This is something I wrote in, I think 2018. A long time ago. Long before these most recent trials. It's in my book, Spiritual Vagabondry but I haven't posted it before here.
Judaism believes
in peace, loves peace and prays and works towards peace. The greatest visions
of the Bible are of the wolf lying down with lamb (Isaiah 11) and of swords
being beaten into ploughshares (Isaiah 2). Beyond the Bible the Rabbis, in
their codification of Jewish life, infused every major prayer experience of the
Jew with the yearning for peace. The second century sage Rav Shimon son of
Halafta, says ‘a blessing is useless unless it comes with peace.’
The great Medieval commentator Rabbi Yom Tov Isbili, known as the Ritba (Spain
d. 1330) collated a list of codified Jewish prayers that have as their
conclusion the plea for peace; it includes the grace after meals, the principle
doxology (Kaddish), the central prayer of evening, morning and afternoon
services (Amidah), the priestly blessing (Numbers 6) and others.
Judaism believes in peace.
But the Hebrew Bible
also knows violence. The commandment lo tirzah (Exodus 20:13) is
inaccurately translated in the King James Bible as ‘thou shall not kill.’ The
correct rendition of the original Hebrew is ‘thou shall not murder.’ The Bible
justifies and even demands violence, even unto killing, on too many occasions
to list. That said there is a noteworthy attitude towards violence that
suffuses not only the Bible, but also the project of Rabbinic Judaism. Time and
time again in the Bible and Rabbinic texts one can see the impulse to violence and
war subjected to controls designed to ameliorate the destructive potential of military
brutality.
The Bible mandates
(Deut 20 & 21) that an invading army should offer peace to a city before
waging war against it. It demands that fruit trees, around an ancient city, are
not destroyed by siege warfare, asking rhetorically ‘is a tree a person, to be
besieged by you?’ It insists that any beautiful women captured in combat is not
to be treated as chattel to be ‘used’ and/or abandoned at will … and the list
goes on.
One can see the
same tendency in Rabbinic texts. Maimonides,
(d. 1204) the greatest of medieval Jewish sages, set out precise Laws of War in
his code the Mishneh Torah. One mandate demands that ‘when besieging a city in
order to capture it, you should not surround it on all four sides, but only on
three sides, allowing an escape path for anyone who wishes to save his life.’
Aside from noting the seeming military lunacy of a three-sided siege there are
two other points to note when considering the significance of this kind of
religious engagement with war. Firstly, while Maimonides is able to produce a
Biblical verse to justify his codification (Numbers 31:7), on the face of it
the verse mandates no such behaviour; Maimonides need not have included this
mandate, he’s willing the mandate into existence driven by a greater sense and
understanding of what Judaism must stand for. Secondly this militarily self-defeating
mandate has had practical impact for the contemporary Israeli army, as will be
discussed below.
The messy business
of Israel’s contemporary engagement will be treated more extensively later in
this paper, but it’s important to understand that for close to two thousand
years Maimonides’ demands were of no practical import whatsoever. The dominant
norm governing Judaism’s engagement with violence was not that of a military
power, squaring military necessity and morality, but that of a wandering,
stateless, army-less people subject to the attitudes to violence of other
nations and nationally enshrined faiths. In 70CE the Romans destroyed the Israelite
State based around Jerusalem, in the years before and after this all the other vestiges
of Jewish national and military presence were also erased. Judaism became a people
with no physical border to protect, no army and no possibility of waging war. From
Selucids to Romans to Christians to Muslims, across time and place Jews have
been persecuted, beaten, burnt, and, in a period as dark as humanity has
experienced, been subject to a level of genocidal brutality beyond decent humans’
ability to imagine. Throughout almost two millennia of Diaspora existence Jews
were forbidden from bearing arms and, by and large, accepted this and other externally
imposed regulations as the cost of survival, of ‘doing business,’ in a world
governed by foreign might. Jews became pacifists by circumstance. Any drive to
conquer territory was sublimated into mercantile endeavour or the exegetical engagement
characteristic of Rabbinic Judaism. In place of soldiers Judaism valorised scholars.
The Rabbis even turned the soldiers of the Bible into intellectuals. The Book
of Samuel refers to David, slayer of Goliath, as ‘a brave fighter and man of
war.’ The Talmud explains this
means he knew how argue his point in ‘the war of Torah.’
