D’var Torah – Vayigash 5769
January 2, 2009

By Rabbi Maurice Harris

Shabbat shalom. What are we to make of the events of the past week? Only a few weeks ago, there was limited reason for some optimism about the potential for progress on negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Southern Israel had been quiet for 6 months. Prime Minister Olmert had been making remarkably brave statements to the press about the sacrifices Israel would need to make for an agreement to be finalized, and he was expressing confidence that it could be done. President Mahmoud Abbas, seizing on this momentum, had the Palestinian Authority pay for full-page ads in all the Israeli papers, as well as on billboards on Israeli roads, depicting the text of the Arab Peace Initiative in Hebrew and Arabic, along with an image of an Israeli and a Palestinian flag side by side. These ads included a direct appeal from Abbas to the Israeli people to give a two-state solution a chance. Both Olmert and Abbas took flak for their overtures to the other side – a sure sign that both were doing something that took courage.

Even the usually dry and disdaining Syrian government had issued a statement that they were now ready to move from indirect talks with Israel to direct, face-to-face talks over a final peace agreement, and they were indicating that they would be open to a peace treaty that included fully normal diplomatic relations. And Prime Minister Olmert also praised the progress that had been made with the Syrians, and appeared to be preparing the Israeli people for a deal on their northeastern border.

Even Hamas’ leaders were commenting that they could foresee accepting a long term truce with Israel based on the 1967 borders – not the kind of full recognition any Israeli government would want in exchange for peace, but a step in the right direction. Iran – perhaps the country Israelis are most fearful of at this moment – is facing presidential elections soon, and the sagging price of oil has so thrashed its already suffering economy that one of the moderate candidates stands a good chance to defeat the Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad. And all of this was playing out in the weeks leading up to a new American administration that has promised to get involved with Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking from Day One. Even Secretary of State Rice’s recent frenzy of shuttle diplomacy intended to bring the two parties as close as possible before the handoff to President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton seemed to be bearing fruit.

Then the cease-fire ended, and Hamas started firing rockets again at Sderot and other Israeli towns, and Olmert started issuing severe warnings. Now we’re almost a week into a war that has cost hundreds of lives, wounded many more, and frightened people on both sides. How do we form judgments about this? This latest Gaza war has divided the American Jewish community as starkly as the Lebanon war of 2006 did. Jews who tend to support the Israeli peace movement have organized themselves under the banner of organizations like Brit Tzedek v’Shalom and J Street to call for international and American pressure to bring about an immediate cease fire. Jews who tend to see these situations as moments to stand with Israel’s government in solidarity have organized themselves to call on the current and next American Presidents to refrain from pressuring Israel at all, and rather to put all pressure on those who support and supply Hamas. Both Jewish responses – left and right of center - are pushing for what they think will be best for Israel. The left of center response is drawing lessons from the eventual outcome of the 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbollah. After the Israelis finished inflicting major damage on the Hezbollah fighters and their terror infrastructure, in the end Hezbollah still remained standing. The fact that it had been militarily weakened didn’t matter. Hezbollah’s status vaulted to new heights in the Arab and Islamic world, as they depicted themselves as having withstood the onslaught of Israel’s superior military force. Many American Jews are concerned that the current Israeli campaign will ultimately create a parallel result, only serving to weaken moderates like Mahmoud Abbas and push Israel ever further away from the possibility of negotiating an end to the conflict.

The right of center response asks the question, “What would any sovereign state do if its civilians were being fired upon?” Their analysis predicts that this time the situation is different than it was in Lebanon. That if they can weaken Hamas militarily they just might be able to help set the table for Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party to retake control of Gaza sometime in the future. They also believe that at a certain point Hamas will be seen as having failed the people of Gaza, and that the misery of Gazans will result in Hamas’ demise as a popular movement.

