Haftarah generates meaning in a way Chumash cannot through the power of redaction. The Five Books of Moses comprise a complete narrative, but picking a Haftarah for each Torah portion requires selectively choosing from the Prophets; including every part of every prophetic book would just be too long. Thus, what gets included – and just as importantly, what gets left out – yields a unique kind of interpretive possibility.
For this week’s Haftarah, Naso, that possibility emerges with a searing critique of modern culture’s enabling of violent misogyny. The Haftarah foresees how men would attack women out of their own deep pathologies, and warns us against blaming the victim.
You can’t have selections from the prophets without including the Book of Judges, and you can’t have the Book of Judges without Samson — any more than you could have a collection of American folk heroes without, say, Paul Bunyan.
How does this folk tale go? Well, you know: Samson got huge strength from his uncut hair, but then the Philistine woman Delilah tricked him into the revealing the source of his strength, lulled him to sleep, and cut off his hair. Fatally weakened and tortured by the Philistines, he died, in the process pulling down a Philistine temple.
Oh yeah; Delilah. Where is she? The lion’s share (so to speak) of the Samson stories (found in Judges chapters 14 to 16) involve our hormonal hero courting, sleeping with, and arguing with several women, mostly (although not always) Philistine. But none of them are in the Haftarah. This redaction exists for a reason.
Traditional commentators suggest that Haftarat Naso concerns Samson because he was a “Nazirite” – someone who devotes himself to God by not cutting his hair or drinking wine, and Parashat Naso, from the Book of Numbers, contains regulations for Nazirites. If there is any section of the Samson tales that practically begs to constitute the core of the Haftarah, then it is the Delilah story, because that sets forth most graphically what happens to the Nazirite who breaks the rules. But Delilah is nowhere to be found.
Instead, the Haftarah centers on the initial arrangement made between God and Samson’s mother. She is barren, and so God gives her a son with the proviso (delivered by an angel) that the son would be a Nazirite. We can assume that whoever chose the Haftarah selections did so with care, but this tale lacks the drama of the Delilah story. So why choose this part?
In the Haftarah’s reading, the Samson story is not about hair, or strength, or Delilah, or the Philistines. The point is that God gave Samson a special calling to divine service. Haftarat Naso’s most dramatic passage occurs when his parents beg the angel for instruction on how they should raise the child, who has not even been conceived yet. (13:8-14). The boy’s parents are committed to serving God. Their son is not. The Tanach tells us — twice — that Samson led Israel for 20 years (15:20; 16:31) and there is nothing to show for it other than some bawdy and violent stories: no great prayers (unlike Deborah), no great demonstrations of faith (unlike Gideon), no acts to unify Israel (unlike both). God gave Samson extraordinary power and a world-historical calling, and he wasted it. That is the reason for his demise, not that he was tricked by some woman. Samson thinks so little of the source of his power that he reveals it to Delilah not because he loves her, but rather because “she nagged him and pressed him constantly” and “he was wearied to death.” (16:16). If it hadn’t been Delilah, it would have been something else: money, or honor, or even more sex, or whatever.
Put another way, Delilah does not appear in the Haftarah because she isn’t the problem here. Delilah is a Philistine patriot, not a vessel of sin. The Haftarah’s very selectivity tells us very clearly: don’t blame the women.
Which brings us to alleged Isla Vista shooter Elliot Rodger.
“I’m the perfect guy, and yet you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men, instead of me, the supreme gentleman,” Rodger complained in his YouTube manifesto. “I will punish you for it.” Rodger was clearly a deranged sociopath, but he also epitomized young male anti-woman rage. His well-organized mind gravitated toward misogyny. And in our culture, that gave him lots to choose from.
Modern culture creates and supports the connection between misogyny and violence. Rodger was not alone: the language of his manifesto derives from a powerful subculture of men entertaining violent fantasies because of women’s rejection. It’s not the men’s fault, you see: it’s those terrible women who make them do it. In 2009, a man shot up a women’s aerobics class in Pittsburgh in supposed revenge for just this sort of rejection.
It’s not just about a few misogynist websites. When I took criminal law a few years ago, quite literally the first eight cases in the casebook, all about homicide, involved some man killing some woman or some man killing another man over some woman. Worldwide, one in three women will be beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused during her lifetime. These statistics have traditional roots, but the horrific numbers have accelerated in recent years. In India,“>still has yet to adequately fund rape kit testing. Our culture tells us that terrorist violence constitutes a crisis, and gender-based violence does not. Rodger agreed: “Women should not have the right to choose who to mate with. The choice should be made for them by civilized men of intelligence,” he wrote in his manifesto. Worse yet, the dislocations and traumas caused by economic change accelerate the rate globally of gender-based violence, as men seek to re-establish control over one area where they can rule with impunity: their intimate lives.
Everywhere, the message is the same: it’s Delilah’s fault, not Samson’s. But through its selection of passages, this week’s Haftarah soundly rejects that message. Samson’s failures are about Samson, not the women he pursued.
When it comes to gender relations, traditional Judaism has at best a highly checkered record. But somewhere, more than 2,000 years ago, someone – probably male — saw a way to make a powerful point. Through his subtle redaction, he demonstrated that men’s problems with women are just that: men’s problems. Are we listening? And will we finally do something about it?
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.