By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif. —As Law and Order now is in summer reruns, I had the chance the other day to see the 2005 episode titled "Bible Story." If you haven't seen it, don't worry. Soon, no doubt, it will be in syndication on one of the independent networks or you will be able to purchase the entire 16th season of the program on DVD.  

Let's briefly summarize the plot so we can get on to the theology:  A man found bludgeoned to death is lying on top of a shredded Chumash outside an Orthodox shul that recently has been the target of desecrations.  Members of the congregation immediately point their fingers at a Palestinian shopkeeper in the neighborhood but he is innocent.  

The victim turns out to be another non-Jew, a fact that Detective Joe Fontana (Dennis Farina) establishes by looking under the sheet covering the man's body at the morgue.  No, he wasn't a member of a white supremacy organization either.  He was hired by Erich Speicher (Mark Feuerstein) to provoke his business partner and cousin Barry Speicher (Zach Grenier) into deciding the neighborhood is too dangerous to remain the site of Congregation Beth Tefiloh, where Barry serves as president.  The cousins, you see, own the building, and if they were to sell it, they'd split millions of dollars.  So greed was one motive, but another factor was also the smoldering resentment each felt towards the other because of religion.

"I've been treated like garbage because I won't buy into what they believe," Erich says at one point.  "My father had to pay my Uncle Daniel to make me a partner.  My holier-than-thou cousin wouldn't even come to my wedding" to a non-Jewish, Asian woman.  "His family won't even eat what my wife makes.  They bring their own food and paper plates...Why do I have to live my life by their rules?"

Barry, who plea-bargained to serve five years in prison on a charge of manslaughter, subsequently was induced to testify against Erich, whom McCoy wanted to prosecute similarly for manslaughter on the theory that by hiring the thug to desecrate the Chumash, Erich had set into motion the chain of circumstances leading to the thug's death. As he went over his testimony with McCoy, Barry exhibited emotions as bitter as his cousin's: "Can I tell how he hated our religion; that the only reason he ever set foot in Beth Tefiloh was so my father would give him a piece of the business?" 

In dealing with religious fanaticism, which the episode's writers term the "nitroglycerin" of the 21st century, the "Bible Story"  reaches an important turning point when the true facts become known about Barry's Chumash—a Torah in book form, which also contained a Hebrew-to-Polish translation and commentaries. This particular Chumash was even more treasured than others. Barry's father and rabbi had told him they retrieved it from a place in Poland where his father had secreted it during the Holocaust.

Under oath,  Rabbi Geller (Allan Miller) admited that he and Speicher's father actually purchased the Chumash  in a used book store after failing to locate the hidden one during their trip to Poland  Astonished, prosecutor Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) demanded to know why they would fabricate the story that it was the real hidden Chumash?

"How do I explain this to you, Mr. McCoy?," Rabbi Geller responded. "The Bible is full of stories that may be apocryphal.  Do we believe that Methuselah lived 900 years or that Moses parted the Red Sea?  Their truth is in the inspiration that we gather from them.  And this particular book inspired a lot of people.  Even if it isn't the same book, it is a symbol of our survival.  I don't see what's wrong with that."

First, let's deal with a minor inaccuracy.  According to Genesis 5:27, Methuseleh, the grandfather of Noah, lived 969 years, not 900.  Now let's deal with some plot problems.  Beth Tefiloh was represented to be an Orthodox congregation, yet during morning  prayers the men are not wearing prayer shawls nor tefillin. Furthermore, the concept of the Bible as a metaphor, as opposed to being the literal word of God, is an unorthodox idea, to say the least.  So there are credibility problems in the plot. 

Leaving that aside, however, what can we say about the theology itself, which broken down, is that in religion, "the ends justify the means"—that it is okay to fabricate faith stories, so long as they serve a good purpose?

Here the plot, in my opinion, became quite plausible.  Barry Speicher, learning that everything he believed about the Chumash had been a lie, quickly transferred his disillusion to the entire Jewish religion.  If the rabbi lied about that, had he not lied about everything else?  Realizing that he had wrongly killed one man because of a lie, Speicher decided to recant testimony against his cousin because he didn't want that lie to contribute to the undoing of another man.  Thereby saving his cousin from stiffer penalties (Erich still is convicted on charges arising out of the burglary), Barry recognized their common victimhood and began a process towards family reconciliation.

McCoy was infuriated by the turn of events, and wanted to prosecute Barry for perjury.  But the pragmatic District Attorney Arthur Branch (played by former U.S. Senator Fred Dalton Thompson, R-Tenn.) ordered him to drop that idea. 

McCoy protested, saying it was important that the district attorney send a message that using religion to provoke violence will not be tolerated.  But Branch saod the case had gone on enough, both men having been sentenced to jail.  "Not everything fits your little Orthodoxy, Jack ... You're practicing your own form of fundamentalism..."  

So what lesson shall we glean from this episode?  I believe  Law and Order creator Dick Wolf wanted us to take it as a maxim that neither religion nor law can be built either on lies or on absolutes.