On Thorns in the Vinyard - 6/23/2024

Hello everyone, and thank you for joining me today as we grieve the 38,000 people who have been killed in Palestine over the past 260 days. I pray that the 90,000 plus people who have been injured by this senseless genocide are able to get care and return to health, and that the 10,000 who are missing are found. May the memories of the martyrs be a blessing to all of those who knew them.

Among the incredibly grim and horrifying news this week was something that has really stuck in my head. On June 20th Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told an Israeli news station that “Hamas is an idea…it's rooted in the hearts of the people - whoever thinks they can eliminate Hamas is wrong.” Of course, this message is genocidal in its intent - it is meant to give credence to the idea that Palestinian lives are expendable. This is not new, and it is something that we have talked about here, and it has gotten me thinking about a very specific story in the Talmud - specifically Bava Metzia 83b.

Rabbi Elazar, who was said to have lived in the 2nd century, was in a bar somewhere in the Roman empire. A thief catcher goes up to him and asks how to catch thieves. Rabbi Elazar responds by saying that you can know if they are a thief based on when they come into the bar. If it is before a certain time, they are likely scholars, if it is later, they are probably thieves. The king heard about Elazar’s plan and hired him to catch thieves for the Roman empire as a result. 

One day, Rabbi Yohoshua ben Korha came up to Elazar and yelled at him: vinegar, son of wine, truly one of the best talmudic insults of all time,  how long are you going to send the people of God to their deaths. Elazar responded with: I am rounding up and destroying the thorns in the vineyard. In return, Yohoshua ben Korha says: let the ruler of the garden (which is interpreted to mean God) round up the thorns in the vineyard.

So at some time later a random washerman sees Elazar and yells at him: vinegar son of wine. In response, Elazar tells the police to seize the man, and they seize him and set the washman to be hanged. It is only when Elazar is standing under the gallows that he realizes he may have made a mistake in sending this man to his death, but by the time he comes to this realization, it is too late and the washerman is killed. 

I have been studying this text for the past 5 weeks as part of an anti-Zionist queer/trans study group and have many of my fellow students and teachers to thank for their wisdom. We have gone line by line, and the words of this story are now deep in my bones, and I have spent many hours thinking about this text.

One of the many takeaways from this story is that these people lived in a society where certain people’s words carried more weight than others. Rabbi Elazar had a famous father. He had the rabbi title. All a washerman needed to do was call him a name to be hanged. No one was going to listen to the washerman when a preeminent rabbi called for his execution. Who and how do we decide that certain people get to have that kind of power in society, especially when we know that they are using their power for something heinous. In this story, Rabbi Yohushua ben Korha sees immediately that Elazar is going to use his power to sentence innocent people to death and yet, the Romans imbue him with this power likely because of this tendency.

The other thing I have been thinking about is this idea of the thorns in the vineyard. First of all, there are many weeds that have thorns, and so if you are looking for thorns, you will see them everywhere. It is easy to point in a random direction and find something that you would rather not see in the vineyard. 

I can think of many people who would see all of us as thorns in the vineyard. Here we are openly challenging imperialist power structures that would rather us be quiet and in fact, they are acting as Elazar and trying to destroy them. I am easily able to conjure up a highlight reel of police repression and violence targeting anti-Zionist protesters across the world. There are also laws trying to codify definitions of antisemitism that would turn our actions into hate crimes. In Providence, local Jewish leaders have publicly said that anti-Zionist Jews are not Jewish. Even with all my talmud and practice, I will still be a thorn to them. Institutions at every level are being legitimized when they hurl their accusations about who is a thorn and how the state should remove them. 

Many of us might also hold other identities that make us thorns in the vineyard. In a white supremacist, cis, hetero, patriarchal society, many different kinds of people have seen their rights legislated away. A few weeks ago, the US Supreme Court decided that political gerrymandering was legal despite the fact that there is so much evidence that  political and racial gerrymandering are virtually the same. We have seen queer and trans rights, and reproductive rights legislated away across the country. Even without our Palestine solidarity, we cannot help but be thorns. 

And sure, thorns might be painful to touch, but think about how many plants have thorns or spines and the importance that those plants play in our lives. I think about stinging nettle with its medicinal properties, or how delicious blackberries are, or how thistle is an important source of nutrition for birds and bees. Cactus spines have important ecological value and deserts would not be habitable without them.

I am certainly not trying to gloss over the danger that comes with labeling an entire population as thorns. What Daniel Hagari said is terrifying. In two sentences, he has laid out the justification to continue this genocide and let it continue without any reason to consider the humanity of Palestinians. He is unfortunately just one of many people in power with this mindset. A mindset that de-legitimizes and criminalizes and fatally punishes Palestinian liberation. For as long as there have been supremacist hierarchies, there have always been those who will always try to clear the vineyard of its thorns. 

My hope for us is that we continue to be thorns in the vineyard. That we plant our roots even deeper and continue to spread in the garden.