Smite Be Something To It

The aspen trees need no social distance. April 8 in Aspen, Colorado.

I’ve been struggling with something very specific recently. No, I’m not talking about social distancing, figuring out my local market’s delivery schedule so I can get fresh vegetables, or deciding whether to say something to the unbelievably selfish people in my community who seem to not get it. Those are certainly challenges related to my present quandary, but they’re not my central point here.

At the moment, I am struggling with conjugating a verb. It’s not a word we use very often, and it’s definitely a wrinkle of translating biblical text and concepts into modern English as we experience the COVID-19 pandemic. And I find it entertaining - the verb, that is, and not the pandemic. I am struggling to conjugate the past and conditional tenses of the verb "to smite".

Conjugating “to smite” is made a little tougher given that the only beings that we commonly think of who could have smote (see what I mean?!) are pretty lofty. My informal view without an exhaustive survey is that Moses, King David, and King Solomon could all have smotten (?) people for offenses. Lohengrin, Shiva, and Zeus certainly possessed the ability to smite someone. Those of us whose religiosity is squarely in the Five Books of Moses and are therefore more accustomed to a fire-and-brimstone, plagues-upon-Egypt relationship with our G-d understand the possibility of being both “smote” and “smitten” by our Eternal Ruler at the same time. The questions to which I seek answers are whether we were smotted; would we have been smott had we not washed our hands; when was the last time you were smotten? Is someone who has been smotted considered smut? It’s vexing.

Although from the same root word, “smitten” has an entirely different connotation in the modern context. Somehow being bowled over by a stunning beauty seems more enjoyable than being struck down by lightening for eating bacon or making matzo balls with butter. Need I say more on that subject?!

One of the philosophical and even theological aspects of the current state of the world that I do genuinely find interesting is that the changes we are all working hard to make in our everyday lives, our societal behavior, are for the benefit of all. Success or failure of social distancing and the like is determined on the basis of the collective outcome, not merely whether we ourselves survive and remain healthy. Yes, there have been and will continue to be a dizzying daily array of heart wrenching individual tragedies that I have no intention of minimizing. Still, when this is all over and we’re back to business as usual we’ll need to consider how each of our behavior contributed to the health and welfare of our community, our nation, our society, and the world in which we live.

My friend Jiri and I had one of our classic intellectual conversations yesterday about theological conflicts between competing belief systems within the same religions - those who believe in individual versus collective salvation. We agreed that COVID-19 necessarily grounds he and I in the collective view. I am not saying that those who fail to social distance or do whatever else we should be doing to “flatten the curve” of the spread of the new coronavirus will be smotten, smited, smot … I don’t think that they’ll be struck by lightning, turned into pillars of salt, hit by a falling satellite, or crushed in a trash compactor. I do believe, however, that those members of our communities who fail to act in our collective best interests will have shown the rest of us their true nature.

The many belief systems that I have studied – my own and others – all include some sort of judgement of how we’re doing (or how we did) as people. I do not personally possess the ability (or the desire) to smite someone, and I do not sit in judgement in any sort of official or ecclesiastical way. I do, however get to choose the people with whom I spend my time. This pandemic is unlike anything we've seen for generations, and I reserve the right to use what I see as a litmus test of character and not invite people to my table when we all can gather for matzo ball soup, or brisket, or a cup of coffee, or take some Temerity laps, or a bike ride …

I am confident that the overwhelming majority of people in the communities where I live will choose to apply themselves towards the welfare of all mankind. Let me be clear, my matzo ball soup is pretty good, but it clearly is lower on the priority list than the greater good of society.