Image: Tissot- The woman with an infirmity of 18 years

Asked in an interview on the podcast Unholy Things on August 5, 2025, the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari was asked:  October the 7^th, 2023, till now, where does that fit – is it a footnote or a chapter in the sweep of Jewish history?

Listen here

Harari responded: I think it’s one of the – could be one of the biggest turning points in Jewish history-  maybe the biggest since the fall of the temple in 70 CE  – since the Roman conquest. Because Judaism has survived it became the world champion in surviving catastrophes, but it never faced a catastrophe like we are dealing with right now which is a spiritual catastrophe for Judaism itself because what is happening right now in Israel could basically – I think destroy, void, 2000 years of Jewish thinking and culture and existence. That the worst case scenario that we are facing right now – what we are facing is the potential of an ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza and the West Bank resulting in the expulsion of 2 million maybe more Palestinians; the establishment of greater Israel and the disintegration of Israeli democracy; the creation of a new Israel which is based on an ideology of Jewish supremacy and on the worship of what were completely anti-Jewish values for more than last two millennia; a country based on the worship of power and violence and which is militarily strong – it will survive – it will be militarily strong  – it will have alliances with various bullies around the world. It will also be economically viable, and this will be the spiritual disaster because this will be the new Judaism that all Jews in the world will have to deal with. It will not disappear again. Jews are very good dealing with catastrophes from the Roman conquest to the Holocaust but this will not be a military catastrophe. The state will actually be successful in military and economic terms and it will make the challenge much, much bigger. No Jew, say, in London or New York or anywhere else, we’ll be able to say this is not the real Judaism.

There is one episode in the iconic TV drama, The West Wing, that is forever etched in my memory. The background to this particular episode concerns the President being asked to pardon a man awaiting execution on death row. Attending Shabbat Service, Toby Ziegler, the White House Chief of Communications, is puzzled by the rabbi’s sermon, in which he states that vengeance is un-Jewish. Puzzled, Toby questions the rabbi about the Torah teaching – an eye for an eye. He reminds the rabbi that throughout Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, the Torah prescribes the death penalty for a large number of offences, mostly religious in nature. The rabbi replies that maybe the Torah sanctioned death penalty represented the best teaching at that time, but that the later rabbis in the Talmud went to great lengths to confine the meaning of the Torah texts to forms of reparation that did not require death. Jewish thought moved on as it deepened, over time, the human understanding of God’s justice and mercy.

Jewish thought moved on as it deepened, over time, the human understanding of God’s justice and mercy.

In Luke 13, we eavesdrop on an encounter between Jesus and religious authority over the case of a woman Luke describes as seriously crippled. Actually, crippled is a rather smooth English rendering that does not do justice to the specificity of Luke’s use of the Greek synkypto, which means bent together– as in doubled over. The woman is more than crippled – she appears to be suffering from a form of spondylo-arthritis known as Marie-Strümpell Disease.

Imagine for a moment the experience of being doubled over. Imagine what happens to your breath as the doubling over of your spine constricts the movement of your lungs. Imagine having this condition for 18 years.

Noticing the woman, Jesus stops proceedings by placing his hand on her and saying, “You are released from your weakness.” She immediately straightens and gives glory to God. Cause for rejoicing all around, you may think? Not a bit of it. Jesus’s action has provoked fierce indignation as the leader of the synagogue accuses him of breaking the Sabbath.

Last week, I spoke about the role of non-violent resistance in Jesus’ ministry, and here Luke presents an instructive example of this in action. The encounter with the woman bent over is not a story of miraculous healing from infirmity – an action the synagogue leader suggests would be more appropriate for the other days of the week. However, Jesus does not say, “Woman, be healed from your infirmity“; he says, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” The question here is, what ails her? Or, more accurately, what is the source of her ailment? In other words, this is not a story of healing at all. Its a story about exorcism.

