The first time we meet Shimon and Levi, they are "rescuing" their sister from a smooth-talking rapist, and by "rescuing" we mean "savagely murdering the perpetrator, massacring his entire clan, and enslaving the survivors." When their father accuses them of provoking reprisals and putting the entire family in danger, they reply, "Ha'chzonah na'aseh et achoteinu? Should our sister be treated like a whore? We're living in a country where some guy thinks he can take her and rape her and then say, 'It's OK, I'll pay you for her!' We didn't make this danger Dad, it's been here all along. What were we supposed to do, sit and discuss the situation by committee? Write to the newspaper about the nationwide decline in moral fiber and family values? They done us wrong! Let's get 'em!"
The brothers make a very compelling argument, but neither time nor introspection bears them out. "They done us wrong! Let's get 'em!" has never been a motto endorsed by Judaism. Yes, it's important to defend your family, but however real the danger may have been, there was no excuse for that kind of bloodbath. Shimon and Levi's readiness to destroy anyone who stood in their way, their readiness to write their own international law, to do what they thought was right in spite of their father's remonstrations is totally condemned by the Tanach. Shimon and Levi becomes the villains of rabbinic literature. They are condemned throughout the Torah sh'bichtav and vilified throughout the Talmud and Midrash. Later in Bereshit, when Joseph chooses to imprison Shimon while his ten brothers return to Canaan, Rashi comments that Joseph was really just trying to separate Shimon and Levi; he figured if they were allowed to work together, they'd probably try to assassinate him, too! Rashi doesn't trust Shimon and Levi to do so much as bring home the groceries without stopping to whack someone along the way. Shimon and Levi's insistence that they alone can dispense justice whenever and however they feel like it breaks the family apart and creates a world where no one can trust anyone else. At the end of the patriarchal period, Shimon and Levi are cursed instead of blessed: "arur apam kee az v'evratam kee kashatah-cursed is their passion, for it is strong, and their rage for it is harsh. Achaklem b'yaakov v'afitzem b'yisrael-I will separate them among the sons of Jacob and disperse them among the tribes of Israel."
Flash forward several centuries. Shimon and Levi themselves are dead and gone, but the things that they stood for remain very much alive. In their lifetimes, they passed their ideals onto their families, and those families grown and flourished. Shimon and Levi have left an enduring legacy in the tribes that bear their names, two great clans of passionately judgmental extremists who think with their hearts, follow their instincts, and believe that aggression is a solution. But Jacob's curse has come true: Shimon and Levi are separated, dispersed. They are no longer acting as a team. Each of them has taken these instincts in a different direction.
Route 152 down Memory Lane. Next stop: The Golden Calf.
I hate to say it, but Cecil B. DeMille got this one right. When the moo cow gets brought out, Aaron tries to proclaim a Festival for the Lord, but the ringleaders take the matter in a different direction and say, "This is your God, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt!" "Vayeshev ha-am l'echol v'shatu v'yakumu l'tzachek-the people sat down to eat, and they drank, and they got up to... party." L'tzachek-loosely translated "to party"-is not a nice verb in Hebrew. There's no real equivalent in English, but when Sarah sees Yishmael doing it, she has him thrown out of the house within 24 hours. When King Avimelech sees Isaac and Rebekah doing it, he calls them in and says, "Ergh!!! Why did you say she was your sister? That lady is your wife!" It's what the Philistines do to Samson when they capture him as a P.O.W. Abu Gharib, anyone? These guys with the Golden Calf are not just dancing the hora here.
"Vayar Moshe et ha am ki forah hu, ki faro Aharon l'shmitzah b'kameyhem. Moses saw that the people were out of control, since Aaron had let them get out of control, and they were a menace to any who opposed them. Vayaamod Moshe b'shaar hamachaneh yayomer, mi l'Adoshem elai, v'yeasfu eilav kol bnei Levi. Moses stood up at the gate of the camp and said, 'Whoever is for the Lord, come to me!' and all the children of Levi rallied to him."
Moshe is about to give a terrible order. He's going to tell the people who have joined him to put down the rebellion, to end this mayhem by any means necessary. Anyone who can party like this after having stood at Sinai and heard God's voice in their head telling them not to murder and not to commit adultery is a lost cause, and their presence is endangering not just certain people in the community, but the very existence of the community itself. Their appalling disregard for the basic rules of human society is preventing the formation of any kind of Godly community around them. "Koh amar Adoshem elohei Yisrael: Thus said the Lord God of Israel, each of you take up your sword and go from one end of the camp to the other, and kill those who are instigating this-your brothers, your friends, your loved ones."
Levi's children willingly follow these orders-and not just because they're Moses's relatives and they want their boy to look good on camera. Levi's spirit is still the spirit of action, and he still is using violence to achieve his ends. He's the one who's going to slam the door on the committee for the investigation of Goldencalfgate, and go do something about it. But something in Levi has changed. It's no longer about us and our people, about who done us wrong and what we're gonna do to them now. It's no longer an issue of protecting one family at the expense of an entire city. Levi is looking at the whole of society, not just his particular friends and relatives. Levi is putting this passion, this aggression in the service of a higher ideal. He is fighting not for himself, his ego, and his family honor, but for his community, his principles, and his God. He's still ready to defy the majority, to fly in the face of the older generation and do what he thinks is right, but he's not doing it because someone done him wrong, he's doing it because God asked him to and because the consequences of what's he's doing will benefit everyone in the long run. In stark contrast to the episode at Shechem, where Levi did what he did because he wanted his family to come out on top, Levi now has more important things on his mind than factionalism and blind loyalty. Now he's willing to go against his heart, to take a stand against his own family if he has to, for the sake of a better tomorrow.
