Sorting Through the Noise - Nitzavim-Vayelekh 5774

Moishe Goldberg was heading out of the synagogue on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and as usual, Rabbi Mendlovich was standing at the door, shaking hands as the congregation departed.

The rabbi grabbed Moishe by the hand, pulled him aside and whispered these words at him: "You need to join the Army of God!"

Moishe replied: "I'm already in the Army of God, Rabbi."

The rabbi questioned: "Then how come I don't see you except for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?"

Moishe whispered back: "I'm in the secret service."

***

Those of us that are here today are, of course, the rank-and-file of the Army of God. We are the regulars. We like shul.

I presume that some of what we like about the regular Shabbat synagogue experience is the opportunity to pray - to sing, to meditate, to mumble, to take our time with the words of liturgy to appreciate, evaluate, immerse ourselves in ancient text.

Come Wednesday evening, it may be a lot more difficult to do that. And this despite all the wonderful features of this season: the richness of the High Holiday liturgy, the glory of the melodies, the heights of the hazzanic interpretation, and the grandeur of these days make this time of year especially powerful.

No, the reason is this: it’s all too much!

The High Holidays are something of a mixed blessing. It’s wonderful to see so many people returning to synagogue, seeking holiness, prayer, and teshuvah / repentance. And yes, the tefillah experience is moving, inspiring, and beautiful. I get shivers when I hear the first motifs of the RH/YK nusah at Selihot.

But it’s a lot to take in. A lot of time in synagogue, with a lot of words in a foreign language. A lot of people. And of course a lot of food. And how can we all expect to focus on the important things - the introspection, the teshuvah - when the ritual, gastronomic, and crowd-control issues might actually be getting in the way? How can we find our kavvanah / intention? How do we enter the High Holiday in a way that is meaningful, with so many physical and metaphorical entrances and exits and inflow and outflow?

I think that the best answer is to work harder at preparing beforehand: Take a personal inventory. Know why you are coming to the synagogue for those days, and be ready to swing into action while you’re there. Perhaps you should set aside some time for personal study ahead of time, by flipping through a mahzor or reviewing the holiday Torah and Haftarah readings with commentary. (I can point you to them in the humash if necessary.)

Given that we are just a few days away, I am going to give you something to think about right now to aid in your High Holidays preparations.

One opinion regarding the opening line of the Parashat Nitzavim, which we read this morning, foreshadows the High Holidays (Deuteronomy 29:9):

אַתֶּם נִצָּבִים הַיּוֹם כֻּלְּכֶם לִפְנֵי ה' אֱ-לֹהֵיכֶם:

Atem nitzavim hayom kulkhem lifnei Adonai Eloheikhem.

You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God.

The scene is this: all of the Israelites are standing together as a community and committing themselves to the covenant with God. This suggests the annual evaluation of Jews by God that is a part of the rabbinic understanding of this season. It is the theme that is addressed directly in the central prayer of the High Holiday Musaf service, Untaneh Toqef, wherein the anonymous author describes us as sheep passing before the Shepherd (with a capital S).

As we all know, the overarching storyline of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance, is the Book of Life - on Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: who shall live and who shall die, etc  The Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 16b) reports that there are three books: the Book of Life, in which the completely righteous are inscribed, the Book of Death, into which the names of the completely wicked go (one assumes that every year we mint new wicked people). And then there’s the intermediate book, in which all the rest of us are written temporarily during the Ten Days, with the hope that our names will be transferred to the Book of Life by the end of Yom Kippur.

But I think there is a better way to understand these days, and to do that we have to look past the “Who by fire, who by water” passage, to the following page in the mahzor:

Adam yesodo me-afar...

Each person’s origin is dust, and each person will return to the earth having spent life seeking sustenance. Scripture compares human beings to:

a broken shard / withering grass / a shriveled flower / a passing shadow / a fading cloud / a fleeting breeze, scattered dust / a vanishing dream.

And You - You are the Sovereign, living God, ever-present.

A shriveled flower - ציץ נובל

What might we glean from this passage? That we are ephemeral, that we are merely passing through, and that God is eternal. But even more so, that we are frail, easily broken or blown away. Our lives are marked by fragility. We are vulnerable, delicate.