In the spirit of non-violent resistance, Jesus confronts the religious leadership with the central question: ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham who Satan bound for 18 years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath Day?  Notice how Jesus reframes the context – reminding the synagogue leader of this woman’s status in the community as a daughter of Abraham. He also throws in the reference to satanic binding – implying a connection to the Sabbath Day. In other words, Jesus is signalling that his diagnosis of her condition is spiritual and not physiological.

This is a story of two encounters – with the woman and the religious authorities. In his reference to satanic binding, Jesus is exposing what’s really going on behind the smokescreen of religion. The symbolism here is of a woman doubled over under the weight of the religious-inspired collective moral judgment upon her.

The authority exercised by religion, in this story, has become a smokescreen to obscure the fear-driven hardening of the human heart?  For the ancients, and even for us today, fear of illness motivates moral judgment as an attempt to explain away our fear of what we either do not understand or are unable to control.

Why has Jesus identified the woman’s condition as satanic binding? The French philosopher, René Girard, states it neatly -Satan exists, [only] because we exist. By this, he means that evil is an anthropological – a human, cultural construction, not a cosmic rival to the victory of God.

In religious tradition and its institutions, evil is to be found in the hardening of the human heart, which privileges the protection of human power – a universal tendency to resist the continual reshaping by the demands of divine justice and mercy. If there is a judgment to be borne, then it’s that we are all found wanting when faced with the judgment of God’s justice and mercy.

Here, we come back to heart of the matter in Luke 13: 10-17 where we find in Jesus’ confrontation with the synagogue leadership a foretaste of both later New Testament and rabbinic traditions that came to understand that it is compassion and mercy not vengeance that lies at the heart of divine justice.

By his reference to Satan’s binding, Jesus is drawing attention to the spiritual effects of the weight imposed upon an individual when religion as the defense of human hard heartedness. In other words, he’s saying to the religious authorities, what can be more appropriate than on the Sabbath Day – to liberate this woman from the satanic bondage you’ve imposed upon her by your perversion of religion as a smokescreen for the hardness of your hearts?

Toby Zeigler’s rabbi reminded him that Jewish thought is continually evolving, deepening over time, the human understanding of God’s justice and mercy. Harari’s words are a fearful warning about the spiritual and moral consequences for Israel in departing from this 2000-year line of development- and by extension – his words are a warning to us of the immanent spiritual and moral dangers in this current American political landscape as religion becomes contaminated by political ambition and the perversion of nationalist aspiration.

The question we always need to ask is: how is religious tradition being used? Is it being used to imprison or to liberate? Is our Christianity a conduit for a deepening of our understanding of mercy at the heart of God’s justice, or is it a smokescreen obscuring the hardening of the human heart? When hearts harden, all kinds of violence and cruelty become justifiable.

Image: Tissot- The women with an infirmity of 18 years

In religious tradition and institutions, evil is to be found in the hardening of the human heart which privileges the protection of human power – a universal tendency to resist the continual reshaping by the demands of divine justice and mercy. If there is a judgment to be borne, then it’s that we are all found wanting when faced with the judgement of God’s justice and mercy.

Revisiting the story of the healing of the woman bent double from Luke 13 triggered memory for me. In an episode of the iconic series The West Wing, now alas, a faint whisper from a long-gone age, the issue of capital punishment is explored in the context of a request for a Presidential pardon for a man waiting on death row. Toby Ziegler, who is White House head of communications questions his Rabbi after Shabbat Service during which the Rabbi stated that vengeance is un-Jewish. Toby counters citing the Torah’s prescription of the death penalty for countless offences and infringements of the religious code.

The Rabbi replies that the Torah represented the best teaching in an historical context that saw the death penalty as the ultimate expression of reparation, i.e., sacrifice to God. He goes on to remind Toby of how over the following centuries the Rabbi’s in their commentaries on the Torah texts go to great lengths to confine and restrict the application of the death penalty by redefining reparation in ways that avoided the execution of the offender. Vengeance became un-Jewish – resulting from a deepening – a gradual evolution in Jewish understanding of divine justice.

