At the end of Parshas Emor, the Torah recounts the case of the megadef, the blasphemer. His background could not have been more disadvantaged: his mother, Shlomit bat Divri, was the only wanton woman in the camp; his presumed Jewish father was likely Dathan; his biological father was the Egyptian taskmaster. He was the product of rape by deception in a slave regime. He belonged to no tribe and had no real place in Klal Yisrael—an erev rav figure in all but name, structurally alienated through no fault of his own. Midrashim suggest he was primed for conflict.

Yet when he cursed Hashem, none of it mattered. Not his tragic origins, not his marginal status, not his “trauma.” The response was swift, merciless, and divinely ordered: stone him publicly – even without the usual due process involving “hasra’ah”. This is the Torah’s clearest rejection of merachem al ha’achzarim—being merciful to the cruel. One does not first inventory the offender’s disadvantages, recurse blame onto one’s own side, and launch into therapeutic self-critique. The poison must be excised first, ruthlessly.

A recent piece in these pages – Making Israel ‘Or Le’Yisrael’ Again – showcases how to commit all these errors at once. Invoking Behab—the ancient post-festival fasts—as a metaphor for a post-Yom Ha’atzmaut “national teshuvah,” the author calls for collective breast-beating over Israel’s conduct in a forced war, religious infighting, failure to condemn “wrongs done in the name of sovereignty,” and the sin of ma’asnei haShem. The goal, he writes, is to polish our image, heal the diaspora, and reclaim our role as or le’Yisrael and or la’goyim.

Chazal’s actual etiology of Behab exposes the distortion. According to the Tur (OC 492), Masechet Soferim, and Tosafos, these Monday-Thursday-Monday fasts address the risk that the prolonged kedusha and simcha of the Shalosh Regalim might spill into kalus rosh—overeating, overdrinking, inappropriate mingling, or diluted holiness amid the feasting. We either overdid the physical joy or under-guarded the spiritual boundaries. The practice draws from Iyov 1:5, who brought offerings lest his children “cursed God in their hearts” after days of celebration. The fasts are observed in the following month because fasting is prohibited in Nissan and Tishrei.

(In some cases we UNDERDID the simchas yom tov.  There might be no bigger undoing of the simcha than skipping it entirely and going right to the fast.  It might ironically invite a whole new set of fasts.)

Importantly, Behab is not a communal fast decreed by Beis Din. It is a private minhag for yechidim—pious individuals voluntarily correcting their own possible excesses during a mitzvah. It is not obligatory, and many poskim exempt weaker generations when fasting would impair health or function.

The author hijacks this modest, personal, higher-level individual corrective for individual lapses in kedusha and transforms it into a public summons for national guilt over politics, war conduct, and how we appear to the diaspora and the world. That is not Behab. It is therapeutic merachem al ha’achzarim—recursing responsibility onto ourselves before – and ultimately, even instead of –  administering the corrective the moment demands.

This is suicidal Jewish self-flagellation masquerading as teshuvah. While the author  acknowledges that “many of these battles were forced upon us by an existential reality,” he still  immediately pivots to “political shortcomings,” “missteps in the war’s execution,” words that “could have been withheld,” and a “dignity we should have preserved even in disagreement.”

The pattern is familiar.

It echoes King Shaul, the tzaddik who was merachem al ha’achzarim. Commanded to annihilate Amalek, Shaul spares Agag under misguided “kechol hagoyim” monarchic protocol, and the  sheep for sacrificial optics (after he considered that he was being too harsh with “civilians” but dispatched them anyway). The script repeats: fight if necessary, but tie one hand behind your back with guilt and performative condemnation. Merciful to our destroyers, cruel to our own survival.

It echoes the fatal anivus of R. Zechariah ben Avkilus: in TB Gittin 56a, his excessive humility and fear of impropriety prevents decisive action against the treacherous Bar Kamtza. The Gemara’s verdict is unambiguous: “The humility of R. Zechariah ben Avkilus burned our Temple, destroyed our House, and exiled us.”  Language like “it deeply pains me… with great humility and trepidation… failure to condemn… tarnished Torah-true Zionism… drained our youth… the ugliness”—is the same scrupulous hand-wringing while the house burns. This is not courageous reflection; it is the paralysis that invites churban.

It inverts Torah priorities by insisting our “genuine national teshuvah” and “moral commitment” will make us a beacon “for the global community.” The global community was meant to earn that light by acting human first. Instead, they weaponized “international law” exclusively against Jews while funding, justifying, and celebrating our genocidal enemies. October 7 becomes “resistance”; Jewish self-defense becomes “genocide.” Our internal debates do not cause chillul Hashem. The selective savagery of the “global community” does.

The metaphor collapses most dramatically on its own terms. Behab follows Yom Tov—the unapologetic simcha of Pesach (national liberation), Shavuos (the giving of the Torah), and Sukkos (divine protection). The fast is a minor, elite tweak after celebrating our uniqueness, our victory, our chosenness.  Our “light seeker” skips that prerequisite entirely and turns every Yom Tov into a Nakba, handing our enemies the narrative they crave: that Jewish independence and strength are things to mourn.

This is not teshuvah but surrender disguised as anivus.  In contrast, on Yom Ha’atzmaut, a growing custom is to recite full Hallel—precisely the complete, joyous version we withhold on the latter days of Pesach. The popular notion that we say half-Hallel at the end of Pesach purely because “we feel bad about the drowning Egyptians” is largely a minority opinion and recent imposition on “taamei minhagim”; the primary Talmudic reason (Arachin 10a-b) is technical, concerning the lack of new korbanot. Even granting the softer midrash, our willingness to say full Hallel on Yom Ha’atzmaut declares something thunderous: we celebrate the downfall of our current enemies even more unreservedly.

And while Behab is reserved for yechidim, there is a much more tziburi attitude to convey in ba’avod resha’im rina: joyous shouting when the wicked themselves perish (Mishlei 11:10). TB Megilla 16a makes this explicit: we do not merely accept the downfall of our mortal external enemies, but rejoice in it fully, even adding insult to injury as when Mordechai kicked the humiliated Haman while the villain pathetically tried to invoke “do not rejoice when your enemy falls.”

The Mishna in Sanhedrin 4:5 reinforces this in the context of capital testimony: when resha’im—the evildoers—are erased, there is rina.  This stands in deliberate contrast to Beruriah’s famous plea in Berachot 10a (“yitamu chata’im—let the sins perish, not the sinners”). Even she would draw a line at certain inversions: when internal hand-wringers and therapeutic paralysis-peddlers cross into actively harming Klal Yisrael—by recursing blame onto us alone, inverting our self-defense into “genocide,” and weakening resolve in the face of existential threats—they become resha’im in their own right. At that point, the verse demands avod resha’im, not polite nuance.

The flaw has never been in us; we never turned off the or.  The global community either simply refuse to see it, or try to misappropriate it, and – when that fails – keeps trying to extinguish it; they’ve turned the or into gaslight.  True rectification begins where the Torah begins with the megadef: identify the blasphemy against Jewish survival and excise it without apology. No backstory. No recursion of blame. And, like the incident of the megadef, where our declared mortal enemies and their aiders and abetters have even forfeited the usual due process. Just administer the harshest corrective—and recite full-throated Hallel at the sight of our enemies’ backbreaking, unbearable, and permanent Nakba.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)