Offered only the opportunity of military surrender Judaism waged war on the
entire notion of military bravado and, playing by rules they themselves constructed,
declared themselves victorious without recourse to sword or bullet.
But by the
beginning of the twentieth century Jews were growing weary of this purely
exegetical triumph. The pacifism was being beaten out of them. By the dark
years of the ’30s and ’40s the suggestion that Jews could respond to antisemitic
violence with words alone seemed more than vapid, it bordered on the offensive.
The great pacifist, Mahatma Ghandi wrote, in 1938, that the Jews of Germany
should protest against Hitler only using non-violent means. “I am as certain as
I am dictating these words that the stoniest German heart will melt [if only
the Jews], adopt active nonviolence… I do not despair of his [Hitler's]
responding to human suffering even though caused by him.”
The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (hardly known as a militarist!) took Ghandi
to task. The Jews of Germany, as Buber knew from personal experience, were
dealing with a genocidal mania that would not respond to non-violence.
Non-violent resistance in the face of utter brutality was capitulation. Of
course said Buber, the violent response was one that could only be employed
with ‘fear and trembling’ but “[I]f there is no other way of preventing the
evil destroying the good, I trust I shall use force and give myself up into
God's hands.”
Alongside its abnegation of violence and love of peace Judaism began to place
increasing weight on the value of self-defence.
Then the wheels of
history turned and Israel found itself with an army, a state and, arrayed
around and even inside its borders, armed aggressors. Now what? Certainly
ethical and religious factors have always been central to the vision of the
defence of the Israeli State. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have an ethics
code,drafted by religious leaders, professors, lawyers and generals
and drummed into soldiers during training. The code articulates the values of
‘Human Dignity,’ ‘Responsibility,’ and ‘Purity of Arms’ – ‘IDF servicemen and
women will use their weapons and force only for the purpose of their mission,
only to the necessary extent and will maintain their humanity even during
combat. IDF soldiers will not use their weapons and force to harm human beings
who are not combatants or prisoners of war, and will do all in their power to
avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity and property.’ When soldiers fail to live
up to values espoused in the code they can expect investigation and reprimand.
But the challenges faced by the Israeli State do not fit easily into categories
outlined in a document written in ivory towers. Terrorist aggressors usually
dressed as civilians tend to launch attacks from and/or into densely populated
areas full of civilians, both Arabs and Jews are liable to suffer the
consequences of terrorist actions. Writing in the aftermath of Operation Cast
Lead, December 2008, philosopher and member of the team who drafted the IDF
Code, Moshe Halbertal has empathy for Israeli soldiers confronted by recognisable
military violence, but no recognisable army, ‘By
disguising themselves as civilians and by attacking civilians with no uniforms
and with no front’ writes Halbertal ‘paramilitary terrorist organizations
attempt nothing less than to erase the distinction between combatants and
noncombatants on both sides of the struggle.’ Israel
faces what Halbertal calls acts of ‘assymetrical warfare.’ It’s hard to balance
out risks of loss and risks of collateral damage even in moments of security,
let alone in the heat of incoming mortars and katyusha rockets.
The aftermath of
an incident now fifty years old will serve as a test case from which to
consider more contemporary religious responses. In 1953 Palestinian terrorists
launched attacks on Israel from Kibiya, a village on the, then, Jordanian
controlled, West Bank. The Israeli military responded ferociously. The village
was all-but destroyed, many villagers were killed. It was an action with
uncanny echoes for our times. Some religious leaders expressed no compunction
in accepting the validity of violence in the face of terrorist attack on Jewish
lives. Rav Shaul Yisraeli, who went on to become one of the heads of Yeshivat Mercaz
Harav Kook justified the use of force as follows, ‘There is a place for acts of retribution
and revenge against the oppressors of Israel. … They are responsible for any
damage that comes to them, their sympathizers, or their children. They must
bear their sin. There is no obligation
to refrain from reprisal for fear that it might harm innocent people, for we
did not cause it. They are the cause and
we are innocent.’
This is the tough uncompromising perspective of a hawkish politician, but
Yisraeli justified the attack on Kibiya with reference to a classic Rabbinic
concept. The community of nations, Yisraeli claimed, believed these kinds of
military actions were permissible, therefore Israel could avail herself of this
international consensus in an application of a classic Rabbinic principle dina
d’malkhuta dina – the law of the land is the law.
