Pilegesh 2012 and What to Do

According to many people, the story of Pilegesh B'giva is the most terrible in the whole Tanach. It is not the textual commonalities between Sodom and Giva that connect them as subversive sequels such as a mod of men "surrounding the house" (Genesis 19: 4 & Judges 19:22), nor is it the attempted sodomy with the visiting men; "bring out the men" (Genesis 19: 5 & Judges 19: 22) and lastly, it is not the offering of virgin loved ones (Genesis 19:8 & Judges 19:24). The reason the story of Pilegesh B'Giva is so terrible is there is no human or divine intervention, nobody steps up to protect the outsiders. In Sodom, the angels step in and blind everyone involved (Genesis 19: 11). However in Pilegesh B'Giva, nobody saves the concubine. She is raped to death, cut into pieces, and scattered across Israel. Sodom seemed almost like an unreal city because even before the story of Sodom, God was considering destroying it, turning it into dust, and eventually he does. Pilegesh B'Giva is very real. There is no divine commentary, perhaps because Judges takes place much later than Genesis. There is no king, man is left with utter freewill and the result of this autonomy is evil. However, is the behavior evil when it is normative in society and passed down from generation to generation? Should we expect someone to have a moral compass, when everyone is rather evil. The answer is ultimately yes

The problem I am addressing is high school uniformity stripping individuals of their individuality. In the past year, there has been an onslaught of suicides in homosexual teens in the United States. Often the cause is years of bullying and the emotional distress being an outsider in a system that is built for the normal students. Groups of teenagers seem to mindlessly pick on outsiders and always have; whether it was black students, hispanic students, middle eastern students, poor students, the minority is always the target.  People are afraid to break out of their social groups and stand up for what is right. In the Breakfast Club, each teenager is taken out of his/her clique and put into detention with people from other groups. Throughout the movie, the walls come down; meaning everyone becomes more real with each other and reveals some part of themselves that was unknown. They become individuals, but near the end of the movie Claire states they probably won't be friends on Monday, even though they got along on a real level. In this sense, Pilegesh B'Giva and the modern world seen extremely connected.

So, what will it take for teenagers to break away from their social groups and accept outsiders? Hopefully it will not come to outcasted minorities being cut up and sent to each state in America. Teenagers need to adopt an Arendtian way of thinking. By adopting an Arendtian philosophy I meant, using thought, judgement, and taking into consideration everyones equal humanity. According to Arendt, if you think, will, and judge you're exercising you're freewill as well as prohibiting yourself from doing evil. If students and the people of Giva and Sodom thought about the people they were hurting instead of abstracting them as foreigners or outsiders, they could not possibly come to the conclusion that mental or physical assault is okay.

My proposal is that schools implement a Challenge Day-esque dialoge between students in schools and schools teach about personal responsibility and consequence of actions. I assert that if Dharun Ravi had thought about his actions and the consequences that could have, and the humanity he was stripping from his roomante, Tyler Clementi, he would not possibly have been able to do such unthoughtful, mundane acts of evil. Just as, if the people of Giva had thought as individuals about the young woman's life they were mindlessly taking, they wouldn't possibly have been able to carry through with it.