A Thought on ‘Prophetic Judaism’ In Times of War

 

I’ve had several conversations with Reform and Liberal colleagues in which they have referred to pursuing prophetic values in this awful time of war as if that adjective mandates a political attitude towards Israel – Gaza that (to be clear!) I support. But my support is NOT because I think it’s ‘prophetic Judaism,’ in fact, rather the reverse.

 

Of course, prophetic Judaism is a collection of hundreds of literary records left by a vast collection of men, and occasionally women, over several hundred years, and we should be careful about claiming it can be distilled into any specific political viewpoint.

 

But, my read of the total collective of materials that fall into the collection marked, ‘prophetic’ is that they DON’T make the case for the response to Israel/Gaza that I think is called for by the tradition, more broadly, and specifically, rabbinically understood.

 

Except for one line in Jonah, the twin concerns of the prophetic collective are Israel and God. There is, of course, the Ger who lives among the people of Israel as a non-Israelite. But I can’t think of cases where the prophets call on Israel to empathise with a suffering non-Israelite nation, or even cases where prophets want anything other than the destruction of people who have attacked Israel. Yes, there is a vision about a peaceful time, after God has come in and crushed those who wish Israel ill, but that end-point seems only to be reachable via military brutality.

 

Actively opposing any kind of compassion for suffering non-Israelites, of course, is Samuel. I know the Rabbis paskened that there are no more Amalakites, but my point is that this particular piece of prophetic Judaism supports a brutal, ethical-squashing, genocidal attack launched against those who have attacked Israel. It’s Rabbinic Judaism that ‘fixes’ that predilection towards genocidal violence that the prophetic summons seems to summon.

 

Similarly, Amos clearly believes in the most gorgeous vision of escatological peace but the book opens with this promise, “for the sins of Gaza, I will send a fire on the walls of Gaza and destroy her palaces,” which arguably makes the current Israeli policy sound … entirely prophetic.

 

Nahum's prophetic values includes enemies of Israel, “though they be like tangled thorns, be devoured as stubble fully dry.” (1:10) Ovadiah prophecises against Edom that, “Because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be destroyed forever.” (also 1:10) Ezekiel seems entirely at ease with vengeance as a war-aim, “Because the Philistines [who lived in the area now known as Gaza] acted in vengeance… I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath” (25:15-17). Zechariah 12:9 – “On that day I will set out to destroy all the nations that attack Jerusalem.” That’s certainly enough for the Smotrich-crew to claim that they are embodying prophetic values.

 

For what it’s worth, I’m not sure turning to the female prophets as articulating compassion for the non-Jew helps. Sarah (if we consider Sarah a prophet) seemed to have no problem with Ishmael and Hagar being deprived of water. Miriam the prophetess – whose dislike of the Kushite almost causes her own death – doesn’t help. And Deborah was no military softie.

 

It’s more, I think, than the notion that you can find verses somewhere to make any point you want, I think the major direction of travel is directly opposed to the way claimed. I get that prophetic Judaism is comfortable with chastising Israeli political leadership, but I get the sense that my colleagues who use the term take it to mean a form of Judaism where compassion for even our enemies is held centrally, and I just don’t see that.

 

For me, it’s the way the Rabbis calm down prophetic energies that are too epiphany-dependent and too "off with the prophets" (1 Sam 10:10) that model the way we should all for calmer, less militaristic responses, even as we are attacked. I think the rise of Rabbinic Judaism serves as a counter-narrative to ‘prophetic Judaism’, calling us to consider longer-term, less theosophic-dependent ways of doing good and achieving peace.

It’s the imprecation – from Chumash not Neviim - to consider every human as created in the image of God (especially as considered in Mishnah Sanhedrin) that is at the heart of my opposition to the way this awful war is being prosecuted. Proverbs’ call to feed our enemies is also on my mind.

 

There are lines like this in Vayikra Rabba, ‘Rabbi Jesse the Galilean states: "How meritorious is peace? Even in time of war, Jewish law requires that one initiate discussions of peace."’ (VR Tzav 9)

And there is Halacha, applied in the siege of Beirut, on keeping, in times of a military siege, one path out of a besieged city (MT H Melachim 6:7)

 

Philo, a Jewish writer writing in the first century, notes “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 little or nothing amiss, shows what I would call a savage and brutal soul. (The Special Laws 4:224-225)

We should be so fortunate.

But I’m not sure any of this would have been on the minds of the great prophets of our tradition when they were off prophesying.

 

What am I missing?

On the 80th Anniversary of VE Day

 I spent a chunk of Thursday, the 8^th of May, VE Day, in a car, listening to Radio 2.

Much of the day was turned over to callers, sharing memories, letters and stories from their families.

 

There was the remarkable and remarkably sprightly 98-year-old veteran of the Bletchley Park Enigma cracking team of heroes. And another memory of a, then, young girl, dancing in the streets among the bonfires of no-longer needed black-out curtains.

 

Then there were the awful stories. A letter from a soldier writing from the front-line asking if his wife had given birth yet. The man was killed before he ever met his daughter. The daughter never met her father.

There was a moment when a journalist, sent out to some anniversary gathering, waved a microphone before a nonagenarian veteran and asked excitedly what he was thinking on such a special day, the man responded, “War is awful, just bloody awful.” And as he said it, you could feel the images he must have seen, and must still be seeing so many years later.