In Luke 13:10-17 Jesus performs a healing on the Sabbath provoking a hostile response from the synagogue leader who objects to this as an infringement of the Sabbath work prohibition.

Luke 13:10-17 presents an example of Jesus’ embrace of nonviolent protest – in this instance against a religious tradition that is not evolving towards a deeper understanding of divine justice and mercy but rather the opposite – an interpretation of the tradition reflective of a hardening of the human heart. History reveals that if unchallenged religion – designed to be a conduit for divine grace – will inevitably degrade into an instrument for prevailing human interests – the business as usual of worldly oppression and discrimination.

For modern ears it’s easy to hear this episode as just another example of Jesus’ miraculous ability to heal sickness. Luke describes a woman seriously crippled. Yet, crippled is a rather smooth English rendering of Luke’s Greek synkypto – bent together– as in doubled over. She appears to be suffering from a form of spondylitis known as Marie-Strümpell Disease.

Noticing her, Jesus stops proceedings and addresses her saying you are released from your weakness. Placing his hand on her, she immediately straightens and gives glory to God causing the leader of the synagogue to accuse Jesus of breaking the Law of Moses by performing an act of work on the Sabbath.

Jesus accuses the religious leadership of hypocrisy. Citing the Sabbath exception to feed and water livestock – he argues that if this is allowed out of necessity then:

... ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham who Satan bound for 18 long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?  

For Jesus, the hypocrisy lies in the use religious tradition to imprison and not to liberate – a use of tradition to mask the hardness of the human heart.

The gist of this encounter centers on Jesus’ recognition of the woman’s ailment as satanic binding. According to Jewish understanding of the time illness was either a punishment for sin – illness as moral judgement, or the result of satanic influences – illness as possession. What is significant in this encounter is Jesus’ prompt diagnosis of satanic influence.

This is no ordinary healing – if there is ever such a thing in Jesus’ ministry. His intention here is not to alleviate the woman’s physical suffering but to free her from bondage – an action he proclaims as particularly appropriate on the Sabbath as an action that give glory to God.

From Episcopal pulpits it is unusual – at least these days -to hear mention of Satan and satanic influences. So let me say a little to redress this deficiency.

In The book of Revelation, chapter 12 we read:

Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

This passage has fed the gnostic heresy that pictures humanity caught in an epic struggle between good and evil– between God and the Devil. Today this ancient heresy is very much alive and kicking in conservative and nationalist Christian circles. According to this worldview, any misstep on our part runs the risk of tilting the balance between the competing forces of good and evil. The mechanistic imperative to save souls is the only way to tilt the balance back in God’s favor.

Such a viewpoint is a profound denial of the victory of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a willful turning away from the power of the Easter story of victory and hope in favor of an ancient Middle-eastern  story of the unending struggle between good and evil – which is neither Jewish or Christian.

That this heresy of cosmic battle between good and evil, between God and the devil is embraced among conspiracy minded Christians should come as no surprise. However, the imagery of Revelation is clear. Lucifer-Satan is defeated. His fall to earth is a metaphor for evil as something to be found only on earth – rooted in the human heart and enshrined in social systems of control and oppression.

The French philosopher, Rene Girard, states it neatly -Satan exists, [only] because we exist. By this he means that evil is an anthropological – a human, cultural construction, not a cosmic rival to the victory of God.

In religious tradition and institutions, evil is to be found in the hardening of the human heart which privileges the protection of human power – a universal tendency to resist the continual reshaping by the demands of divine justice and mercy. If there is a judgment to be borne, then it’s that we are all found wanting when faced with the judgement of God’s justice and mercy.

Here, we come back to heart of the matter in Luke 13: 10-17 where we find in Jesus’ confrontation with the synagogue leadership a foretaste of both later New Testament and rabbinic traditions that came to understand that it is compassion and mercy not vengeance that lies at the heart of divine justice.