I know that I’ve expressed more than a little nostalgia for my time
as a chaplain in the US Air Force. One aspect
of my service that stands out is the joy of getting to know, and work with,
chaplains of other faiths. We all worked
under very different basic religious assumptions. Yet we didn’t find it hard to transcend those
differences as we served the troops and their families.
One of my colleagues
whose memory is particularly precious to me, is the Catholic priest who served
as my mentor during my first assignment. Father Vern Shuler, of blessed memory. But once I worked with a priest who was rather
problematic. He tried to bait me for
sport. I don’t think he was
mean-spirited. He just had a fondness
for mental jousting that would manifest itself now and then as he made what I saw
as outlandish declarations in casual conversation. I would sometimes respond in kind which only
provoked him further.
One time, the priest
said something that really gave me pause.
He declared that we Jews had invented Ethnic Cleansing, and he pointed
to the 31st chapter of the Book of Numbers to prove his point. There, we find the account of the vengeance
of the Israelites against the Midianites.
In chapter 25, we read about Midianite women seducing Israelite men and
leading them to idolatrous practices. The
result was a plague that killed 24,000 Israelites. At the time, Moses promised to avenge the
Midianites for leading the Israelite men to sin; in this chapter he carries out
the promise. Here, our people commit
wholesale slaughter of the men of Midian.
Moses, on hearing they had allowed the Midianite women to live, was
livid. Since it was the daughters of
Midian who lad led the Israelite men astray, he wanted the vengeance to be
carried out particularly against them.
He ordered that not one girl above puberty be allowed to live.
Now my Catholic colleague
was absolutely wrong; this was not the first recorded ethnic cleansing
in history. But he was correct in that
this is a problematic episode…to say the least. It is reasonable that it least gives some
credence to a claim that we Jews, historically, are not exactly the
peace-loving people we like to think that we are. We confront this passage today, in the parashah
Mattot which is half of our double portion this week.
I had a snappy answer
to my colleague. I snatched his Bible
off his desk. “Is this your holy book?”
I asked him. When he responded that it
was, I flipped open to the chapter in question, Numbers 31. Then I asserted that, since his own holy book
records this incident with no hint of rebuke toward Moses, then he – the
priest – must understand the purge as ordained by G-d. Having made my debating point, I felt
good. I returned to my own office to
start my day’s work.
I was thinking about
this encounter this week, because as you may now, my son Eyal made his Aliyah;
he immigrated to Israel to serve in the defence forces of one of the two
countries in which he holds citizenship. A day or two before he boarded his flight to
Ben Gurion Airport, we had a conversation about the morality of the Israel
Defence Forces.
Eyal went voluntarily;
the IDF does force citizens who have never actually lived in Israel to serve. Eyal could have gone through his life in the
USA or elsewhere, without ever having to worry about it. But about a year and a half ago, he made a
decision to serve in the IDF if possible and enrolled in a program assisting young
Israelis living abroad to make the transition, make their Aliyah, and serve. He’s headed for a couple of months of
acclimatization and processing and will actually enlist in the army in October
or so.
I’ve addressed in the
past, that Israel gets extremely bad press in the world’s mainstream media. It is nothing short of tragic that professional
journalists, with an important function of keeping the public informed, do so
with a pronounced bias. Israel is not alone
on the wrong side of that bias, mind you, but she seems to be a favourite object
of negative reporting. The incredible thing
is that, whenever a major media outlet is exposed as having botched a story to
Israel’s disadvantage, there’s never a price to pay. People keep devouring the news from the BBC
and Reuters, to give examples of two of the biggest offenders, and ascribe to
their reporting a high degree of credibility. But if they manipulate the news about Israel,
doesn’t that call into question all of their reporting? That is doesn’t for so many consumers of the
news, is nothing short of incredible.
Look, this is not to
say that Israel is akin to Mother Theresa. But she certainly is not Jack the Ripper, as
is popularly portrayed. The reality is
that Israel, trying to stay alive and thrive in a bad neighbourhood, with
neighbours who don’t particularly want her there, is one of the most tolerant, open,
liberal, multicultural countries in the world. And her army is held to a higher standard by
her citizens, than almost any army in the world. And few armies in the world are at war every
day of their existence the way that Israel’s is.