‘The foundation of dina d’malkhutah dina relates not only to what
transpires within a state, but also to international matters as is the accepted
custom,’ claimed Yisraeli. Putting aside the issue of whether the international
community would have accepted the legality of actions taken in Kibiyah,
Yisraeli’s claim is that Israel should be judged by the standard of the ethics
of nations at large. If the British bomb Dresden and the Americans lay waste to
Hiroshima (both examples cited in support of his position), the Israelis can
lay waste to Kibiya not only as a matter of military expediency, but also without
religious qualm.
More critical positions
also crystallised in the aftermath of the attack on Kibiyah. The philosopher
and commentator Yeshayhu Leibowitz acknowledged the attack could be defended
with reference to Rabbinic tradition or the standards of other nations, ‘but
let us not try to do so. Let us rather recognize its distressing nature.’
Leibowitz compared Kibiya’s destruction to the Biblical tale of Dinah.
Dinah, daughter of Jacob, was kidnapped, taken to Shechem and raped, an action
that resulted in her brothers destroying the town and its male inhabitants.
Leibowitz claimed the brothers ‘had a decisive justification [for launching the
all-out raid]. Nevertheless, because of this action, their father Jacob cursed
the two tribes for generations…Let us not establish [the modern State of
Israel] on the foundation of the curse of our father Jacob!’
Both these
responses – the hawkish and the cursing – can be observed in contemporary
Jewish and Israeli discourse responding to contemporary acts of Israeli
military violence, but there is a third way which, I argue is truer to Jewish
discourse and analysis. Rav Shlomo Goren (d. 1994) founded the Israel
Defence Forces Rabbinate and served as its first Chief Rabbi for about two
decades, subsequently serving as Chief Rabbi of Israel. Much of his vast scholarly
output concerned military matters. His formally collected Responsa on Matters
of the Military, War, and Security
alone run to four volumes and cover a vast range of issues, theoretical and
practical, as applies to Generals and to Privates. Goren was no apologist. In a
radical and broad application of principles learnt from an obscure law in
Deuteronomy
he deems Israelis responsible for any death that occurs anywhere in the
occupied territories.
In 1982 Goren was Chief Rabbi
of Israel and used his position to insist that an escape path be left open
during the siege of Beirut, (in accordance with Maimonides’ demand as discussed
above).
Responsa literature is technical, there are many competing factors to be
balanced as religious aspiration and ugly brutality come into conflict, it is
also requires deep scholarship understanding of religious sensitivity and of
military necessity. Goren’s approach is untidy, often unpopular and even
occasionally unsafe. But it is, I argue, the truest reflection of a Jewish tradition
torn between dreams of peace and harsh political and historical realities. Those
who wish to speak on the validity, or otherwise, of various acts of military
violence need to study much, speak carefully and know that the safety of
certainty is not given to human beings. ‘Who knows if your blood is redder,’
asks the Talmud, ‘perhaps their blood is redder.’
Ethics and war make for uncomfortable
bed-fellows. Military ethicists, particularly those who speak in the name of a
religious tradition, should be troubled sleepers, uneasy and unsure, afraid
that their pronouncements could condone the spillage of a single drop of blood.
No matter whose blood may be shed, every drop is sacred, ‘for the soul of all
flesh is in its blood.’
At the heart of Judaism lies an extraordinary articulation of the value of
human life. All humans, the book of Genesis tells us, are created from one
original template – Adam. This is so, state the Rabbis, in order to teach us
that ‘whoever
destroys a single soul, is considered as though they had destroyed an entire
world; and whoever saves a single soul is considered as though they had saved
an entire world.’
It is, of course, an
articulation that Muslim scholars will recognise from their own scriptures.
The demand of the One God shared by both Jews and Muslims is that this message be
taught and taught again and again until the day when swords can indeed be
turned into ploughshares, nations and individuals will cease lifting up swords
against one another and none shall learn war any more. And then every person,
Jew and Palestinian, shall be able to sit under their vine and under their fig
tree and none shall make them afraid.
Rabbi Jeremy
Gordon is Rabbi of New London Synagogue. He studied at Cambridge University and
the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and is associated with the British
Masorti, and American Conservative denominations. His blog can be found at http://www.rabbionanarrowbridge.blogspot.com/
Y. Leibowitz, “After Kibiyeh,” in Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish
State (Eliezer
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