 

The great Israel poet, Yehuda Amichai, wrote this in 1976.

 

The Diameter Of The Bomb

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making a circle with no end.

 

War is awful, just bloody awful.

But my freedom, my very existence, depends on the willingness of those who served, on front lines and away from the front lines.

I’m thinking of one of my great-uncle, who was killed manning anti-aircraft guns and another killed in the Blitz.

I’ve been really touched by several of the members here – some of you here today – who have shared stories of your families. Joe Carlebach wanted to share the story of his father, a refugee from Nazi Germany who served in the Allied Forces who found our on or around VE day that his own parents had been murdered by the Nazis.

Rabbi Natasha shared the story of her grandmother, Parmjit, who was held as a prisoner by the Japanese in Singapore. VE Day, of course, didn’t mark the end of the war.

Our member Margo Schwartz reached out to make sure I didn’t forget the contributions made from across the Commonwealth. She’s Candian and wanted to share the story of “the 8 members of [her] family came across the ocean to do their duty and three made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force- bomber command. Just wondering,” she wrote, “after all the national celebrations if you might be remembering those in our community who fought to keep us free too.”

 

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard.

 

I’m committed to that act of memory. I think we all should be.

We should all be telling the stories of that generation. We should all be committed to that act of memory.

 

80 years ago, the Chief Rabbi of UK Orthodoxy, Joseph Hertz, responded to VE Day by calling for the Jews of this country to Bentsh Gomel.

Gomel is an unusual but beautiful blessing.

It’s a blessing that acknowledge great things done for us, despite our not being quite sure we are worthy.

The response, unusually, isn’t an Amen, but rather an acceptance that all of us, hearing someone Bentsch Gomel, coming together in freedom because of sacrifices we can never fully deserve, acknowledge a humility before what has been done for us, to allow us to be here and celebrate and live at all, in the face of the evil that swept Nazi Europe 80-plus years ago.

 

That’s my first, of three, thoughts on this special anniversary.

A commitment to remember and express gratitude for those who sacrificed their lives to defend a freedom I so enjoy and so quickly take for granted.

 

My second thought is this.

Please, please, please can we turn towards a different way to solve disagreement and balance the competing claims of our human difference.

Heartbreakingly and horrifically not even the War to End All Wars has really ended all wars. There’s a piece of my heart broken in Ukraine, and another in Israel, and Gaza too.

I was listening to the tale of Israeli prisoners taken hostage in the War of Attrition, that bubbled along between 1967 and 1973 – the little talked about מלחמת ההתשה. There were ten Israelis held in an Egyptian Prisoner of War camp, eventually held in reasonable conditions – Red Cross parcels, they translated the Hobbit into Hebrew while they were there. But initially tortured and mis-treated, one murdered. On their eventual release, for some after three years, they tried to get back to so-called normal life, but, for many, the scars never healed. And then there are new victims, the new hostages, the new deaths, in Amichai’s language, “the new larger circles of pain and time.”

 

There’s an exquisite prayer for peace culled from the writings of Rebbe Nachman by Rabbi Jules Harlow, in the Siddur of the American Conservative Movement.

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It’s heartbreaking we still need that prayer.

That’s the second thought. Peace.

 

I also looked back at the sermon I gave 10 years ago on the 70^th Anniversary of VE, I often get asked if I ever repeat sermons – I’m repeating this bit. Just for those of you who like to keep track. Once every ten years – a paragraph or two.

 

Ten years ago this week, I had been reading Martin Gilbert’s masterful (gevalt) 8-Volume biography of Winston Churchill.

Having given a speech announcing VE day in Parliament Square, Churchill, his voice cracking, as he makes final call, ‘Long live the cause of freedom, God Save the King,’ goes into the Chamber.

 

He gave thanks to the parliament that had supported his leadership. And he said this, “the strength of the Parliamentary institution has been shown to enable it at the same moment to preserve all the title-deeds of democracy while waging war in the most stern and protracted form.

“The liveliness of Parliamentary institutions has been maintained under the fire of the enemy, and for the way in which we have been able to preserve – and we could have persevered much longer if need had been.”

 

We live in a time of what David Runciman calls Dictator Envy. It’s easy to fall for the notion that strength comes from bullying, from squashing contrary voices or from simply demanding that my way is the best way simply because is it my way.

That’s wrong, dangerous and – the lesson of VE – ultimately weak.

It was wrong, dangerous and weak 80 years ago, it remains wrong dangerous and weak today. Strength, real strength, the strength required to defeat the Nazis, comes from wanting to learn from difference, valuing debate and a privileging a process that can lead to best outcomes above my own sense of my own right-ness.

 

To conflate my own opinion with what must be true is turn oneself into an idol, a dictator and a fool. To privilege and fight to ensure the voices of others are heard, even in difference and disagreement, is holy and, ultimately, the source of our strength.

 

It’s important, perhaps even more important today than ten years ago to remember the strength of democracy in the face of demagogy. It’s important to remind ourselves and remind those we vote for the kind of strength we wish for this country in these uneven times. Democratic strength takes a kind of strength.

 

 

 

To those who paid with their lives to bring us, in Europe, 77 years of peace, thank you.

May nation not lift up sword again nation, and let none still turn towards the fake promise of war.

And may we always resist the seductive, dangerous but ultimately weak charms of dictators.

 

Shabbat Shalom