Saving the Text, The Stubborn and Rebellious Child
Parashat Ki Tetzei presents a group of criminal, civil and family laws regarding the relationship between human beings. And it is exactly in this context that we find the laws regarding the Ben Sorer uMoreh (the stubborn and rebellious son), a complex and even objectionable passage found in Deut. 21:18-21. It is troubling because it establishes the possibility of a violent execution of a child in which the parents are the accusers, bringing their own child to the elders of the city, who execute the sentence apparently with no defence.
As parents, it may be difficult and painful to give up and ask for help. It is painful to let go and give a child to someone else, because one cannot deal with them anymore. It is almost impossible to turn away from the feeling of being a failure as a parent, especially when having to deal with such extreme cases. However, Torah offers the answer to parents: it is not only the parents’ responsibility, but the elders’ and, ultimately, the whole city’s responsibility to deal with the problem. Parents should not feel alone, and Torah gives the way, we only need to do what is taught by our sages in Tosefta Sanhedrin 11: interpret and receive a reward.
“Perhaps because of a general discomfort with parents taking their children to the court to be executed, the rabbis dramatically reinterpret, define, and limit this case”, explains Rabbi Rachel L. Rosenthal (Rebel with a Clause: Interpretation, Pedagogy and the Problem of the Stubborn and Rebellious Son). “The rabbis are driven by moral concerns, which exist outside of the constructs of the rabbinic system, but which they must find a way to put in concert with their fealty to the legal system.” to deal with such discomfort.
Therefore, our sages developed a tradition based on the statement “there has never been, and there never will be a stubborn and rebellious son” (Tosefta Sanhedrin 11:6), which supports the idea that the Ben Sorer uMoreh exists only to be studied. Interpreting the biblical text was then established by our sages as the main reason for the existence of the verses regarding the Ben Sorer uMoreh in Scriptures.
Alternatively, interpreting can be the tool used to find new meanings for this text, “uncovering many truths, in which God’s laws in the written Torah and the human intellect in interpreting those laws work in tandem to reveal the ways in which the human and the divine work together to reveal higher truths”, as Rabbi Rosenthal proposes. It allows us to use our ancient foundational text for our work as rabbis and community leaders today, finding answers for new questions and paths for pastoral care.
Accepting the challenge and the complexities of the Ben Sorer uMoreh requires that we consider their psychological characteristics as the starting point to the interpretation of the above-mentioned verses. Dictionaries translate both words “sorer” and “moreh” as: stubborn, rebellious, disobedient, difficult, angry, unreliable, deceitful, troublesome, foolish, recalcitrant. Traditional biblical commentaries established that this child is “low spirited” (Targum Neofiti), “deviates from the path” (Rashi), someone with bitterness of spirit (Chizkuni), whose “obstinacy has removed all hope that he will return from his disobedience” (Sforno).
A Zolel veSoveh (glutton and a drunk) according to Torah. Someone “immersed in the prohibited acts to an excessive degree” (Saadia Gaon), “anyone who commits himself to all that he lusts for, to all that his desires ask of him” and “one who drinks a lot” (Ibn Ezra), a person who “will become impoverished and will steal to fill his soul, satisfy his needs” (Sforno).
Ben Sorer uMoreh is not the child who merely does not behave well, or doesn’t do homework, or answers badly when hungry or in a bad mood. It is not someone who eats too much, drinks too much, or parties too much. It is more than that. It is someone who “in the end he will squander his father’s wealth and, seeking for what he became accustomed but not finding, he will go out to the crossroads and rob people” (T. Bavli, Sanhedrin 72a). There is a rage, a desperate feeling, an erratic craving behaviour, something deeper than just simple bad habits or naughtiness. It must be a behaviour that takes all hopes from the child’s parents, possibly indicating a future life of crime.
Based on the profile traced above, and reading it through modern lenses, the Ben Sorer uMoreh can be regarded, for instance, as someone facing problems with addiction. Addicts do not hear their parents, can be unreliable, deceitful, troublesome – stubborn. Addicts are committed to their desires and sometimes end up stealing and killing because of their addiction. The treatment for addiction many times involves institutionalisation, rendering the parents with the feeling of giving up the care for their child.
Opposing the idea that there never was and never will be a Ben Sorer uMoreh, “Rabbi Yonatan says: I saw him, and I sat on his grave” (Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 71a), meaning that it is real, and it is very serious, especially if nothing is done. Understanding that your child has reached a stage at which one cannot deal with the problem anymore needing to seek the help of professionals is not a death sentence, on the contrary, is a valid attempt to save them. When confronted with a stubborn and rebellious child, one needs to seek out ways to help them and receive the reward of saving them from a bad end. The reward, mentioned in Tosefta, is the understanding that in order to save the soul of a Ben Sorer uMoreh we cannot decide that there never was and never will be one in our family, otherwise, we will be forced to sit on their graves.
Andrea Kulikovsky, LBC rabbinical student
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.