One of the central teachings of Torah is that all human beings are made in the Image of God. That teaching and what flows from it are at the heart of Jewish prohibitions on the use of torture.
Indeed, the Rabbis –-- living under the Roman Empire –-- enrich that teaching as a direct challenge to the power of Rome, the Imperial fount of torture. One of them asks, “What does this mean, 'In God’s image?'” And another answers, “When Caesar puts his image on a coin, all the coins come out identical. When that One who is beyond all rulers puts the divine image on a 'coin,' all the coins come out unique.”
Torture tries to destroy the Image of God and replace it with Caesar's image on the human soul and body. In the experience of the Rabbis, it was Imperial Rome that used torture.
To this very day, the liturgy for Yom Kippur, when more Jews are in the synagogue than at any other time, and in a more deeply devotional and covenantal place than at any other time, includes the graphic and horrific descriptions of Rome's torturing to death ten of the greatest rabbis of that or any age.
I think this understanding of the Image of God casts a profound light on the story in three of the Christian Gospels in which two troublemakers come up to Jesus and ask him a question: "Should we pay taxes with this coin?"
They evidently hoped to trap him into violating either Jewish or Roman law. For the coin had on it an image of Caesar, marked "Caesar, imperator, divus: Emperor, God." If Jesus said to use the coin, he might be violating the Jewish law against idolatry. If he said not to, he would surely be violating Roman law. So, Jesus, in a totally Jewish fashion, answers the question with a question. He asks “Whose image is on the coin?” They respond, more or less -- “Caesar’s, dummy, that’s the point.”
So Jesus says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” and Christians have been arguing about what that means for 2,000 years.
But now take into account the Rabbinic teaching that Caesar puts his rigid uniformity upon his coins, whereas the Infinite God puts uniqueness into God's coins: every human being. Surely Jesus, the radical rabbi from the Galilee, knew this teaching. So I believe there is a missing line in the Gospel story -- either Jesus didn’t need to say it, or it was censored out because it was so radical: “Whose image is on that coin?" he said, and they answered: "Caesar's."
And then I think he said, "And whose image is on this coin?" putting his hand on the shoulders of the troublemakers. Only then did he say, “So give to Caesar what is Caesar's -- and give to God what is God's!”
And just as Jewish tradition insists that on Yom Kippur the community relive the torture of ten rabbis by Rome, so Christianity insists that on Good Friday the community relive the torture of Jesus by Rome.
That is what empires do: they torture. The US in the Philippines a century ago, as in Iraq and Afghanistan today. No empire can survive without resorting to torture against those who refuse to bow to its power -- by act or even by omission or even by sheer accident of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those who get in the way of its demand that human beings abandon their uniqueness and bow to uniformity, as Caesar presses his own image onto every human body, drowning the Image of God in a flood of agony.
So what does this teach us about America today? That we have a choice more basic than whether we close Guantanamo or – as is now being done by the Obama Administration -- we double the size of Bagram, a similar prison in Afghanistan.
The choice is whether America is to celebrate the Infinite God or the tyrannical Caesar. To affirm the Image of God in every human being, or to fall at the feet of Empire. Torture is both a grave sin and a major crime. Refusing to "look back" at the use of torture in the past, refusing to try as criminals those who committed the crime, failing to excommunicate those who committed the sin, means refusing to heal the future.
It would be the same as ripping the crucifixion out of Good Friday or the torture of the ten rabbis out of Yom Kippur. After all, it merely happened long ago. Under a long-gone Empire. What is the point of remembering?
* Rabbi Arthur Waskow Awaskow@shalomctr.org is director of The Shalom Center, the author of
Godwrestling – Round 2, and co-author of
The Tent of Abraham.