Book Review: Studied Dissonance-Disability in Jewish Law
By M. Miles (m99miles@hotmail.com)
Tzvi C. Marx (2002) Disability in Jewish Law. London & New York: Routledge. isbn 0415278899. (Vol. 3 in the "Jewish Law in Context" series, edited by N.S. Hecht, Institute of Jewish Law, Boston University School of Law). xii + 260 pp. Hardback.
Tzvi Marx has written a book of striking peculiarity. With an understanding yet critical 'insider' eye he examines an enclosed world of rabbinical thought that concerns defect and disability but has been little concerned with presenting itself in an acceptable way to people outside the enclosure. Some of the contents would probably infuriate modern euro-american disability leaders (and also any feminists still interested in doing fury). Marx's aim is to expose and suggest ways of reducing some of the mutually contradictory interpretations within Jewish law (halakha) and the dissonance between Jewish law and modern euro-american secular beliefs and ideologies around disability.
The work had a prolonged gestation followed by a shadowy proto-existence, starting apparently in the late 1980s as Marx worked on his doctoral thesis at Utrecht. The dissertation was accepted in 1993, and a few authors since then have cited the resultant weighty Halakha and Handicap [1]. The present book has a preface dated 1999, but almost all the references are from 1991 or earlier. Meanwhile, in 1998, Judith Abrams brought out her scholarly and well-written Judaism and Disability [2], which innocently occupied much of the space on which Dr Marx might have had first claim.
Closed and Inaccessible Worlds?
The significance of the ten or twelve year gap is apparent throughout Marx's book. In the late 1980s, researchers even with some awareness of the nascent Disability Movement would still confidently produce crass generalisations, stereotyping 'the disabled', their lives, their thoughts, the 'problem and burden' they pose for family and society. So does Marx, e.g. "The disabled individual's simple physical dependency dominates family life" (p. 6); "The disabled are a population in chronic need of the generosity of others" (p. 69). In a publication of 2002 such terminology and attitude sounds seriously dated. Still more incongruous is the use of 'deaf-mute', in phrases such as "the closed and inaccessible nature of the deaf-mute's world until quite recently" (p. 114), on the same page as reference to "the hearing disabled". It is reasonable to use 'deaf-mute' when discussing historical situations where that term was commonplace and not deemed offensive; but this exception hardly extends to phrases (and their implied thoughts) such as "deaf-mutes are today routinely taught to communicate vocally" (p. 234). Marx knows that terminology can be problematical, especially "the old associations with mental deficiency that the term "deaf-mute" connotes in the halakhic mind" (p. 127). The problem is more in the "closed and inaccessible nature" of the world of halakhic debate, than in anything experienced by deaf or hearing-impaired people in the 20th and 21st centuries. Tzvi Marx has opened windows on an obscure and little understood world.
To understand what Marx has attempted, one must know that the world of traditional Jewish law does move, but very slowly because its roots are over two thousand years deep. For example, in 1988 when Jacob Neusner produced a fresh translation of the Mishnah (a foundational codification of Jewish law), deliberately using archaic English that adheres closely to the shape and order of the Hebrew text, he remarked that "the Mishnah is separated from us by the whole of western history, philosophy and science" (p. xxxiv). [3] This is the chasm that Marx faced, first in trying to understand and expound the authentic and dialectical teaching of earlier rabbis on disability, and secondly to bring out some underlying ethical principles. The latter give grounds from which the former may partly be refurbished, and this provides much of the interest of the book. Marx notes the need for skill to "navigate the intricate byways of halakhic logic" so that in any updating, if possible, "the empirical facts strengthen rather than undermine" what has gone before (p. 237). Each of the world's great religions and philosophies needs to undergo some refurbishment of its traditions and practices regarding disability and disabled people, and each naturally hopes to do so without admitting any abrupt contradiction of its earlier 'authoritative' teaching.
Most religions and philosophies have embraced and taught some elevated charitable ideals, and these are prominently presented in Marx's exposition of Judaism with regard to disabled people. No doubt, for the great majority of humankind, balancing on the slenderest margin between survival and death, it has been good that the wealthy and powerful were exhorted to take thought for the poor and weak. However, in post-modern thought, balancing on an ample diet and a comfortable computer workstation, 'charity' has become almost a dirty word, as Marx partly recognises when he notes that, "Charity, an offering of relief, is primarily remedial" (p. 69). The game now is to redesign the social environment so that having mental or bodily impairments, while still no doubt being a damn nuisance, should not dis-able anyone from living a fairly satisfactory life. Such a redesign might remove many of the occasions for high-minded 'charitable practice', a removal for which erstwhile recipients would be extremely grateful (so the theory runs). Certainly, none of the great religions or philosophies can claim to be very far forward in the required reconstruction, refurb or redesign. [4]
Seeking Dignity and Merit
The traditional teaching and belief is that Jewish men seriously practising their religion are placed under 613 divine commands. These are not to be regarded as difficult, burdensome or constricting, but as a privilege and moral challenge from the creator (Marx, pp. 13, 28). There are differing views on whether the commands are all pragmatically good, i.e. embodying 'The Manufacturer's Instructions' on how best to live life, or whether they are intrinsically good because they emanate from God, regardless of whether fallible humans can perceive in them any logic or reasonableness. [5] Either way, dignity is conferred on men by the effort to obey the commands and to order their lives by them. By contrast, the cow in the field is not (so far as we know) subject to commands - it faces no moral choice to be a good cow or a bad cow - whereas the religiously observant Jew acquires dignity by being commanded to keep every part of the law and making efforts to do so. One consequence is that those who were traditionally perceived as having a lesser obligation to keep the law, i.e. women, minors, and disabled people, seem inherently to have less dignity and less opportunity to acquire it. They may voluntarily try to keep some or all of the command and this may count in their favour, or (as some rabbis have taught) perhaps such voluntary actions are a mistaken encroachment on territory that is inappropriate for them.