To paraphrase Qohelet / Ecclesiastes, whose ancient words we will read on Sukkot, there is a time for that. (BTW, there’s probably an app for that, too.) There is a time to feel strong, and a time to feel vulnerable. This is the season to doubt our resilience, to acknowledge our frailty. We enter this period broken, having missed the mark throughout the past year, having transgressed not only the letter of God’s laws, but their spirit as well, having failed to uphold our end of the covenant, having violated not only the mitzvot bein adam lamaqom, those laws that apply between us and God, but also the mitzvot bein adam lehavero, those mitzvot that are essential to our personal human relationships.

And it is precisely God’s stability and ever-presence from which we draw inspiration for the year that is just beginning. We may be vulnerable, but we know that God is there, that the Divine Presence in its awesome-ness is hovering nearby, however we understand that to work, inspiring us to do good for ourselves and others.

Let’s face it, people. It is not only us as individuals who are broken. It’s the whole world. Our world is in need of some serious teshuvah / repentance. There are so many ills in this world that need our attention, so many horrible things in the headlines, from the threat of terrorism here and abroad to domestic violence and rape to the diseases ravaging humanity.

Just the events of the last few weeks - even as the conflict between Israel and Hamas has cooled down, we have watched as journalists have been beheaded by the Islamic State, as an NFL player was suspended for beating his wife (or, perhaps more accurately, for being captured on video beating his then-fiancee), as a Columbia student has mounted a protest against the university by carrying her mattress around with her all day long until the fellow student accused of raping her is suspended from school, and on and on. We have seen aid workers in Africa attacked and killed by villagers living under the threat of Ebola. Seven young men and women in Iran were sentenced to 91 lashes each for making a video of themselves dancing to Pharrell Williams’ anthem, Happy. Closer to home, I read in the Great Neck Record the other day that Nassau and Suffolk counties together have averaged 120 deaths annually for the last few years from heroin overdoses.

Sometimes, we have to ask ourselves, how could we have reached such a point? Even if I as an individual have had nothing to do with any of this, can I be held responsible? (It’s one reason why we confess our sins on YK in public, in the first person plural.)

We are frail, vulnerable, ephemeral. And we are also tyrannical, violent, and repressive. We are piteously weak and dangerously powerful. Some of us in this world are busy with intentionally hurting others; some of us are powerless to fend off attacks from others. All of this is part of the swirling sea of extremes of human existence.

It is with this in mind that we might return to the earlier part of Untaneh Toqef:

Uvshofar gadol yittaqa, veqol demamah daqqah yishama…

And the great shofar is sounded, and the still, small voice is yet heard.

We might take comfort in the piercing notes of the shofar, in the strength of its call and its majestic melody. But the real power to heal, to bring comfort to the bereaved, strength to the weary, and to help mend the souls of those of us who are emotionally wounded from having missed the mark where it counts, is found in that tiny, distant voice that you might hear when you tune everything else out.

Our lives are so busy, so filled with obligations and distractions and noise, that we might often miss that voice. But now is the time that we should be listening for it. And, I think, this is the source of strength to those who face their own vulnerability at this time of the year. While the shofar might spur us to action, leading the charge into the louder moments of our lives, that still, small voice is there when we feel alone, broken, frail, ashamed, despairing.

Untaneh Toqef is considered a master-work of Jewish liturgy, the very centerfold of the High Holiday experience. Its composer’s name has been lost to the ages, and I think we may agree that the author was brilliant. But had I written this prayer, I would have placed the statement of vulnerability first, to set the stage for what follows.

As we stand together as a community before God on Thursday and Friday, try to find that headspace where you can cut through the noise, so that when the 100 blasts of the shofar are complete, and when you have finished lunch, you can listen for that qol demamah daqqah, the tiny voice that is the source of our strength.

Shabbat shalom, and shanah tovah.

~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 9/20/2014.)

