War and Peace in Jewish Tradition - Shabbat Hazon, 5774

My older son flew back to Israel on Thursday evening. After I dropped him at the airport, I received news of the 72-hour cease-fire, and you can imagine how relieved I was. That is, until yesterday morning, when we heard that the cease-fire lasted all of 2 hours before being broken by mortar fire from Gaza into Israel, and then there was the news of the captured IDF soldier, Hadar Goldin.

This is also Shabbat Hazon, the Shabbat right before Tish’ah Be’av, the saddest day of the Jewish year, when we commemorate all of the greatest losses that we have suffered as a people. As Israelis and Gazans mourn their dead, I think we can safely say that everybody in the world would agree that 72 hours of quiet would have been a good start, but that we need something longer, and ideally something permanent. And, of course, as we look backward over the arc of Jewish history, we may agree that there have been far more military losses and destructions and dispersions than any nation should be subjected to.

But the point on which the world disagrees is the why, the what, the when, and basically everything else. I must confess that it is very hard for me to be objective about this entire situation, with Hamas in control of Gaza and pouring all of its resources, its Israeli-made cement, its Israeli-supplied electricity and water, into building tunnels and terrorist infrastructure to destroy Israel. They could have been building greenhouses, or a nice waterfront park, or new residential buildings, or schools, or hospitals, or really anything positive. But no, they put their money on their primary objective, which is to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

So I must admit that I have a hard time seeing the other side, the side that only points to Israel’s destruction in Gaza and says, Israel is the aggressor, Israel is the sole guilty party, Israel is the murderous Zionist entity, Israel is the occupier (even though Israel has not occupied Gaza since they pulled out in 2005). And it really hurts to see that there are many people around the world who not only believe this, but chant it into microphones along with anti-Semitic epithets. That hurts. We, the Jews, deserve a land of our own, a nation that came from 2,000 years of hope and yearning, and that land deserves quiet, deserves freedom from rocket fire, freedom from enemies bent on its destruction.

While we all agree that peace should come soon, we may all not agree on Israel’s approach, even among Jews, even among Israelis. So I thought that it would be a good idea to take a look at some Jewish sources on warfare and peace, so that we can view this current conflict through the long-range scope of our ancient wisdom.

As a postulate, it must be acknowledged that Jewish tradition, as is always the case, never speaks with a single voice. So there is disagreement to be found even within these sources.

Rabbinic tradition separates wars into a couple of different kinds: mandatory and discretionary (source 2). Among the mandatory wars in the Torah are those against the seven Canaanite nations and against the Amalekites. These are called “hovah,” meaning obligatory. Maimonides tells us that these particular obligations no longer apply, because none of these people exist any more. (Even though every year Purim comes around, rabbis magically locate the spirit of Amaleq, for homiletical purposes.)

But also among the mandatory wars are those that are defensive, that is, responding to attack (source 1, below). These are in the category of milhemot mitzvah, commanded wars. The current Operation Protective Edge of course falls into this category. (There are disagreements between commentators on the Talmud about the pre-emptive strike; Rashi sides with the majority of commentators who agree that a pre-emptive strike is discretionary.)

The Sanhedrin (i.e. the representatives of the people) have the right to declare war, but they must consider the ramifications, including loss of soldiers’ lives. In the Talmud, Shemuel (source 3) condones the loss of up to one-sixth of the fighting force before charging a government with misconduct.

Philo of Alexandria (source 4), noted Jewish philosopher who lived in Egypt late into the Second Temple period, and Maimonides (source 5) as well as others were concerned for the welfare non-combatants, with the latter insisting that a siege must not prevent innocents from leaving the city.

Destruction is always a part of war, but it must be limited. See Deuteronomy 20:19-20, and Maimonides’ elaboration (sources 6 & 7). Why is this a concern? Because war has the tendency to allow for military excess (sources 8-10). See Ramban, comment to Deuteronomy 23:10 below, and also that the Torah “wants the soldier to learn to act compassionately with our enemies even during wartime.” (Ramban’s addendum to Sefer HaMitzvot).

