“Chapter 16 -- The Fence
A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens
that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob
carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. (There is a familiar
version of this story, but a friend of mine, a Speaker for the Dead, has told
me of two other rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm
going to tell you.)
The rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of
respect for him the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their
hands, "Is there anyone here," he says to them, "who has not
desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?"
They murmur and say, "We all know the desire. But,
Rabbi, none of us has acted
on it."
The rabbi says, "Then kneel down and give thanks that
God made you strong."
He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the
market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, "Tell the lord
magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he'll know I am his loyal
servant."
So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to
protect itself from disorder.
Another rabbi, another city, He goes to her and stops the
mob, as in the other story, and says, "Which of you is without sin? Let
him cast the first stone." The people are abashed, and they forget their
unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday, they
think, I may be like this woman, and I'll hope for forgiveness and another
chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated.
As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the
ground, the rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the
woman's head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her
skull and dashes her brains onto the cobblestones.
"Nor am I without sin," he says to the people.
"But if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon
be dead, and our city with it." So the woman died because her community
was too rigid to endure her deviance.
The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is
so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and
rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to
expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still
forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.
-- San Angelo,
Letters to on Incipient Heretic, trans. Amai a Tudomundo Para
Que Deus Vos Ame Crist o, 103:72:54:2”
(Orson Scott Card, The
Speaker of the Dead)