No Time for Comfort - Shabbat Nahamu, 5774

We are now seven weeks away from Rosh Hashanah, and the theme of this period is rebuilding, of going from the sorrow of desolation and loss (Tish’ah Be’Av) to the joy of redemption and renewal.

Today is Shabbat Nahamu, the Shabbat of comfort, a name referring to the opening word of today’s first haftarah of consolation, repeated twice (Isaiah 40:1-2):

נַחֲמוּ נַחֲמוּ, עַמִּי--יֹאמַר, אֱ-לֹהֵיכֶם.  דַּבְּרוּ עַל-לֵב יְרוּשָׁלִַם, וְקִרְאוּ אֵלֶיהָ--כִּי מָלְאָה צְבָאָהּ, כִּי נִרְצָה עֲו‍ֹנָהּ:  כִּי לָקְחָה מִיַּד ה', כִּפְלַיִם בְּכָל-חַטֹּאתֶיהָ.

Comfort, oh comfort My people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and declare to her that her term of service is over, that her iniquity is expiated, for she has received at the hand of the Lord double for all her sins.

It is the first of the seven haftarot of consolation. Each of these is drawn from the book of Isaiah, and each seeks to provide comfort to Israel by reassuring that restoration is on the way.

This restoration is in the context of a remarkable historical turning point. Some scholars believe that he is writing around 538 BCE, about the time that the Persian king Cyrus conquered the Babylonian Empire, and issued an edict allowing exiled peoples, like the Jews, to return to their native lands. This was roughly 50 years after the Babylonians had taken Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple, and brought the Jews to Babylon, in what is today called Iraq.

But how did that restoration come about? How was the Second Temple built? Although Cyrus let the Jews return to Israel, not everybody was willing to pick up and move again. Fifty years is a long time - they had lives and businesses and were intermarried with the local population. Not many wanted to return; many Jews stayed in Babylon; some even moved instead to Persia, to the new imperial capital of the region. (It was in fact the events of the sixth century BCE that formed the basis of both the Iraqi and Iranian Jewish communities, both of which thrived into the 20th century.)

Rather, it was the initiative of a relatively small band (the book of Ezra says about 42,000) who returned to the Judean wasteland and braved Samaritan attacks to rebuild and rededicate the Temple, the Second Temple. It was a human endeavor.

On Thursday, I was preparing to speak about picking up the pieces of Operation Protective Edge, when I heard that Hamas had broken the cease-fire by firing rockets into Israel. On Friday morning, I read that Israel had responded with airstrikes. So, sadly, this chapter continues.

However, this will not go on forever, and when the (temporary) quiet returns, we will be faced once more with the challenge of, “Well, what’s next?”

I read this week that Amos Oz, the noted Israeli author and outspoken leftist, supported Operation Protective Edge to stop the rockets coming into Israel, calling it “justified, but excessive.” This sheds some light on the depth and complexity of the problem at hand. And he is not alone: elsewhere, I saw a Gallup poll that indicated that 93% of American Jews were supportive of Israel in the last month, and the figure is about the same in Israel. You can’t get 93% Jews to agree on much of anything, really, so that is quite a sobering  figure.

Whether we are at the end of this Gaza engagement or not, we have to consider the future now.

So here is the quandary that we are in today. Continued rocket-fire and reprisals notwithstanding, Israel has mostly completed Operation Protective Edge, entering Gaza and destroying terrorist infrastructure and killing enemy combatants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They mostly restored peace to Israel, so that nobody has to head down regularly into bomb shelters. They have rooted out and destroyed the 32 carefully-designed tunnels leading into Israel, thus foiling the apparent plan to infiltrate and attack Israel on Rosh Hashanah.

But what have they not done? They have not even considered any kind of negotiated settlement that will guarantee a long-term peace. And here is the problem.

Because, as I pointed out a few weeks ago, this will all happen again. And next time, there will be more rockets with a longer range, more tunnels, and greater danger to Israel. My son, who lives at Kibbutz Ein Gev up north, was not in range of Hamas’ rockets this time. Maybe next time he will be.

Unless.

Unless there is not a next time. And I am afraid that the only way that this can be is if the international powers, in cooperation with Israel, can create a successful, de-militarized Palestinian-controlled territory. And here is where Amos Oz and I agree once again.  (And some here will surely disagree with me.)