Philo (sources 11), sees the Jewish military as being held to a higher standard, that we seek peace first, and do not slaughter indiscriminately during war.

We might conclude by noting that our inclinations to war and peace should be guided by the general principle, expressed so beautifully in Qohelet Rabbah (the standard midrash on Ecclesiastes, source 12), that this is the only world we have been given, and therefore we should do our best to minimize the damage that we cause. It is a reminder that in war, there are no winners.

***

And as we draw near to Tish’ah Be’av, we should remember that while the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians due to our having committed the greatest sins (idolatry, sexual impropriety, and murder), the Second Temple was lost to the Romans due to sin’at hinnam, baseless hatred.

There are many lenses here through which to view the current conflict; I leave that to you.

Shabbat shalom. Let us hope and pray that next Shabbat will truly be a Shabbat of peace.

***

Sources

1. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot 58a

והתורה אמרה: אם בא להרגך ־ השכם להרגו, מחייה בקולפא וקטליה.

If a man comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first.

2. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sotah 44b

א״ר יוחנן: רשות דרבנן זו היא מצוה דרבי יהודה, מצוה דרבנן זו היא חובה דרבי יהודה. אמר רבא: מלחמות יהושע לכבש ־ דברי הכל חובה, מלחמות בית דוד לרווחה ־ דברי הכל רשות, כי פליגי ־ למעוטי עובדי כוכבים דלא ליתי עלייהו

R. Johanan said: A war which is discretionary according to the Rabbis is mandatory according to R. Judah, and a war which is mandatory according to the Rabbis is obligatory according to R. Judah.

Raba said: The wars waged by Joshua to conquer Canaan were obligatory in the opinion of all; the wars waged by the House of David for territorial expansion were voluntary in the opinion of all; where they differ is with regard to wars against heathens so that these should not march against them.

3. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shevuot 35b

דאמר שמואל: מלכותא דקטלא חד משיתא בעלמא לא מיענשא, שנאמר: כרמי שלי לפני האלף לך שלמה למלכותא דרקיעא, ומאתים לנוטרים את פריו למלכותא דארעא,

Shemuel said: A government which kills only one out of six is not punished; for it is said: “I have my very own vineyard: You may have the thousand, O Solomon” - for the Kingdom of Heaven; “And the guards of the fruit two hundred”— - for the kingdom on earth. (quoted verse is Song of Songs 8:12)

4. Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE - 50 CE), The Special Laws, IV, 224-5

The Jewish nation, when it takes up arms, distinguishes between those whose life is one of hostility, and the reverse. For to breathe slaughter against all, even those who have done very little or nothing amiss, shows what I should call a savage and brutal soul.

5. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim Umilhemoteihem, 6:7

כשצרין על עיר לתפשה, אין מקיפין אותה מארבע רוחותיה אלא משלש רוחותיה, ומניחין מקום לבורח ולכל מי שירצה להמלט על נפשו, שנאמר ויצבאו על מדין כאשר צוה ה׳ את משה מפי השמועה למדו שבכך צוהו.

When siege is laid to a city for the purpose of capture, it may not be surrounded on all four sides, but only on three, to give an opportunity for those who would avoid capture to escape.

6. Deuteronomy 20:19-20

יט כִּי-תָצוּר אֶל-עִיר יָמִים רַבִּים לְהִלָּחֵם עָלֶיהָ לְתָפְשָׂהּ, לֹא-תַשְׁחִית אֶת-עֵצָהּ לִנְדֹּחַ עָלָיו גַּרְזֶן--כִּי מִמֶּנּוּ תֹאכֵל, וְאֹתוֹ לֹא תִכְרֹת:  כִּי הָאָדָם עֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה, לָבֹא מִפָּנֶיךָ בַּמָּצוֹר.  כ רַק עֵץ אֲשֶׁר-תֵּדַע, כִּי-לֹא-עֵץ מַאֲכָל הוּא--אֹתוֹ תַשְׁחִית, וְכָרָתָּ; וּבָנִיתָ מָצוֹר...