What does our tradition teach us about war and peace, about self-defense and the use of violence? As I have studied it, I find Jewish teaching to be multi-vocal on this subject. There are many voices on the subject expressing different perspectives. The short answer many people often hear is that Judaism is not a pacifist tradition, that Jewish law includes laws of warfare, and that this is a core difference between Judaism and religious traditions that teach strict non-violence. As a short answer this is true – it is an accurate description of what Judaism has been over the centuries. There are many areas of moral and ethical life that are richly debated in Judaism, and the ethics of when and whether it is appropriate to use violence, and what kind of violence, is one of those areas that we don’t have religious consensus about.

There is a famous one-liner in the Talmud, in Tractate Sanhedrin, that goes like this: “When somebody is coming to kill you, get up earlier and kill him first.” It’s kind of the cosmic opposite of “turn the other cheek.” When war with groups like Hamas erupts in Israel – war with terrorist groups that openly state that their aim is to kill Israelis, groups that aim their weapons at Israeli civilians – many Israelis quote this passage from the Talmud to justify their actions. Nobody in Israel wants to be what’s known in modern Hebrew as a friar. No, this is not a member of a monastic order. A friar is a fool who gets taken advantage of by somebody smarter and more ruthless. To listen to the threats and rants of Hamas’s militants and watch them start firing rockets at Israeli towns – and then to show restraint – that would be like being a real friar. Only a friar is stupid enough to let the other guy try to kill you. “Kill him first.”

The problem with quoting one-liners from the Talmud is that the Talmud is really not a book of one-liners. It’s not like the book of Proverbs in our Bible, which really is a book of one-liners. The Talmud is a book of discussions, and often one-liners are floated by the unnamed narrator of a section, known in Aramaic as the stam, so that they can be explored, discussed, and often disputed. Rabbi Arik Asherman, a prominent human rights leader in Israel, has just written this in reference to the current war:

Many Israelis will quote from the Talmudic Tractate Sanhedrin, "When somebody is coming to kill you, get up earlier and kill him first." However, few are aware of how the Talmud continues, teaching us only to use the minimum necessary force and drawing a sharp contrast between defending ourselves against those attacking us and harming an innocent third party.

Perhaps we can learn something on this topic from this week’s Torah portion, Vayigash. Vayigash takes us through the climax of the famous story of Joseph and his brothers. As we recall, out of hatred borne of jealousy, some of Joseph’s brothers wanted to kill him. But a small measure of mercy stayed their hands, and instead they sold him away to slave-traders. In this week’s reading we see Joseph finally revealing his true identity to his brothers, who are at first dumbfounded, and then later overjoyed and full of apology for their horrible sin against him. Joseph wants to see his father once more, and so it is arranged for Jacob to come with all the members of their clan down to Egypt to see his long lost son, Joseph. In next week’s parashah, the last one in the Book of Genesis, Jacob finally dies, and Joseph’s brothers become afraid that Joseph has been waiting for their father’s death to retaliate against them. Genesis draws to a close with Joseph reassuring his brothers that he has no intention of doing so.

Is there a lesson in this part of Torah about the use of violence? At the end of the drama between Joseph and his brothers, Joseph resists the urge to return to the previous script between him and his brothers – a script of resentment, animosity, violence and separation. In fact, this script is three generations old. Isaac and Ishmael were broken up as brothers, and so were Jacob and Esau. Joseph ends the cycle of enmity and separation by not only forgiving his brothers, but living with them as well.

If there is a lesson, what is it? That Israel should forgive Hamas and stand still as it fires rockets on Israeli civilians? I don’t think that needs to be the lesson. Between massive military action and total pacifism there lies a wide range of possible responses to an enemy attack. Maybe there’s a lesson in the moment early in the Joseph story that the jealous brothers shifted from their plan to kill Joseph to a plan to do him a lesser turn of violence. That moment is vividly drawn in Torah – Reuben is the brother who talks the others out of murder. Maybe even in the midst of war there’s wisdom in looking for a measure of mercy, or a measure of moderation in the act of self-defense that may help to leave open the possibility of reconciliation somewhere down the road.