But I think that it is the lesser of two potentially bad futures.

Short of turning Gaza into a parking lot (which Israel is DEFINITELY not going to do; they are not genocidal barbarians, despite mob-driven protestations to the contrary), the only way that we have a chance for long-term peace is to create, if not a state, at least an independent, non-Hamas-ruled entity for Gaza.

Yes, I know that past events have suggested that trusting them will be fraught.

Yes, a major sticking point is that Hamas rules Gaza, and uses their own people as human shields and places rocket launchers in residential neighborhoods (BTW, did you see the video captured by the Indian television crew from NDTV of Hamas combatants building a makeshift rocket launcher next to their hotel, and then firing a rocket into Israel? Incredible!).

Yes, I know that multiple proposals for a two-state solution in the past two decades have failed for various reasons.

But remember: there is no other way out. The residents of Gaza, Hebron, Jenin, Nablus (Shekhem), and so forth are not going away. And they will not be absorbed into Egypt or Jordan.

(Aside: two years ago I was at a gas station in Ma'ale Adummim, the largest settlements on the outskirts of Jerusalem. I was having trouble with the self-service pump, so an attendant came over to help me. He was a Palestinian Arab, and, noticing that the car was a rental, he asked me where I was from. I explained that I was American, and then he complimented me on my Hebrew. I asked where he was from. He said, proudly, “From here!” “You mean, Ma'ale Adummim?” I asked, jokingly. He merely smiled in response as we completed the transaction.)

No, they are not going away. And the terrorist element among them is not going away either, unless all the powers at the table find a way to neutralize them. And that would require there to be a functioning government in Gaza that serves the people of Gaza rather than the idolatrous god of terror.

Ultimately, we have to reframe this conflict not as Israel vs. Gaza, or Jew vs. Muslim, but rather as moderates vs. fundamentalists. (Remember, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states are quietly rooting for Israel here, against the Muslim Brotherhood.) This is not naïveté.  It is, rather, the only sane way out of the current bottomless pit.

The path to rebuilding will be to return to the table. Remember that table? The one that is as forlorn right now as Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile, as described in the book of Lamentations, which we read on Monday evening for Tish’ah Be’Av. We will have to negotiate with Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, and nobody will like it.

But let’s face it. If you compare Gaza under Hamas with the West Bank under the PA, with whom Israel has been cooperating on certain things for a long time now, the difference is stark. Why, when there are terrorists based in Gaza, has the West Bank remained largely quiet? Why did it not erupt in fury over Protective Edge? Because Israel and America have been training Palestinian police forces in the West Bank. Because trade and investment in the West Bank is quietly increasing. Unemployment in the West Bank, while not small at about 20%, is much better than the 40% in Gaza. With more people working, with priorities placed on public safety and security, with greater emphasis on cooperation, we have a chance.

Without those things, there will be more anger, more frustration, more anti-Semitic mobs, and more rockets. Guaranteed. Think about it.

You know, as a rabbi I spend a lot of time speaking about comfort, offering comfort, helping others to comfort. I must confess that the events of the last month and a half have been not just uncomfortable, but downright painful: Israelis in and out of bomb shelters, the tunnels, the body count in Gaza, the utterly cynical media manipulation of Hamas, the angry mobs chanting anti-Semitic slogans all over the world. And through all of that, I have had to offer comfort to bereaved families who have lost a loved one, comfort to my son, who was rightfully scared to fly back into a war zone, and comfort to members of this community, who are wrought over the situation in Israel and unsure how to help and support, and comfort to my wife, who has taken it upon herself to valiantly respond to her friends’ anti-Israel and vaguely anti-Semitic postings on Facebook.

Well, I am just about used up. And I am sure that all of us are as well.

But as with the brave returnees from Babylon and the building of the Second Temple, it will take a great human initiative to begin this restoration.

We are going to have to steel ourselves either for more fighting, or to return to that deserted table. That is the choice before us.

Shabbat shalom.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 8/8/14.)

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.)