The previous paragraph gives (probably with foolish over-simplification) the gist of Marx's chapter 2, "Moral imperatives governing disability", in which he sets out the ground across which a modest number of Jewish teachers battled down the centuries, as elaborated in subsequent chapters. Considering every known or imagined flaw, impairment, difficulty or disability in the context of every one of the 613 legal dos and don'ts, the scholars have had plenty of tortuous material on which to disagree with each other and to cite reason, logic, linguistic gymnastics, ancient precedent and (sometimes) practical experience. In one location, some disabled people could be excluded from some activities either by legal purists ('they can't do it') or by the kind-hearted ('they need not do it'), with the risk of diminished human value. In another location, some could be included in the same activities either by legal purists ('they are not exempt') or by the fair-minded ('to exclude them would be a contempt'), or perhaps by the pragmatic ('let's not be stupid about this thing'). As a longstanding example, Marx points out that "the range of opinion on the halakhic inclusion of the blind in observance of the precepts varies from complete exemption, in Rabbi Judah's view, to almost total obligation ... in Rabbi Meir's view" (pp. 106-107).
Contradictions within the major text-based religions over what is the authentic law, what is its meaning, and how it is to be applied in life-situations involving very different cultures and technologies, tend to reflect badly either on the wisdom of God or on the idea that God ever did 'send down' well-drafted and universally applicable laws, beyond the very simplest and broadest principles for amicable co-existence ('don't eat other people'; 'don't bother your father when he's watching the big game'). Some theologians of various religions have given up defending 'revealed universal law' positions, and instead suggest a combination of progressive discovery and revelation: humankind collectively gropes toward practical ways of regulating community life and society so that the strong do not excessively oppress the weak, and the majority leaves some valued space for minorities, assisted and enlightened by nudges and hints from a deity who got bored with cows and thought up some creatures with capacity to evolve a mature moral sensibility (even if it takes several millennia). Tzvi Marx does not propound any such hypothesis; but the long centuries of slow and painful rabbinical debate tend to support the notion that life's rougher sides provide opportunities for moral growth, however reluctantly we may embrace them.
Preliminary Treatment
To expect Marx to survey views much beyond the halakhic world might be excessive. His chapter on "extra-halakhic sources" does inspect some biblical and rabbinical material not strictly concerned with law; yet some of the exposition is curiously limited, e.g. the case of King David on pp. 53-54. Marx gives a simplistic treatment of the text (II Samuel 5: 8), quoting Jewish commentators who suggest that David "had an instinctive, inborn revulsion for the lame and the blind, precisely as the text states", with a footnote that some discount the "plain meaning of the text". This "plain meaning" is then seen as illustrating what Marx believes to be a "virtually universal phenomenon of the disabled arousing primordial abhorrence", and on this assumption David's "achievement in overcoming it" - i.e. his kindness to the lame Mephibosheth [Meriba'al] - "is particularly admirable." It would be better to concede that the meaning of this brief passage is notoriously far from "plain". It has attracted a substantial literature, among which the Biblical scholarship was reviewed recently by Anthony Ceresko [6], while Elena Cassin earlier placed it in detailed historical and linguistic context [7].
After an arduous labour of many years, Marx claims only that his book is a "preliminary treatment that will encourage dialogue and further study" (p. xi), and his concluding chapter modestly aims to "assess strategies for mitigating the dissonance" between the more humane and the more legalistic sides of halakhic discourse on disability. If the present review makes a few criticisms, they should be understood in the same non-dogmatic spirit. Marx has taken pains to make an even-handed presentation of sharply differing halakhic points of view. Even where it becomes evident that he disagrees with some of them, he eschews adversarial positions that would merely provoke abreaction. He has made a major contribution to the slowly growing scholarship linking ancient and modern beliefs, attitudes and practices.
Notes & References
-
T. Marx (1993) Halakha and Handicap: Jewish Law and Ethics on Disability. Jerusalem: T.Marx. (The British Library catalogue lists a copy of this, but the library had already mislaid or lost it by the time I made requests for it in the late 1990s... )
-
J. Abrams (1998) Judaism and Disability. Portrayals in Ancient Texts from the Tanach through the Bavli. Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press.
-
The Mishnah. A new translation (1988) tr. Jacob Neusner. New Haven: Yale UP. The Mishnah, a somewhat idealistic compilation of Jewish oral law and interpretation reaching final form by the 3rd century CE, was the basis for further interpretative commentary over a further three centuries, known collectively as the Talmud. Halakhic codification and interpretation has continued ever since.
-
M. Miles (2002) Disability and religion in Middle Eastern, South Asian and East Asian histories: annotated bibliography of selected material in English and French. Journal of Religion, Disability & Health 6 (2/3) pp. 149-204.
-
Cf Abrams, Judaism and Disability, 152, who brings a new and improbable dimension to theological sources by her comparison of the Mishnah with the Star Fleet Technical Manual (based on the Star Trek TV series), since each contains some material dealing with theoretical situations unlikely to be met in real life.
-
A.R. Ceresko (2001) The identity of "the blind and the lame" ('iwwer upisseah) in 2 Samuel 5: 8b. Catholic Biblical Quarterly 63: 23-30.
-
Elena Cassin (1987) Le semblable et le différent. Symbolismes du pouvoir dans le proche-orient ancien. Paris: Editions la Découverte. Two chapters discuss "Le droit et le tordu". The first (pp. 50-71) concerns disability in the Jewish scriptures, focusing largely on David, Meriba'al, and 'the blind and the lame'.
|