I’ve taken a stand with the Jewish peace groups pushing for American interference, in the hopes of creating an immediate cease fire. I took that stand because I’ve become fairly convinced that violence unleashed is such a potent and damaging force that it almost always generates unexpected negative consequences for those who unleash it as well as those who receive it. I took that stand because I don’t like it when the U.S. or Israel – the two countries I love the most – do things that kill civilians even if the other side is killing ours. But I’ve taken that stand with a measure of doubt. What if the people to my right are correct? What if this really is Israel’s chance to do serious damage to Hamas, an organization whose beliefs are anathema to me? What if a cease fire now will only help Hamas regroup and further risk Israeli lives?

I’ll close by sharing two quotes, one from my friend and rabbinic colleague, Rabbi Anita Steiner, who lives in Ashkelon in southern Israel, and one from the writer and war correspondent, Chris Hedges.

A couple days ago, Rabbi Steiner, who serves on the Board of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, posted this to our rabbinic listserv:

I was visiting a very sick friend when we started to bomb Gaza earlier. Usually shabbatot are quiet, so when we heard our planes going overheard and southward (towards Gaza), we knew something was going on.

Thus far six sirens/alerts have gone off here in my neighborhood. Each time I go to my bomb shelter which opens onto my kitchen. I am lucky, as I have my own bomb shelter, and live towards the northern part of the city. Some people have to descend a number of flights of stairs for a safe place, and some people have no safe place to go to.

I have heard seven of the rockets landing in Ashkelon, two of them being very loud and therefore very close, I even heard the zooming of the last one.

This week we were dodging rockets, and an unprecedented number were fired from Gaza. Davka (ironically) one hit a Palestinian in Gaza and we helped him cross over and he was taken to an Israeli hospital. And our trucks were delivering goods -flour, sugar, medical supplies to Gaza.

Three of the sirens have gone off while I have [been] writing this email.

What should one do when being bombarded?

I find myself unable to be rational. I was to have gone to the center of the country to visit with friends who are new olim (immigrants to Israel), and have dinner with my sons in Tel Aviv. Both my sons encouraged me to leave home and to go stay with them in Tel Aviv.

But it feels "better" to be at home, figure that out.

In my former life as a social worker, we had assignments in case of emergencies, or a disaster. (The entire country is organized "in case of.") During the first Iraq war, I spent a number of nights in the emergency command center when the rockets were landing in Israel, as I was one of the few social workers locally that didn't have little kids at home- and could work the night shifts.

But I am no longer in the system.

So I am at home....... hoping that rockets will end, that there will be international pressure, and a cease fire will be forced on both sides. Yes I realize that this is only a short term solution.

I don't have any easy answers.

May we have peace in Israel and all yoshvei tevel (“all who dwell on earth”).

Anita

And finally, this from Chris Hedges’ book, War Is a Force for Meaning in Our Lives. Mr. Hedges is a veteran war correspondent who has been in the thick of war all over the world. He writes:

War and conflict have marked most of my adult life. I have been in ambushes on desolate stretches of Central American roads, locked in unnerving firefights in the marshes in southern Iraq, imprisoned in the Sudan, beaten by Saudi military police, deported from Libya and Iran, captured and held for a week by Iraqi Republican Guards, strafed by Russian Mig-21s in central Bosnia, shot at by Serb snipers and shelled with deafening rounds of artillery in Sarajevo that threw out thousands of deadly bits of iron fragments. I have seen too much of violent death. I have tasted too much of my own fear. I have painful memories that lie buried most of the time. It is never easy when they surface.

And yet there is a part of me that remains nostalgic for war's simplicity and high. The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it gives us what we all long for in life. It gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our news. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those that have the least meaning in their lives - the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the lost legions of youth that live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world - are all susceptible to war's appeal.

Let us beware the dangers of simplistic, black and white thinking during this difficult time. Let us empathize and show concern for our fellow Jews in Israel while never losing our ability to empathize and show concern for Palestinians who are our permanent neighbors in the region. Let us strengthen the forces of reconciliation and hope in the Middle East with our time, money, letters and other efforts, because brighter days will come. Let us be skeptical of the seductive nature of war’s appeal, and also not be friars. Shabbat shalom.