Torah from the Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi J oel Zeff If you have comments or questions please feel free to e-mail Rabbi Zeff at: thezeffs@gmail.com

The Real and the Ideal: War and Peace in Jewish Values

For close to two thousand years Jewish statelessness made the issue of Judaism’s attitude towards war and peace a purely theoretical construct. The rise of the State of Israel and the unfortunate necessity to all too frequently defend its existence has forced Jewish thinkers to reexamine the classical texts of Judaism to formulate a Jewish ethics of warfare. The Hebrew Bible deals at length with the topic of war and, in its wake, the Talmud and subsequent commentaries and law codes treat this issue in substantial detail. The focus of this essay will be on the most basic attitude towards war and peace as reflected in Jewish religious literature.

A surprisingly fruitful place to begin our journey of exploration is with a seemingly obscure detail in the rubric of the Torah’s laws concerning the sacrificial order, “If you make for me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for if you wave your sword upon it you will have defiled it.”(Ex. 20:22) This injunction is reiterated in Deuteronomy with a slightly different formulation, “And there, you shall build an altar to the Lord, your God, an altar of stones. You shall not wield any iron upon them. You shall build the altar of the Lord, your God, out of whole stones.”(Deut. 27:5-6) Indeed, the Bible considers this detail of sacrificial architecture so significant it records the punctilious actualization of this command with regards to the altar built by Joshua upon the conquest of the Land of Israel, “Then Joshua built an altar to the Lord God of Israel on Mount Ebal. As Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of whole stones, upon which no (man) has lifted up any iron.”(Josh. 8:30-31) Typical to the Biblical style, no rationale is offered for this demand that the altar be constructed of rough stones, still in their natural state, rather than the more customary practice of carving the stones to a more manageable and, in fact, more aesthetic, shape.

The Talmudic sages suggest a symbolic approach in understanding this commandment:

‘For if you wave your sword upon it you will have defiled it.’ In this connection Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar used to say, ‘The altar is made to prolong the years of man and iron is made to shorten the years of man. It is not right for that which shortens life to be lifted up against that which prolongs life.’

The ancient rabbis associate the altar with the prolongation of life. This is undoubtedly a reference to the altar’s role in the process of atonement and expiation for sin. Once liability for wrongdoing is mitigated through sacrifice, the “cleansed” individual is no longer subject to heavenly retribution. The tool that would have been used to carve the stones into shape was invariably a sharp iron instrument, precisely evocative of, or even identical with, a sword- whose more common function is to “shorten the years of man.” The Talmudic sages plug back into the verse the symbolic values and the verse is now telling us that war and the altar are incompatible. An instrument of war profanes the altar.

To fully appreciate the drama of this statement it is vital to understand the centrality of the sacrificial order in classical Jewish thought. In the famous collection of wisdom sayings contained in the Mishna, referred to as Avot, we find the well known dictum, “The world stands on three things: on the Torah, on Divine service, and on acts of loving kindness.”(Avot 1:2) While the meaning of “Torah” and “acts of loving kindness” is fairly self-evident, the term “Divine service” needs clarification. The most basic of commentators on the Mishna, Rabbi Ovadya of Bartenua, comments, “the service of the sacrificial offerings, for so we have learned in tractate Ta’anit, ‘were it not for the order of sacrificial worship in the Temple the heavens and earth could not exist…’” The altar represents the very peak of worship of God; an ideal which affirms life and assures the existence of the world. War profanes the ultimate of Jewish ideals.

For those who lived during the periods of Jewish history in which there existed such an altar made of unhewn stones they served as a potent reminder of the supreme value of peace and the affirmation of life. Jewish tradition found a way to perpetuate this message through an almost identical symbolic structure, even in the absence of such an altar. The universally celebrated 16^th century code of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch, records an interesting custom, “It is the custom to cover the knife before reciting the grace after meals.”(Shulchan Aruch 180:5) Though Rabbi Yosef Karo, the author of the Shulchan Aruch, does not explain the basis of this custom in the Shulchan Aruch, he does do so in his earlier and much more detailed work entitled Beit Yosef: "Iron shortens the life of man and therefore it is improper that it lay on the table, which is compared to the altar of the Sanctuary which lengthens the life of man.” (Orech Chaim 180)

Rabbi Karo is obviously invoking the language and imagery of the Talmudic interpretation of the Biblical prohibition on hewn stones making up the altar. Though we no longer have the Tabernacle nor the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, our home is now our sanctuary and the dining room table is our altar. For this reason we cover the knife on the table as we say grace, in order to create a contemporary perpetuation of the symbolic structure conveying the profound value of the affirmation of life and the feeling of repugnance towards the antithesis of peace.