When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city? Only trees that you know do not yield food may be destroyed; you may cut them down for constructing siegeworks...

7. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim Umilhemoteihem, 6:10

ולא האילנות בלבד, אלא כל המשבר כלים, וקורע בגדים, והורס בנין, וסותם מעין, ומאבד מאכלות דרך השחתה, עובר בלא תשחית

And not only the trees, but also one who smashes household goods, tears clothes, demolishes a building, stops up a spring, or destroys articles of food with destructive intent, transgresses the commandment of bal tashhit (i.e. “Do not destroy”).

8. Deuteronomy 23:10

כִּי-תֵצֵא מַחֲנֶה, עַל-אֹיְבֶיךָ,  וְנִשְׁמַרְתָּ מִכֹּל דָּבָר רָע.

When you go out as a troop against your enemies, be on your guard against anything untoward.

9. Nahmanides, comment to Deut. 23:10

The most refined of people become possessed with ferocity and cruelty when advancing upon the enemy.

10. Rabbi Reuven Kimelman, “War,” chapter in Frontiers of Jewish Thought, Steven Katz, ed., B’nai B’rith Books, 1992, p. 319

These concerns for the moral quotient of the soldier and the life of the enemy inform the “purity of arms” [tohorat nesheq] doctrine of the modern Israel Defense Forces. The doctrine of purity of arms, an expression apparently coined by the Labor-Zionist idealogue Berl Katznelson, limits killing to necessary and unavoidable situations.

11. Philo, The Special Laws, IV, 224

All this shows clearly that the Jewish nation is ready for agreement and friendship with all like-minded nations whose intentions are peaceful, yet is not of the contemptible kind which surrenders through cowardice to wrongful aggression.

12. Qohelet Rabbah, Parashah 7, Siman 19

בשעה שברא הקב״ה את אדם הראשון נטלו והחזירו על כל אילני גן עדן ואמר לו ראה מעשי כמה נאים ומשובחין הן וכל מה שבראתי בשבילך בראתי, תן דעתך שלא תקלקל ותחריב את עולמי, שאם קלקלת אין מי שיתקן אחריך…

At the moment that the Holy One, Blessed be God created the first human, he took him and made him pass before all of the trees in the Garden of Eden. God said to him, “See how fine and praiseworthy My creations are! And everything that I have created, I have created for you. Consider this, so that you will not spoil and destroy my world, for if you do so, there will be nobody who will repair it after you.”


 ~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally presented and discussed at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 8/2/2014.)

Tish'ah Be'Av and the Egyptian Connection

My summer travels have found me gallivanting through multiple airports, and while trying vainly to find a wi-fi signal in Ataturk International (i.e. Istanbul, where a violent anti-government protest was in progress, although thankfully nowhere near Gate G-11), it occurred to me that if Israel is ever at peace with all of her neighbors, Ben Gurion Airport could be an international hub that rivals the big European airports. Peace produces prosperity.

Meanwhile, the drama in Egypt has been working up for a few weeks now, and I must confess that I am following it with slightly more interest than I would the average Middle Eastern uprising. I suspect that instability in Israel’s largest and most powerful neighbor is, at least in the short term, good for the Jewish state. First, the Egyptian military is interested in maintaining peace, and honoring prior agreements is the best way to do so. Second, the leaders of this coup are mostly former allies of Hosni Mubarak, the deposed president, who (despite his many failings) did keep those agreements during his tenure. Third, we can be sure that just about any ruling party that will succeed the Muslim Brotherhood and now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi will be better for relations with Israel. But in the long term, stability will be far more valuable.

As we are now into the Nine Days of the month of Av, the somber lead-up to Tish’ah Be’Av, I am reminded that uprisings and their aftermath tend to come during the hot summer months (think the Fourth of July, or Bastille Day, July 14th, in France). True, the Jewish rebellion against the Romans had been raging for three years, only to be crushed on the ninth day of Av in the year 70 CE with the destruction of the Second Temple; the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple on the same day in 586 BCE followed a siege that may have lasted the better part of a year. But the dramatic conclusion in both cases on the same day suggests that Av is the season for rebellion.

