Finding a balance: ‘Live and let live,’ without accepting evil

Sometimes, you can’t change the world, and to make sure the world doesn’t change you, difficult and often painful decisions are necessary.

In the Israeli army, there are certain rules and codes you learn quickly, that most soldiers instinctively understand. No normal soldier steals weapons and you don’t ever take personal belongings from anyone, especially from the guys in your own unit.

Guys will rationalize taking things they deem to be the collective army’s (such as swiping an extra rain parka out of the huge pile in the supply depot) but usually draw the line at pilfering from a buddy’s gear.

Which was why it was so distressing to discover that we apparently had a thief in the unit; things were disappearing, and some of the guys were getting upset. It was clear we had a problem, and if you can’t trust the guys in your unit everything else starts to fall apart.

It took me a few weeks of detective work to catch the guy. It was a painful shock to discover who the thief was, especially as he was one of the guys who was always helpful. When he realized I was bringing him up on charges and demanding his removal from our battalion (eventually settling for his transfer) not only was he upset with me, but some of the other guys in the unit, his buddies and good men themselves, tried to convince me that it wasn’t a big deal, and that ejecting him would seriously damage morale.

It took me a couple weeks to get him kicked out of our unit. I had to convince the battalion commander that one of us would have to go, because I refused to serve with or command a thief who could steal from his own buddies. They finally just switched him into one of the other companies on the base.

It took me a lot longer to struggle with whether I was right or had made a terrible error in judgment. After all, in the end he was a good guy who you could count on to cover your back, and pilfering was almost an inevitable part of army life…. Was it fair to put a blotch on his service record forever?

How does one find the appropriate balance between “live and let live,” and refusing to compromise with evil and wrongdoing on the other?

If you are standing in the supermarket and someone cuts the line, should you demand he leave the line, and call for store personnel to remove him from the store? Or is that getting too stressed out? Where do we draw the line, and how do we know when immoral or unethical behavior should not be tolerated, and when we should just let it go?

This week’s portion of Lech Lecha provides a case in point: It seems that the shepherds of Avram (Abraham) and the shepherds of Lot, Avram’s nephew, had gotten into an argument big enough that it came to Avram’s attention. (Bereishit (Genesis) 12:5-7)

While the Torah is vague about the exact nature of the conflict between the shepherds, Rashi (Rav Shlomo Yitzchaki; 11th century Biblical commentator), quoting the Midrash (Rabbinic legend) makes it very clear: Lot’s shepherds were stealing, and Avram’s shepherds were taking the moral high ground.

More puzzling than the conflict however, is Avram’s inexplicable reaction to it: “And Avram said to Lot: ‘Let there not be a quarrel between you and I and between my shepherds and your shepherds. Behold all the land is before you; please separate from me; if you go left I will go right, and if you go right, I will go left.” (12:8-9)

“Separate from me”? This is Avram’s great solution to conflict? Bear in mind that this is not an argument with someone you never met who is in you parking space; this is Avram’s own nephew!

The verse does not actually say Avram and Lot were arguing; it says the argument was between the shepherds. So why does Avram feel Lot should leave? How depressing to think that even the paradigm of loving-kindness in this world can reach the point of no return in his relationship with his own nephew. Is this the blueprint for Jewish ethics? When the going gets a little tough, just go?!

Equally disturbing is Lot’s response: Lot actually chooses to leave the tent of Abraham and live in S’dom, the most wicked and sinful place on earth! How could someone who grew up in what must have been the most ethical place on earth end up in S’dom?

Perhaps Avram understands he cannot decide where Lot should be, Lot has to make that decision on his own.

It seems Lot has sunken to a level which precludes his living in the tent of Avram, and with a heavy heart, Lot is told in no uncertain terms he needs to leave.

This does not, incidentally, mean Avram ever stops loving Lot and caring for him. After all, when hearing that Lot has been taken captive, Avram goes to war against no less than five kings to save him. But they can no longer live together.

Interestingly, if one looks closely at the story in the Biblical commentaries, it may well be that the straw that broke the camel’s back was not that the shepherds of Lot were stealing; it was that Lot didn’t see anything wrong with it.

When does someone cross a line to the extent that we need to distance ourselves from them? Not when they do wrong, but when they justify it, and perceive it to be right. When right is wrong and wrong is right, then society is upside down, and if we can’t remove such a society, we at least need to remove ourselves from it.

And this is true in every aspect of life. When someone you love does something terrible, it is important to be able to deal with it, forgive them, and move on. But if they don’t really see anything wrong with what they are doing, then we have to absolutely refuse to live with such norms.

This week, a nine year old Jewish girl was shot at by an Arab terrorist at point blank range as she arrived home from youth groups. It is nothing short of incredible that Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority with whom we are supposed to be negotiating peace with, do not even pretend to protest. Indeed, we will never have a peace process in the absence of a peace partner.

Maybe we need to take a lesson from Abraham, who 4000 years ago suggested that there is a line in the moral sand one cannot cross, and there are some people and even societies one simply cannot negotiate with.

If a society is teaching their children to emulate suicide bombers; if people are dancing on rooftops because missiles are raining down on civilians, and partying in the streets because the twin Towers collapsed, then there is just no one to talk to. And while we dream of creating a world where all peoples live together in peace; our challenge is to make sure we are happy with that peaceful world we create.