by Benny Ross

This article uses some Hebrew and Aramaic terms. There is a glossary at the end. 

Many people know a few Hebrew phrases such as “tikkun olam”. This one is less well-known, but it’s very relevant to our stance as Jews who take seriously our heritage of argument, dissent, and careful analysis of Torah law. 

1: What is the opposite of ḥillul hashem? 

The Hebrew root  ש-ד-ק  (q-d-sh) is the basis for a whole bunch of words relating to holiness, and sacred or revered actions and items. For example, the adjective kadosh means holy; the Temple was called Beit haMikdash, and we use lots of words like kiddush (which makes a time or a snack holy) and the Aramaic kaddish. It’s also why the Arabic name for Jerusalem (holy city) is al-Quds. 

To make God’s name holy is called קידוש השם (kiddush ha-Shem). It’s a wide-ranging mitzvah, encompassing anything from martyrdom to acting in a way that earns Judaism a good reputation. 

The opposite of ק-ד-ש  is  ל-ל-ח  (ḥ-l-l) and its basic meaning is just something that is not holy. Hence the Israeli word חילוני (ḥiloni) for secular; and the middle days of a festival, which are not holidays, are called חול המועד  (ḥol ha-mo‘ed): secular [days] of the [special] season. As a verb, leḥallel means to desecrate, or make unholy. For instance, חילול שבת (ḥillul Shabbat) is the rather old-fashioned term for desecrating the sabbath by doing any of the 39 forbidden activities, or generally making the day horrible in other ways than by observing the rules. 

2: Halachic view of ḥillul hashem 

The Torah uses both of the above roots in one sentence when it says:

The question arises, what would profane God’s holy name? Please pause here and write down some suggestions (in the comments). 

Maimonides’ ordering and listing of the rules of halacha (Jewish law) specifies that in most cases we should ‘live by them’ and not die by them, so one should always avoid martyrdom by breaking the rules of (e.g.) Shabbat or kashrut. But breaking the rules for the specific purpose of discrediting the Jewish religion, especially if it’s done in front of a minyan, counts as ḥillul hashem. And succumbing to idolatry, blasphemy or incest is always ḥillul hashem, even when your life is under threat. 

Beyond these specialised instances, the Talmud considers a variety of actions which may constitute ḥillul hashem if they bring the Jewish people and its god into disrepute. One talmudic example, in Bava Kamma 113a, considers a court case between a Jew and a Gentile. The Rabbis assume that a Jewish judge would want to find in favour of the Jewish litigant if they can. But if the Jew’s case is the weaker one, both by Roman/Babylonian law and Jewish law, then מפני קידוש השם (to uphold the sanctity of God’s name) the judge must avoid the temptation to issue a dishonest ruling. At most, the judge may approach the question בעקיפין (ba‘aqifin) – indirectly. Not an ideal answer, to my mind, but perhaps it’s better than the recent record of Israeli courts which discriminate shamelessly against Palestinians, and where innumerable crimes go untried because the prosecutions just don’t happen.

A little further on in Bava Kamma (113b), the discussion turns to the question of whether the rule of “finders keepers” applies when a Jew finds something that a Gentile has lost. Rav Ḥama bar Gurya takes the phrase in Deuteronomy לְכׇל אֲבֵדַת אָחִיךָ (literally: “to anything your brother loses”) to refer only to other Israelites. Therefore anything lost by someone who is not your brother is yours to keep. Rabbi Pinḥas ben Yair, on the other hand, teaches that  במקום שיש חילול השם (in a case where there would be ḥillul hashem) i.e. where God’s name would be desecrated by the Jew keeping somebody’s lost property, you must restore it to the non-Jew who lost it.  

3: Talmudic logic: the kal vaḥomer rule

Please accompany me on a short digression into one of the rules of logic that are used in Torah study. Some of these rules are exceedingly obscure and I don’t understand them, but one of the simplest and most widely applicable is called קל וחומר (kal vaḥomer) – literally “light and heavy”. It works by considering a case that is either spelled out explicitly in the Torah, or has already been accepted by a consensus of the Rabbis. Something about this case is less extreme than it could be; but if the rule under discussion applies to the less extreme case, it must apply even more strongly to the more extreme one. (English-language writers sometimes refer to this method of reasoning by the Latin phrase a fortiori.)

4: Comparing a lost object with mass murder 

Not everyone agrees that the actions of the Israeli state constitute the most serious and persistent ḥillul hashem imaginable. It is argued that overt racism, mass murder, open contempt for the institutions of international law, and outspoken, contemptuous hostility toward non-governmental aid agencies does not bring the Jewish people or its god into disrepute. Not even when all those things are proclaimed as necessary for the defence of the Jewish people from its ubiquitous and eternal enemies. 

But I would like to suggest that we use the kal vaḥomer method to compare the talmudic example of a lost object with the actions of the Israeli state in recent years – actions which we’re told incessantly and stridently are the only way to defend us against annihilation by Nazis, terrorists and Islamists. If, as Rabbi Pinḥas ben Yair taught, we must return a non-Jew’s lost property when we find it because failure to do so could cause ḥillul hashem, how much more serious is the ḥillul hashem when a highly militarised state, claiming to act in the interest of all Jews, slaughters thousands of children, smashes every building and every trace of infrastructure in huge areas and repeatedly hounds the population from place to place, deliberately uses starvation against a civilian population, shoots to kill aid workers and locks all reporters out of its killing fields, and allows militant settlers to rampage with weapons through the villages and farms of an agricultural and pastoral population?

If a mere lost object could provoke ḥillul hashem, how much more so the vengeful and hate-filled attacks which openly and shamelessly seek to humiliate and oppress a subjugated nation? 

I hope this article will stimulate some informed and critical thinking, questions or disagreement. Please send us your contributions!  

Glossary

(N.B: Transliterations vary widely. You may see, for example, halacha, halachah, halakha, halakhah, and, in Ashkenazi circles, halocho. Yiddish-influenced pronunciation renders non-initial ת as an ‘s’ sound, where it is otherwise pronounced as a ‘t’ or ‘th’ sound.)