Whether or not Avraham was finished speaking, whether or not he ultimately did come to terms with Hashem, the last line of Genesis 18 contains the most significant aspect of the conversation that gets overlooked by scholars: the revelation of Hashem’s (if not also Avraham’s) final stance on collateral damage. Namely: that some collateral damage is acceptable.
And how much is some? How much collateral damage? At first, it seems easy to calculate: 9 parts per the population of Sodom. And scholars do have a rough idea of that population — between 600 and 1200. But then, on second thought, neither Avraham nor Hashem would speak of children as being righteous or wicked (until one comes of age, one’s behavior is attributed to one’s parents), so scholars must subtract the number of Sodomite males under the age of thirteen and Sodomite females under the age of twelve from the denominator. Scholars don’t know this number, but can assume, conservatively (in terms of allowable collateral damage), that the percentage of children in Sodom was equivalent to the percentage of children in Jordan today ≈ 40 %, which is relatively low for that region.
So the denominator (the estimated population of Sodom minus 40 % of itself) is somewhere between 360 and 720. The acceptable proportion of collateral damage, then, is somewhere between 9 parts per 360 and 9 parts per 720. Reduced to their greatest common denominators, these proportions become, respectively, 1 part per 40 and 1 part per 80.
In other words: If a scholar were to approach the issue of collateral damage as conservatively as possible, that scholar would conclude that to kill 1 righteous person in the course of killing 79 or more wicked ones is acceptable to Hashem. If, on the other hand, a scholar were to approach the issue of collateral damage as liberally as possible, that scholar would conclude that to kill 1 righteous person in the course of killing 39 or more wicked ones is acceptable to Hashem.
In either case, to say “Hashem treats the righteous with mercy” is omissive.
Hashem treats the righteous with mercy when it is cost-efficient.
His standards of cost-efficiency are the ones by which Israelites must strive to live. Therefore even those who play the numbers as loosely as possible cannot justify bringing a proportion of collateral damage that is greater than 2.5 % of the total damage brought. When death is the unit by which damage is measured (as seen above), these calculations are simple enough. When injury is the unit of measurement, however, it is a bit more complicated. How many righteous noses, for example, may be collaterally broken in the course of smashing 39 wicked femurs? Certainly more than one — a broken nose is little more than a flesh wound compared to a broken leg — but how many? And what is the acceptable ratio of crushed and righteous strong-side wrists to crushed and wicked weak-side ones? It is true that without the use of his left hand, David could not have sawn past the neckbone of Goliath of Gath, and so could not have hoisted high the massive head, but without the use of his right, he would never have even felled the giant.
Patrick Drucker was in critical. A coma, the radio was saying. A broken back. Six ribs snapped. One punctured lung.
My father had some bruises. Maybe some torn ligaments. Was his damage ≤ 2.5 % of the total damage brought? I think it was — even if his ligaments were torn and Drucker didn’t die.
And so, assuming Drucker was wicked, my father’s damage was acceptable in the eyes of Hashem.
And so I found myself at odds with Hashem.
And not just Him.
Flowers turned off NPR and said, “Talk to me, man. You gotta talk.”
We were heading south on Sheridan in his old Volvo wagon. According to my dad, Sheridan was known as the second most beautiful road anywhere. It wound a lot, often sharply, and that kept you from driving too fast and missing it. For miles you could see Lake Michigan between the gaps of the tree-shaded mansions. The white one with the Spanish-tiled roof was supposedly built by Capone. A few miles farther, the road widened to four lanes and the B’hai temple appeared in the distance. In all the world, there were only seven B’hai temples. The one in Haifa was known for its garden.
“You need to talk, Gurion.”
I don’t feel like talking.
The first most beautiful road anywhere was said to be in Monte Carlo. I could never remember what it was called, but my mom had driven it, and she said Sheridan was prettier.
Flowers said, “You spooking me out.”
Heebie-jeebies, I told him.
“Oh, I see. We jokin’ around. You break my remote, quote some Lenny Bruce, stare out the window twenty minutes so salty you jaw muscles bout to tear through you cheeks, then make some silly wordplay with some racial slurs and now it’s all better. That something, man. Least it might be. I don’t think I believe you, though. I think you bottlin up. I think you gettin heavy.”
We passed Capone’s, then the B’Hai — a dome set atop a pair of stacked hexagons, all stone and white.
Flowers blew air through his lips, pulled a folded paper square from his jacket, dropped it in my lap. “Not a single redmark,” he said. “And it ain’t cause I didn’t read it.”
I unfolded it. “There is love,” it said. “There was always love, and there will be more love, always. Were there ever to be less love, we would all be at war and Your angels would learn suffering.”
I tore it seven ways.
Flowers said, “Why you do that?”
It’s nonsense, I said.
“You the one called it scripture.”
That was a mistake, I said. It’s just fiction.
He didn’t like that.
“Just fiction. You believed it well enough yesterday. Maybe what you sayin right now is just fiction. Maybe you actin a little fictional.”
Fiction is lies, I said. I said, I have no use for lies.
He liked that even less.
“So why you tell me you don’t feel like talkin?” he said.
I don’t, I said.
“No,” he said. “You don’t feel like talkin to me. That different than you don’t feel like talkin. And what you said was, ‘I don’t feel like talkin.’”
I was being polite.
“Feedin me some maggoty-ass apple and callin it protein-enriched what you doin — polite’s evasive, man.”
I just saw my dad get trampled on television. I don’t feel like talking to you about it.
“It ain’t cause you saw you dad get trampled you ain’t feel like talkin.”
Why are you picking on me?
“Pickin on you — shit. What am I, some sadsack principal? I don’t like the reason you ain’t feel like talkin to me. You someone else, it be different. Might say to myself, ‘He into some stoic, Hemingway yang.’ That ain’t you, though — you nothing like stoic. You a little boy don’t shut the fuck up less he hidin something. And that what you doin. You leavin some vital information by the wayside. I pay attention to what you say. I pay attention to you scriptures, be they disavowed or not. I pay more attention than anyone else who reads them, if there even is anyone else, but that don’t matter to you cause who the fuck am I, right? A Gentile. You friend, sure, but just some goy. No kinda person to talk to about the people you want to read you work most — people who couldn’t care less what you have to say. And they the ones put you dad in the hospital. And they the ones—”
Stop treating my paradox like it’s irony, I said. It’s not that simple.
“Retreat to the abstract — that’s good. Paradox versus irony: discuss.”
I know who hurt my dad, I said, and I’m not retreating from that, I’m trying to figure out how to approach—