As Israeli strategists try to divine what all of this might mean for border security and concerns for the viability of long-term peace in the region,* we should not forget the Egyptian people, with whom the people of Israel have a relationship that stretches back at least 3000 years. Let us hope that whatever stumbling blocks they face as a more-ideal democracy unfolds on the Nile River valley will be minimal, so that Egyptians can soon go about their worldly pursuits with some modicum of safety and security. In the long run, a stable democratic government that empowers the Egyptian people will afford them better lives and greater satisfaction, and satisfied citizens do not wage reckless wars against their neighbors.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, Judaism was fundamentally changed, and for the better. Scholars of ancient Judaism tell us that it took several hundred years of commentary and learning and debate for normative rabbinic Judaism to emerge as the standard of Jewish practice, but it is worth noting that this model is far more democratic with respect to our individual relationships to God than the sacrificial Temple cult that preceded it. May the Qadosh Barukh Hu help raise the democracy quotient in Egypt, speedily and in our days.

 

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally published in the Temple Israel Voice, July 11, 2013.)

* An update from this column as it appeared in the Voice: The Wall Street Journal reported on July 11, 2013 that

Israel's military plans to downsize its conventional firepower such as tanks and artillery to focus on countering threats from guerrilla warfare and to boost its technological prowess, in a recognition that the Middle East turmoil has virtually halted the ability of neighbors to invade for years to come.

  It seems that Israel's borders are safer now than they have been for a long time. Good news!

Elul 12: What's Ten Years?

Ten years does not mean anything in particular. It’s an arbitrary figure, perhaps more related to the number of fingers on the human hand than anything else. Furthermore, it's just not that long.

My memories of 9/11/01 are unremarkable, but they are crystal-clear. Ten years ago today, I left my conducting class at the Jewish Theological Seminary, just as the world was turning upside-down.

I remember the panicked looks, the people rushing down the street with their phones out, trying to get in touch with loved ones.

I remember the hastily-gathered school assembly, the anxious expressions of friends and colleagues around the room, the collective never-before-felt uncertainty about the world, the future.

In the afternoon, I walked down to the 72nd St. pier on the Hudson just to watch, with my mouth open, with what must have been hundreds of others.

For several weeks, it seemed, you couldn’t think too long about anything before coming back to this. Just a few days after was Rosh Hashanah; I took a bus to my first High Holiday pulpit as a cantorial student, in Old Bridge, New Jersey. There was still smoke coming off the pile.

I have to recall the words intoned by Rabbi Bill Lebeau, then the dean of the Rabbinical School, at morning minyan at JTS the day after, Wednesday, 9/12/01. This is from the psalm that is customarily recited on Wednesday mornings:

עַד-מָתַי רְשָׁעִים יְהוָה: עַד-מָתַי, רְשָׁעִים יַעֲלֹזוּ
Ad matai resha’im Adonai, at matai resha’im ya’alozu.
How long, Adonai, how long shall the wicked exult? (Psalm 94:3)

Just a month ago, we marked Tish'ah Be'Av, the day we recall the destruction (twice) of the Temple in Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago; the ascent from mourning to rejoicing at Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, takes seven short weeks. This is a healing process that the Jewish calendar forces us into every year. As Jews we are still fundamentally incomplete, two millennia after this loss.

What's ten years?

Re'eh: Dangerous Hurricane Theology

As Hurricane Irene inexorably makes her way up the East Coast, it seems nearly impossible for theological questions not to simmer behind the more pressing needs of storm preparation.

It is very tempting, in the face of natural disasters, for some spiritual leaders to reflexively invoke Biblical themes of reward and punishment. So goes the traditional trope, repeated unflinchingly throughout the Torah: if you follow the mitzvot / commandments, you will be rewarded; if you don't, then God will cause you great suffering. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti, both Jewish and non-Jewish preachers put forward the theory of Divine collective punishment, effectively blaming the victim.

