Does Judaism Value Strength or Smarts?

Note: At Temple Micah, every b’nai mitzvah student gets to ask their rabbi a question of their own choosing to be answered by the rabbi as part of their sermon the morning of the b’nai mitzvah. This is one of those sermons.

Dear Alice,

Today you add your link in our chain of tradition -

Here at Temple Micah, you do this in several ways:

You read Torah and Haftarah

You teach us, with your own understandings and interpretations

And you pose a question -

And I respond - with a letter - shared here.

Alice, you asked me, "What does Judaism value more, strength or smarts?

It is Brawns vs. Brains -

The school-yard battle - With serious modern applications

Who are the Jews, at their core, you are asking?

What do we value?

I’ll admit, Alice - that this is an easy answer -

We, as a people, value Intelligence and wisdom

This is true now - and in ancient times -

As reflected in our texts -

Just a few:

From the Book of Ecclesiastes - Wisdom give more strength to the wise man more than rulers are were in the city

From the Book of Proverbs - The wise man is strong; and a person of knowledge increases strength.

And from Pirkei Avot: Who is strong? One who controls their inclination to do evil.

And if we look further back at some biblical characters, we might find this assumption of wisdom being valued over strength reinforced:

Two twins who perhaps best illustrate this dichotomy - Jacob and Esau

Twins who wrestle in the womb - when they emerge, Esau comes first, becoming the eldest, and Jacob is born, holding Esau’s foot -

Genesis says, “When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the outdoors; but Jacob became a mild man, raising livestock.”

The rabbinic tradition takes this a step further, suggesting that Jacob spent his time in his tent studying, while Esau spent his time in the field.

We trace our ancestry back to one of these two twins -

Jacob - the scholar, Esau, a skilled, strong hunter

ultimately, Esau’s strength is his weakness - when Esau returns to their camp exhausted from a long day hunting, he is impulsive -

And Jacob, clear-minded and clever, manipulates Esau into trading his birthright for some stew

Brains over Brawns - Jacob over Esau

And we turn to other stories -

A tradition says that Moses’ wisdom was far more valuable than Samson’s strength -

A tradition suggests that wisdom allows you to be like a tree with strong roots, Standing firm

And yet -

We also have stories that lift up strength

The end of the Jacob - Esau saga, in fact, ends with a wrestling match

Jacob, alone on a mountain, is confronted with a mysterious unknown “ish” or man. And after an all-night wrestling match, Jacob prevails, and gets a new name,

“Yisra-El” one who struggles, fights

And there is the story of David and Goliath- from the book of Samuel

During the reign of King Saul - the Israelites are fighting with the Philistines,

The Philistines send Golaith - a supposed 7 ft 9 man, armed with shields - and a javelin

And the Israelites send David, a young shepard - who brings a staff, a sling, and five single stones

David himself, although smaller, is faster, and more skilled -

And he takes his sling and almost immediately defeats the giant -

With some tactical wisdom, yes -

But also with his strength -

And this is where I want to take us, Alice

Because we have a varied tradition

And in that tradition, we try our best to push past simple or easy binaries.

Yes, we come from a tradition that lifts up wisdom -

That reads and learns and debates

In so many ways - we are the descendants of Jacob in the tent

We immensely value the pursuit of truth and knowledge

We are the people of the book

We aspire always to be wise

As Tony Bayfield writes:

[For] 1,800 years, prestige within the Jewish world didn’t go to the tallest, most athletic or even the most economically astute. [it] favoured the brightest, those with aptitude for intellectual process of developing post-biblical, post-Second Temple Judaism. It selected men who could make a contribution to developing the reasoning, formulation and application of the ideas. Rabbinic Judaism was created and developed by people who asked difficult and challenging questions, wanting nothing better than to struggle with the answers; it was built from debate among those drawn to the process.”

And so - Our coming of age ceremony does not require you to wrestle a lion or defeat a giant, or climb a tower

We ask you to learn a language, to learn how to make it sound beautiful, and then - to find something in it to teach us

We ask you to ask a question.

This is so much of who we are, Alice.

And yet -

We are also the descendants of Jacob wrestling

We are the people of Samson who brought down an entire house with his bare hands

We are the people of the Israelite women who birthed quickly and fiercely to avoid Pharaoh’s evil decree

We do not run away from strength when strength is required

And this is itself important to say

We can not fear being a people of both wisdom and strength

Because the truth is - although we have this very proud legacy of prioritizing wisdom over strength

Some of that was only birthed by necessity

Because we lacked the access to power

Because it was kept away from us

And with it, the ability to decide our fate for ourselves

And now that we have it -

There are those who want to run away from it

And there are those who, perhaps from some internalized antisemitism

Believe that it is ok for others to have power and strength, but not for us.

We are no longer a people without power

How we wield that strength is incredibly important

Because power without wisdom turns power into an ends and not a means

From scholar Rabbi Donniel Hartman, “[Power[ is a gift, an essential tool, but at the same time, its potential for abuse and injustice haunts me. Liberal Jews…need an approach to power that is commensurate with our values—a narrative that recognizes the need for power as well as its dangers.”

We have to always be working towards both strength and wisdom, Alice

We have to be wrestling and studying

Who is strong, we ask again? The one who is able to take their power and wield it with justice, compassion, and wisdom

Who is strong? The one who can hold power - and choose to not use it for evil.

Because let me tell you about the two stories again -

That of Jacob, and David

David defeats the giant swiftly - he knocks him with a stone between the eyes - and Goliath falls to the ground, unable to stand back up

This is the moment of victory -

The shepherd defeated the giant, the Israelites defeated the Philistines

And here is where the power goes wrong, perhaps

David runs over to Goliath, takes his sword, and beheads him

The fight had ended - but David needed the symbol that showed him as powerful

Maybe such a show of power was necessary - who can know

But I prefer the ending of the other story - Jacob’s story - of him wrestling with the “ish” -

This being wrestles with him all night

And when it is clear he has won

The being begs Jacob to let go - which he does, but first he asks for a blessing.

says that through this battle, he has seen the face of God

Perhaps it was because of the wise application of strength

Of knowing when to wield power- and when to let go

Can we be Jacob?

Can we study strength - can our strength give us wisdom?

Can we know when each is necessary?

The work of this Jewish moment - and of a life - might just be to figure out this balance.

Good luck, Alice.

In wisdom, and power-

Your friend,

Rabbi Crawley