and give the appearance of being addressed to a specific generation, like the commandment to annihilate or expel the natives of Canaan, which refers specifically to the seven Canaanite nations... Now, had there been any inclination to generalize the law [of extermination], it would have been easy for the talmudic sages to [do so]. But in fact the sages left the ancient herem law as they found it: applying to seven extinct nations.
Sin has changed [since biblical times]; crime has changed. We bring a different sensibility to our reading of the sacred texts of the past, even the Torah. There are passages in it which to our modern minds command crimes, the kind of crimes which our age would call "crimes against humanity"... I think of the problematic section in the Mattot [Numbers 31] which contains the commandment to exact revenge against the Midianites by slaying every male and every female old enough to engage in sexual intercourse.... I used to think that were they [Midianites] suddenly to appear, no Jew would be willing to carry out such a commandment. Then Baruch Goldstein appeared on the scene, and he was followed by Yigal Amir and now I am not sure.... I find the commandment to commit genocide against the Midianite unacceptable. To accept the commandment to do the same to "the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Peruzzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites" seems to me to make permissible the Holocaust, the attempted genocide of the Jewish people.
Judaism lex talionis.
Similarly, the passage in Mishnah Makkot 1:10: "A Sanhedrin that puts a man to death once in seven years is called a murderous one. R. Eleazar ben Azariah says 'Or even once in 70 years.' R. Tarfon and R. Akiva said, 'If we had been in the Sanhedrin no death sentence would ever have been passed'; Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel said: 'If so, they would have multiplied murderers in Israel.'
This refers to the statement in the Mishnah (Mak. 1:10; Mak. 7a) that a Sanhedrin that kills (gives the death penalty) once in seven years (R. Eleazer b. Azariah said: once in 70 years) is called "bloody" (ḥovlanit, the term "ḥovel" generally implying a type of injury in which there is blood).
Although Goldstein did not say anything during his attack to explain his actions it is known that the night before his assault he had attended a service at the Jewish side of the Cave of the Patriarchs where after listening to the traditional reading from the Scroll of Esther, he told others who were there that they should all behave like Esther. The timing of his attack at the same site the next day hardly seems to be the product of happenstance or coincidence. It was the day of Purim. Moreover, although his actions seemed to be the product of a mind that had snapped or become depraved, there did not seem to be any sign that he was suffering from a mental disorder. His actions were deliberate and intentional. Goldstein was troubled by the ongoing peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in Oslo and he was openly concerned that a Palestinian state was about to be created. His attack on Muslim worshippers at the same site, while Purim coincided with Ramadan, was an attempt to symbolically cast himself in the story as Mordecai. Indeed, that was exactly the way in which his actions were interpreted by other settlers at Kiryat Arba, and in the years to come after 1994, there would be numerous instances in which the settlers would also celebrate Purim by invoking Goldstein's memory and image in a provocative manner.