Most of us
experience some degree of jitters when we undertake a big change in our lives. So too Eyal.
As he prepared to travel to Israel and put into motion the process that
will end with him donning the uniform of the IDF later this year, he began to
listen ever more keenly to reportage on Israel. And much of it is negative. He began to wonder; would he be expected to
engage in immoral actions? Since
everybody “knows” that Israel “illegally occupies” someone else’s land and uses
her army to enforce that occupation, wasn’t it likely that Eyal would be forced
by consequences and military discipline to act immorally?
You can tell by my
use of quotes that I question the premises so widely accepted in much of the
world. So Eyal and I had a long talk
about what actually constitutes occupation, and about why I believe the Israeli
presence in Judea and Samaria does not qualify as occupation. About the history of why Israel came to erect
barriers between her citizens and those who engaged, before those barriers, in
almost-daily terror attacks resulting in hundreds of deaths over the years. Sbarro Pizzeria. Dolphinarium Disco. The Netanya Wedding. And hundreds of other incidents. The attacks were devastating in such a small
country. So the Israelis built a barrier
and checkpoints to enforce a modicum of security. And it has largely worked. Some of you have seen the Simon Schama
miniseries, The Story of the Jews, produced for the BBC. Schama stands in front of one section of the
barrier that definitely reminds one of the Berlin Wall and asks: “What does this do to the soul of a nation?” But in the next breath, he looks straight at
the camera and states that he, who has not lived under the existential threats
that Israel faces, is unqualified to judge. Of course now, a three years after the production
of the series, Schama and other Britons know firsthand the reality of terror. In truth, we all do. Schama is certainly correct in regretting that
the existence of Israel, and her neighbours’ refusal to accept that fact, has
led to the existence of a stockade-like barrier that snakes across the Judean
landscape. And he is also correct in his
refusal to pass judgement against the Israelis for building it. The barrier is an ugly reminder of an ugly
truth. At the end of the day, it has
saved untold Israeli lives. If the jihad
would end tomorrow, the wall’s removal would surely follow.
The slaughter of the
Midianites is a difficult passage to understand in our age. The Torah does not condemn Moses for
his brutality towards the Midianites. But
our sages have never understood that this is to be used as an example in
determining the threshold for going to war, or the limits of behavior in war,
afterwards. Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the
first Chief Rabbi of the IDF, taught this clearly in Meishiv Milchamah, his
monumental work on morality and war. Citing
the Rambam, Goren pointed out the Rambam’s teaching that the wars against the
Canaanite nations were to be seen as a unique category of war, a one-time
event, necessary for the cleansing of the land prior to the Israelites’
conquest. They are not to be seen as an
example for later generations; later enemies of the people Israel cannot be
seen as incarnations of the Canaanites. Therefore,
a very different ethic concerning the conduct of war has been enshrined in the
Halachah. That ethic in large part,
forms the basis of the standards within which the IDF today is expected to
operate.
Knowing this, even
whilst knowing that it means the IDF will place its troops in great danger to
prevent large scale injury to non-combatants, is comforting to me as the parent
of a young man who will soon serve in Israel’s army. My saying this, may sound
counter-intuitive. Of course, like any
parent of a young person performing military service, I pray that he will be
safe. But it is also my prayer that his
service will not force him to behave in ways that will compromise his ethics,
his sense of right and wrong.
The war against the
Midianites certainly was brutal according to the standards that we
accept today. But the Torah teaches us
that it was necessary. Even so, our
tradition teaches that it will never be repeated. In our time, measures enacted in Judea and
Samaria to control the contagion of terror are regrettable yet not brutal in
perspective. And if we’re giving Israel
a fair hearing, we can understand how they are necessary. The IDF is definitely not Jack the
Ripper. Rather, it is a very moral force
which has been handed a difficult mission.
We can be proud of the Israeli Army as it faces the difficulties that
fate has handed it. We can be proud of
our Israeli cousins who step forward proudly to serve and protect their country
– our country. Shabbat shalom.
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