Rabbi's Corner

War would not be the subject of tonight's d'var Torah had Russia not started one. Though in our developing Torah story, warfare is on the Israelite horizon, at this point in our reading our ancestors are gathering amongst themselves in the common cause of building a portable sanctuary that is to be a physical home for God. The sanctuary or mishkan was a tangible symbol of God's centrality that regularly had to be assembled, disassembled, and carried from place to place. The mishkan was a weighty reminder that God's word, Torah, was to serve as the foundation for a freer, more ethical, law-based society that could and would tame the greed and ruthlessness of brute power--something the Israelites new firsthand from their experience under Pharaoh.

This new society of Israelites is expressly envisioned to be a priestly nation. In other words, what is expected is for an entire nation of individuals to behave in ways befitting a priest even though at this point in our history, only a select few were to be crowned as such. Aaron and his sons were the launch team, if you will. So while in our portion, the Israelites are preoccupied with community building, warfare was on the horizon. It's not hard to imagine how a new Israelite nation professing an ethical monotheism would come to challenge the moral foundations and world views of other regional peoples. Is it so different today?

What can be more threatening to tyranny than budding democracy on your border? But this is not the first time that Russian autocrats faced down the encroachments of the West. In War and Peace, a renowned piece of nineteenth century historical fiction, Leo Tolstoy retells Napoleon's failed ambition to conquer Moscow, understood as the holy grail of western ambition. In his expansive narrative, Tolstoy captures the Russian people's love for a czar as brilliantly as he dissects the myriad individual motives for which nations go to war. In the early twentieth century, professed lovers of freedom and equality like Vladimir Lenin, eventually succumb to tyranny. In that unfortunate history, tyrants of an ideology hold Soviets in thrall for nearly a century. It seems now that history circles back on itself. Some are saying that Putin is poised for twenty-first century czardom.

And what have we learned? Do the terms of Ukraine's adjacent NATO status, of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, and of however many other promises were made to safeguard Ukraine's sovereignty make clear our American obligations? Does Torah provide any guidance?

Jewish law, halakhah, literally, “the path that one walks,” is a set of rules and practices that govern every aspect of life and which add a spiritual dimension to even the most mundane activities. Jewish law is derived from the Torah, the rabbis, and from custom, in descending order of authority.

Jewish law differs from Western law in its inclusion of moral values. In Western law, if you want to know the right thing to do, you have to go outside the law to the vaguer sanctions of conscience.¹

For example, there are Good Samaritan laws in a handful of US states. The Good Samaritan law holds blameless a person who intervenes on behalf of a distressed person should the intervention prove injurious. Yet there is no state in the union that makes it mandatory to stop and intervene on behalf of a person in distress. For whatever reasons, one can legally stand aside and leave a distressed person to their fate. By contrast, halakhah does obligate us to stop and help a person in distress.

Regarding a nation in distress and war itself, the Bible is less prescriptive. Warfare is treated as a given, sometimes a show of God's power, sometimes a form of divine punishment, sometimes the only way to achieve what's right, sometimes the epitome of what is wrong. Ecclesiastes or Kohelet, thought to be a king of Judah took a practical rather than idealistic view of war stating the now famous verses: “There is a time for everything under heaven, including a time for war and a time for peace,” placing peace second.² Prophets spoke out against violence³ most (not all) prophets close to kings supported wars about to be fought.⁴ At the same time an era without war and strife is clearly the future messianic vision. Fashioning swords into ploughshares and teaching war no more is Torah's ultimate goal and desired state for the world.⁵

After defeat by the Romans in 70 CE, the early rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud had little appetite for elaborating on war and its practices. It wasn't until Maimonides in the twelfth century that the subject would be addressed at any length, articulating distinctions between obligatory wars--those related to defending the Promised Land--and non-obligatory wars--virtually all others, which could be engaged in only after efforts of peacemaking had failed and which called for a [majority] vote by the highest legislative body, the Sanhedrin. Since then ethical approaches to war through a Jewish lens continue to be worked out in our day. Responding to the current Russian aggression, Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, stated that Israel is currently focusing on efforts to evacuate Israelis, to provide aid to the Ukranian Jewish community, to provide humanitarian aid in general and is preparing to receive Ukranian Jews who want to immigrate to Israel. The Prime Minister commented on the tragedy of the situation resulting from a changing world order and from a world order that is less stable.

In our liturgy we say, "Pray as if everything depends on God." We pray for peace and for a quick conclusion to Russia's aggression. We pray for the well-being of all those in eastern Ukraine and for an end to fear and intimidation. We also say, "Act as if everything depends on us." As a Jewish American, when I see the faces of the wounded in Ukraine I see a bully who is responsible at center stage and I see us, a bystander nation, with the obligation to intervene. . . I wish I could say for the sake of peace, but I'm going to say for the sake of freedom.

¹ Rabbi Yitzhok Adlerstein, Adjunct Chair of Jewish Law and Ethics at Loyala Law School, Los Angeles, CA.
² Eccl. 3:8.
³ Is 60:18; Jer 23:3; Ezek 45:9
⁴ Jehu in I Kings 16:7; I Kings 22:6
⁵ Jer 65:25, Micah 4:3; Is 2:4