Is this indeed the “authentic” interpretation of the prohibition on the use of hewn stones in the construction of the altar? Is the midrashic analysis a fanciful use of a conveniently obscure verse? A brief examination of King David’s charge to his son Solomon to build the Holy Temple in Jerusalem is instructive:

And he called Solomon his son and commanded him to build a House for the Lord God of Israel. And David said to Solomon, "My son, as for me, it was in my heart to build a House in the name of the Lord my God. But the word of the Lord was upon me, saying: 'You have shed much blood, and you have waged great wars; you shall not build a House in My Name because you have shed much blood to the ground before Me. Behold a son will be born to you; he will be a man of peace, and I shall give him peace from all his enemies around about, for Solomon will be his name, and I shall give peace and quiet to Israel in his days. He shall build a House in My Name, and he shall be to Me as a son, and I to him as a Father, and I shall prepare the throne of his kingdom forever.'

Though David had desired and intended to build the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, God had prevented him from doing so. The text is clear as to God’s motives. David shed much blood and waged great wars. It is fascinating to note that the text does not have a condemnatory tone with regards to David. David fought wars as the King of Israel; wars that were largely necessitated by historical context. King David, in his very person, is a living symbol of the sword. As such he is not fit to build the Holy Temple, which is the altar and its expanded surroundings. The altar is a symbol affirming the almost absolute value of life. David, the living sword, is an inappropriate instrument for the building of the altar. Solomon, David’s son, who merited to rule in an age of peace, largely due to the military prowess of his father, is chosen to build a House to the Lord. Solomon’s very name is a form of the Hebrew word shalom, peace. Only he whose very name is peace can build a citadel of peace.

The example of King David also contributes a vital nuance. Judaism places an extraordinary premium on the value of peace, yet it is most decidedly not advocating a pacifist position. King David is a hero and serves as the paradigm for the messianic personality. He is both warrior and sweet singer of Israel. War is a tragic necessity in a far from perfect world. Indeed, it is not unfair to view many of the wars of David as an ironically unfortunate expression of the very affirmation of life, which is Judaism’s ideal. The will to live, both as individuals and as a nation in its homeland, necessitates the bearing of the sword. Yet the pressure of necessity must never be allowed to blur the clarity of the ideal vision of peace. The sword may be necessary but the altar must broadcast a pristine message of peace.

It is abundantly clear that the Talmudic sages saw the obvious parallel between disallowing David to build the Holy Temple, with its altar, and the Torah’s proscribing the use of the sword in the construction of the stone altar. In light of the passage from Chronicles, the Talmudic midrash which deciphered the meaning of the Torah’s prohibition could not be more firmly rooted in the plain meaning of the Biblical text.

The Mishnaic tractate of Shabbat, dealing with the intricate details of Sabbath observance, serves as another surprising source for an examination of the tension between the real and the ideal of war and peace. The Mishnah Shabbat (6:4) reads:

A man may not go out with a sword or with a bow or with a shield or with a lance or with a spear; and if he went out, he is liable to a sin-offering. Rabbi Eliezer says, They are his adornments. But the Sages say, They are nothing other than a reproach, for it is said, ‘And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, and nation shall not lift up sword against a nation and they shall no more learn war.’(Isa. 2:4)

This passage is dealing with a detail of the general prohibition of carrying on the Sabbath day. This prohibition does not preclude walking outside with jewelry, which is viewed as being analogous to clothing. Rabbi Eliezer asserts that these military accessories should be viewed as jewelry, as they presumably enhance the masculine demeanor of the bearer. The majority opinion sharply disagrees. The prophet Isaiah informs us of the ideal of Jewish values. We yearn for the day when weapons will be obsolete. How can a sword be viewed as “jewelry,” whose function is to enhance the appearance of its bearer, when the prophets express their disdain for weapons. It is important to note that Rabbi Eliezer certainly does not disagree with the value system of the prophets. He may be assuming that for the purposes of Sabbath observance the concept of “jewelry” is defined as a function of social reality rather than ethical values. Since it is a common social convention to bear arms in a ceremonial style, as if they were a form of jewelry, this normative behavior confers upon the weapons the status of jewelry, not withstanding the dissonance with the values of Jewish tradition. Here again we find a restatement of the tension between the real and the ideal, of war and of peace.

Judaism’s unambiguous embracing of the value of peace, while recognizing the occasional tragic necessity for war, stands in stark contrast to the value systems of her “sister” religions. Both “jihad” and “crusade” are foreign to Jewish values. Perhaps the time has come for a more clear and strident sharing of the universal ethical message of Judaism. Indeed, nothing less than global survival may depend on it. 

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