Samson:  The Blessings and Challenges of Physical Strength
Sermon, May 25, 2007
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

Last night, Barbara and I watched the academy award winning short film “West Bank Story,” a take-off on “West Side Story,” dealing with dueling falafel stands, one Jewish and one Arab.  At one point the Jews say:  “We are going to construct a wall between our stands,” to which the Arabs respond, laughing, “Jews, in construction!” as if it were the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard.

We Jews are not known for our physical strength or prowess.  The stereotype of the Jewish male is one of weakness and passivity. 

The contrast between weak Jews and strong gentiles may go back to Jacob and his twin brother, Esau.  Esau is described as red and hairy, like an animal, at birth, in contract to Jacob who emerges grasping the heel of his older brother.  As the boys grow, Esau becomes a hunter, a man of the outdoors, whereas “Jacob was a mild man who stayed in the camp.”   When Isaac tries to determine the true identity of the son before him, he remarks that “the voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau,” which the rabbis interpret to show a contrast between the spiritual strength of Jacob and his descendants and the physical strength of Esau and his descendants. 

Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, in his book Searching for My Brothers:  Jewish Men in a Gentile World,” points out that it is common to consider Jewish men to be effeminate.  Even Adolph Jellinek, a 19^th century Viennese rabbi, “portrayed the Jew as inherently female, and the Jews as the feminine nation among the nations” according to Salkin.

In the same vein, a friend once asked Barbara, only somewhat facetiously, if we had Jewish children or children who played sports, and couldn’t believe that Micah was freshman athlete of the year at his high school.

But there is an exception.  At the end of this week’s haftarah reading from the book of Judges, we are introduced to Samson son of Manoah and his unnamed wife.  Manoah’s wife had been barren; but an angel of God appeared to her and told her that she would bear a son.  She is warned against drinking wine or other intoxicant and told not to cut her son’s hair, “for he is to be a nazirite to God from the womb on.” (Judges 13:5)

The haftarah ends with the birth of Samson, so we do not get to read about any of his exploits, which is too bad because Samson’s story provides an appropriate context for the vital discussion of the blessings and challenges of physical strength.

Samson is quite a character, in all that word entails.  His life revolves around relationships with three Philistine women.  Now, of course, the Philistines would become the hated enemy of the Israelites at the time of the first kings of Israel.  But at this stage, the animosity is not as intense and there is archeological evidence of significant contact between the Philistines and the Israelite community at Bet Shemesh.  This historical tidbit is particularly important because Samson’s name, Shimshon is clearly related to the word shemesh, meaning sun [s-u-n].

In fact, the article on Samson in The Anchor Bible Dictionary points to a connection to solar worship, beginning with his name, but also including his blinding, which is analogous to a solar eclipse and the name of his third female interest, Delilah, which is similar to the Hebrew word for night, lailah.

In any case, Samson first encounters a Philistine woman while in Timnah, and demands that his parents arrange for her to be his wife.  Although they object that he wants “to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines,” they go to Timnah in search of her. 

On the way, Samson encounters a fierce lion.  “He tore him asunder with his bare hands as one might tear a kid asunder,” the text tells us.  On his next trip to Timnah, he comes across the carcass of the lion which now filled with bees and honey.  Samson scoops some of the honey and eats it as he travels, and even has enough to share with his parents when he returns home. 

He finally returns to Timnah to marry the woman, which was celebrated by a seven-day feast.  Samson tells the people a riddle, promising them 30 linen tunics and 30 sets of clothing if they can solve it, but demanding the same payment from them if they fail. 

They agree and Samson shares this riddle:  “Out of the eater came something to eat; out of the strong came something sweet.”  They are stumped and ask Samson’s wife to try to get him to tell her the answer, threatening to destroy her and her father’s house by fire.  She approaches him tearfully, but he fends her off, until the seventh day, when he finally relents and tells her the answer.  She, of course, passes it along to her people who --as the deadline nears—give him the answer.  In anger, he goes to Ashkelon, kills 30 men and takes their clothing to give to those who answered the riddle.

Later, Samson returns to reclaim his wife, but his father-in-law tells him that he thought Samson had taken a dislike to her, so he gave her to his wedding companion.  Instead, his father-in-law offers her younger sister who “is more beautiful than she.”  Angered, Samson captures 300 foxes, attaches them tail to tail with a torch between their tails and lets them loose among the grain of the Philistines, destroying their harvest.

The Philistines, after taking vengeance on Samson’s wife and her father, approach the people of Judah and demand that they turn over Samson to be punished for what he has done to them.  Some 3000 men of Judah go to Samson, who is hiding the cave of Etam, to take him and turn him over to the Philistines.  He agrees to go with them, as long as they promise not to attack him.