And they stand on good, solid textual bases. Two and a half weeks after Tish'ah Be'av, the day on which we commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem not once, but twice, we read tomorrow the third of seven haftarot of consolation. Ancient rabbis saw our loss of the Temple as being the result of our transgressions, just like the Torah tells us that droughts or floods are our own fault.

But that is not where I stand, and I would venture a guess that most if not all progressive rabbis agree with me. And the ancient rabbis of the Talmud were not of one mind on this either; they knew that the particularly troubling problem of theodicy, answering the question of why there is suffering in the world, is insoluble when we accept as a postulate that God is all good and all powerful. The Talmud puts this question in the mouth of Moses: "Master of the universe, why is it that some righteous men prosper while others suffer adversity, some wicked men prosper while others suffer adversity?" (Berakhot 7a)

We read in Parashat Re'eh tomorrow the strong imperative to avoid avodah zarah, the pagan worship of idols practiced by the Canaanites (Deuteronomy 12:3):

וְנִתַּצְתֶּם אֶת-מִזְבְּחֹתָם, וְשִׁבַּרְתֶּם אֶת-מַצֵּבֹתָם, וַאֲשֵׁרֵיהֶם תִּשְׂרְפוּן בָּאֵשׁ, וּפְסִילֵי אֱלֹהֵיהֶם תְּגַדֵּעוּן; וְאִבַּדְתֶּם אֶת-שְׁמָם, מִן-הַמָּקוֹם הַהוּא.
Tear down their altars, smash their pillars, put their sacred posts to the fire, and cut down the images of their gods, obliterating their name from that site.

I would argue that one idol that we should smash is the ancient notion that God visits punishment on us. While God makes possible the physical forces around us that make the patterns of weather possible, God does not micro-manage, sending destructive storms here and sunny, mild weather there. The weather, and the destruction that it may wreak, is not dependent on God's mood, or indeed our behavior.

God is the source of good, and the inspiration for our own work in repairing a broken world; we are partners with God in this task. Shabbat Shalom!

Tish'ah Be'Av 5771 - Loss and Transition

Tish'ah Be'Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, represents the most fundamental loss that the Jewish people have suffered – the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem - not once, but twice. It is a reminder of our national incompleteness, of the missing piece of ourselves that was taken away, first by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and then by the Romans in 70 CE. With both destructions, we suffered not only the denial of the religious practice mandated by the Torah, the ability to sacrifice to God, but also the land of Israel, our national homeland. And we continue to mourn to this day, even though the latter has been restored.

There is in this tale a hint of irony. The system of religious and cultural traditions that we call Judaism was hatched only after the Second Temple was destroyed. Leaving aside the sacrificial cult (which is by far the most extensive part of the Torah's vision of religious practice), what we do today is derived from the Torah, but is not really described therein. It is only through the rabbinic lens, through centuries of interpretation and re-interpretation, that we arrive at today's Judaism.

Tish'ah Be'Av therefore marks a transition – the stimulus for the most comprehensive religious retrofit ever undertaken by a people. We moved from a centralized, hierarchical, religious tradition headed by the Kohanim, the priests, to a democratic, personal, and portable tradition based on learning and maintained by rabbis, who are scholars, not priests.

Frankly, the system we have had for the last 1,900-odd years seems to me superior. Even if I were not a rabbi, the idea that I can communicate with the Divine directly through prayer rather than through a priestly mediator seems far more sophisticated, far more civilized than the ancient practice of sacrificing animals.

The Temple is a symbol, a powerful reminder of our history and the glory days of our ancient sovereignty over the land. (It is for this very reason that when you visit the Temple Mount, the Islamic Waqf gives you a pamphlet that claims that the Jewish Temple was never located on that site.) In recalling its destruction on the ninth day of the month of Av, we are not only invoking our historical roots and our incompleteness, but we are also reminding ourselves that this is, ultimately, a transition for the better.

(Originally published in the Temple Israel Voice, 8/5/2011.)