What about Shimon? Where has Shimon been during all of this? When Moses is looking for a few good men to do a dirty job, Shimon is nowhere to be found. The tribe of Shimon is strangely silent whenever Moses and Aaron identify a threat to the community and call for retaliation. The next time we hear from Shimon, it isn't even the tribe who's springing into action, it's one lone member. Something Shimon has done has fractured his tribe from one unified entity into a collection of disparate individuals.
Route 152 down Memory Lane. Last stop: the end of last week's parsha.
In the face of a national crisis, when Jewish men are being seduced by Midianite women and assimilating into the fertility cult of Baal-Peor, when Moses has executed several leading officials for idolatry, when even Moses is calling for violence as a solution, Zimri be Salu, chief of the clan of Shimon... brings a Midianite gold-digger to shul.
The only member of the tribe of Shimon to have anything to do with this unpleasant cause isn't trying to solve the problem, he's deliberately exacerbating it! What's almost worse, he's not even trying to rally his tribe in communal support of the Free Love movement ("All we are saying is give Baal a chance..."). Communal support and national unity mean nothing to Zimri be Salu! He has lost all sense of clan connection, all sense of community responsibility, all sense that the actions he takes can affect the lives of people around him. Anyone who doesn't like what he's doing can talk to the hand, because they hain't got no call to bring down his groove.
Not only has Zimri abandoned his moral fiber and his God, he's also abandoned his fellow human beings. Zimri has to be stopped and he has to be stopped fast, before even one other Jew considers the advantages of his carefree lifestyle. And to everyone's surprise, the one who takes up the spear to stop him isn't his sworn enemy from the tribe of Menashe or Ephraim, isn't his father defending the honor of the family, it isn't even Moses, who's got a pretty big stake in all this. Shimon's chief is ultimately stopped by Pinchas ben El'azar ben Aharon haCohen, great-great-grandson of Levi. "Vayar Pinchas ben El'azar ben Aharon haCohen, vayakam mitoch ha-eidah, vayikach romach b'yado. Vayavo achar ish Yisrael el ha-kubah vayikod et shneihem, et ish Yisrael v'et ha-ishah el kavatah. Pinchas took in this scene and rose up from the midst of the crowd, taking his spear in his hand. He followed the Israelite man into the chamber and skewered them both, the Israelite man and the woman through the stomach." The patriarchal curse has been fulfilled in the most gruesome of terms. Shimon and Levi are separated, all right: instead of brothers and partners, they are blood enemies.
What happened? Where was the rift? When did Shimon and Levi stop seeing the world through the same eyes? When did one of them get on the wrong end of the spear?
Levi turned outwar; Shimon turned inward. Like Levi, he's stopped looking at the world in terms of us vs. them. Shimon no longer thinks about us and who done us wrong, but instead, he's thinking about me and who's in my face. Levi has reined in his instincts and holds himself back until God gives the word; Shimon follows each and every instinct wherever it takes him. Shimon is a man who follows his heart, no matter what society says: he'll defy the older generation and take an aggressive stand for what he believes in, but he's not doing it for the community or even for his family. He's not doing it for the good of anybody except himself! The fact that casual sex with strange women is creating a serious assimilation problem-as well as a mysterious plague that's circulating around the camp-is not an issue for Shimon. He's following his heart! He's taking a stand! And that's what's important!
Shimon has held onto everything that his ancestor did wrong in the massacre at Shechem. He's headstrong, he's aggressive, he's totally sociopathic, and he springs into action because his comfort level is on the line. And these days, when he's defying the big guys and doing what he thinks is right, he's not looking out for his sister, kidnapped and raped and taken from her family, he's doing it for his current squeeze. The devastation he's wreaking is no less then that he's caused in the past, but now he's not even dignifying this behavior with any kind of honorable motive.
Levi, on the other hand, is headstrong and aggressive and totally sociopathic, but he springs into action because the community is falling apart and he wants to be the one who pulls it together. He's defying the crowd and doing what he thinks is right, not for his sister, but for his principles, his nation, and his God. His sister will never get treated like a whore, not because he's going to massacre the relatives of anyone who breathes on her, but because he's going to build a society where she can walk the streets without fear.
God places the tribe of Levi in charge of the sanctuary. The old curse is still in full force-they are still going to be dispersed and landless among the tribes-but these living arrangements are no longer a punishment, they're a privilege! Levi has a job in the sanctuary-he doesn't have to worry about little things like agriculture. Levi's children have shown that they can rise above his tendency to think about every issue in terms of his team, that they can protect ideals as well as individual people; they are rewarded by becoming the perennial protectors of the nation's spirituality. By using his own worst and most dangerous tendencies-aggression, ruthlessness, rage-in defense of society rather than in spite it, Pinchas transforms Levi's curse into a blessing. "Lachen emor hinneni noten lo et briti shalom-say therefore, says God, that I give him my covenant of peace."