So they tie him with rope and bring him to the Philistines, but God’s spirit grips him and “the bonds melted off his hands.”  He picks up the jawbone of an ass and kills 1000 men with it. 

Next, Samson goes to Gaza and sleeps with a prostitute.  The residents learn of this and wait by the city gate to ambush him.  But Samson grabs the doors of the gate and pulls them out along with the frame, puts them on his shoulders and takes them away with him.

Finally, the story reaches its climax when Samson falls in love with Delilah.  The Philistines tell her to find out the secret of his strength so that they might capture him, promising her a great reward.

She asks him and he replies that tying him up with seven fresh tendons that had not been dried would make him “as weak as an ordinary man.”  The Philistines quickly do this, but Samson is easily able to tear apart the tendons. 

Delilah again asks him how to overcome his strength and he replies that using new rope would do it.  But again, he is easily able to break free from the rope.  One more time she asks him and he tells her to weave seven locks of his hair into a web and pin it to the wall with a peg, but once again, he is able to pull the peg from the wall and get free.

Exasperated that he is deceiving her, Delilah continues to press him and finally Samson reveals that he is a nazarite and that no razor has ever cut his hair which is the source of his strength.

Delilah then lulls him to sleep and cuts off his hair.  This time, indeed, he has lost his strength, allowing the Philistines to seize him and gouge out his eyes.  They mock him, making him dance for them and then bind him between two pillars of their pagan shrine.  Samson calls upon God, asking for strength to take vengeance upon the Philistines, and pulls down the two pillars, which bring the temple down upon him and upon the Philistines. 

What a story!  There are many intriguing aspects of it, but I want to focus on Samson’s strength.  There is no disputing his raw physical strength.  It serves him well through most of his life:  when he slays the lion and when he takes vengeance on the 30 men in Ashkelon. 

For most of his life, his physical strength can make up for other glaring weaknesses:  his predilection to act on impulse, such as when he demands that he marry the Philistine woman, despite the prohibition of such relationships; his inability to keep a secret, especially around women; and his penchance for wreaking vengeance on the Philistines.  He may be physically strong, but when it comes to controlling his passions, he is quite weak.

In Pirkei Avot we are taught:  “Who is strong?  One who controls his yetzer, his passion.”  Samson is not able to control his yetzer his impulsiveness in many regards.  For much of his life he makes up for this flaw with his physical strength, but in the end that too deserts him and leads to his demise.  The clear message of this story is that physical strength, in and of itself, cannot make up for other weaknesses. Physical strength alone is not enough to survive and thrive.

This story has important lessons for the Jewish people today.  Throughout most of our history, Judaism has survived in a position of weakness and vulnerability.  We were, for the most part, dependent upon the good will of the ruling authorities.  At times it meant that we were able to live in relative peace and even prosperity.  But too often it meant that we were vulnerable to the whims of the political leadership or of the majority, with the leadership’s acquiescence.  Too often we were victims of oppression and persecution; too often we were forced to leave our homes, or worse,  were slaughtered before we could escape.

If there is any lesson of the Holocaust it is that we can never again allow ourselves to depend upon others for our survival and well-being.  With the creation of the state of Israel, we, as a people, can flex our physical strength. 

And it is not just the fact that Israel has an army that has successfully fought wars and combated terrorism at home and abroad.  Part of the Zionist agenda involved returning the people to the land and embracing physical labor.  Listen to these words of Alef. Dalet Gordon:  “The Jewish people has been completely cut off from nature and imprisoned within city walls these two thousand years.  We have become accustomed to every form of life, except to a life of labor.  We lack the principal ingredient for national life.  We lack the habit of labor.”

Gordon, and other early labor Zionists rejected the Judaism of the Eastern European shtetl, as well as the assimilated Jews of the big cities and endeavored to create a new Jew, devoted to physical labor and devotion to the land.  They recognized that in order to create a strong people with a strong country they needed strong individuals.  So they worked the land and took up arms to protect and defend themselves, and indeed, were able to reshape Jewish identity. 

They embraced Jewish heroes such as Samson and the Maccabees, and their descendents invoked the memories of the defenders of Masada, who died as martyrs, bringing inductees into the Israeli army to the ancient fortress. 

But they and we have learned that physical strength alone is not enough.  Physical strength can offer a certain amount of protection and security, much needed in this age of terrorism, but by itself physical strength cannot bring us the comfort and security that we would like.  The story of Samson reminds us that we need more than physical strength to assure our survival. 

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