Les Misérables and the Bible

RABBI BENJAMIN BLECH

Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Adapted to the stage as a musical, it became a global sensation in the 1980s, and is now an epic motion picture generating Oscar buzz.

It is a profoundly moving story that deals with some of the most universally relevant tribulations of mankind. What I find most fascinating is that in his French preface, “Philosophie, Commencement d’un Livre,” Hugo revealed that he originally intended Les Misérables as a religious book.

Of all the themes to be found in this incredible work, there is one that comes to grips with a fundamental question every one of us who aspires to live life honestly and ethically must encounter. It revolves around how best to resolve the conflict between mercy and justice.

Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert, the two chief protagonists of Les Misérables, are locked in lifelong battle. By the strict standard of law, Jean Valjean, the hero, is a criminal. He has stolen a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. For this crime, he is imprisoned for years and subsequently forced to carry a yellow badge identifying him as former convict – something that resonates with post-Holocaust Jewry far more than Hugo could ever have imagined.

His nemesis, Inspector Javert, is the ostensible defender of law and order. Remarkably, Javert has no first name. A first name is personal. It defines us as individuals. It grants us our uniqueness. It is the key to our friendship and closeness with others. Javert is too cold, too formal, too officious to be acknowledged with a first name. He is simply not sufficiently human to deserve one.

Inspector Javert is law without feeling. He seeks only blind justice. He refuses to admit the possibility of repentance. He is obsessed with re-arresting Valjean in spite of his complete rehabilitation. Javert sees himself as saintly because he dedicates his life to punishing sinners. In his fixation with sin he loses sight of the possibility for salvation.

The genius of Victor Hugo was to allow us, by way of the novel’s ability to personalize two conflicting ideologies, to grasp a truth that Jewish theologians believe is expressed in the two chief biblical names of G-d.

The opening verse of the Torah tells us, “In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.” The Divine name that is used, Elokim (transliterated with the letter K instead of H so as not to needlessly write His holy name) is synonymous with G-d as ruler. It refers to the heavenly attribute of justice, midat ha-din. It is Elokim who created laws of nature – laws unbending and indifferent to specific preferences of people.

Yet, as Rashi’s commentary explains (Genesis 1:1), in the beginning, it was His intention to create it with only the Divine standard of justice. However, He perceived that the world would not endure, so He preceded it with the Divine standard of mercy, allying it with the Divine standard of justice. That is the reason it is written in Chapter 2:4, “on the day the Lord G-d made earth and heaven.”

G-d solely as judge is an impossibility; G-d has another name. To deal with the world, He must also be the Lord – the four-letter name of G-d known as the Tetragrammaton (Ado-nai, Y-H-V-H). That name is the midat ha-rachamim, the attribute of compassion and mercy. G-d rules with justice; the Lord tempers it with mercy. One without the other betrays the essence of the harmonious heavenly spirit.

This duality of G-d has tremendous importance for us. We are meant to imitate Him; His attributes are to be ours. The way He acts is the way we must act. We must learn to find the correct balance between law and love, between rigid detachment and empathetic compassion.

Jewish law is a system that mightily strives to merge these two Divine traits. It asks much of us, but it also offers the means to repentance and pardon. It teaches that, “in a place where baalei teshuvah [masters of repentance] stand, even the most righteous are unworthy of standing.” (BT Berachot 34b)

Sin has consequences, crime has punishment, but penitence is always possible. Forgiveness is to be granted to those who have overcome their failings.

Those like Jean Valjean dare not be pursued and persecuted for crimes committed in a distant past, for sins long since atoned. Inspector Javert is the paradigm of those who would pervert the purpose of law from rehabilitation to simple revenge. Without a heart, justice is blind – and blind justice is ultimately no less than unjust.

Victor Hugo found a powerful way to illustrate this very point. Jean Valjean saves the life of his archenemy, Javert, placing him in a profound moral dilemma. In emotional turmoil, Javert’s mind simply cannot reconcile the image he had carried through the years of Valjean as a brutal ex-convict with his acts of kindness on the barricades. His lifelong commitment to strict justice will not allow him to let Valjean go free. Yet he knows that if he were to arrest him he would be acting lawfully but not morally. For the first time in his life, Javert is faced with the situation where he must decide between the two. Unable to find a solution to this dilemma, and horrified at the sudden realization that Valjean’s past no longer deserved cruel punishment in the present, Javert’s entire system of moral values is shattered.

Javert could not make peace with the dissonance between his lifelong commitment to strict law and his newfound understanding of the requirement for compassion. In Jewish terms, we might say Javert had only understood the concept of G-d as justice but never learned the need to also worship the ideals of the Lord who embodies mercy.

Javert finds only one solution for his dilemma. Not knowing whether to prioritize justice or mercy, Javert drowns himself in the river Seine. How remarkable that Les Misérables comes to the same conclusion recorded by Rashi in his comment on the first verse of the Torah. The world cannot exist solely with justice without mercy – and those who attempt it will lose even their will to survive.

Rabbi Benjamin Blech, a frequent contributor to Aish, is a professor of Talmud at Yeshivah University and an internationally recognized educator, religious leader and lecturer. The author of 14 books, his newest, The World from a Spiritual Perspective, is a collection of more than 100 of his Aish articles. Visit his website at benjaminblech.com. This article was distributed by Kaddish Connection Network.

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